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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/18860-8.txt b/18860-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..04bf5ef --- /dev/null +++ b/18860-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7613 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shadows of the Stage, by William Winter + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Shadows of the Stage + +Author: William Winter + +Release Date: July 18, 2006 [EBook #18860] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHADOWS OF THE STAGE *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + +SHADOWS OF THE +STAGE + +BY +WILLIAM WINTER + + + _"The best in this kind are but shadows"_ + +SHAKESPEARE + + +NEW YORK +MACMILLAN AND COMPANY +AND LONDON +1893 + + +COPYRIGHT, 1892, +BY MACMILLAN & CO. + +Set up and electrotyped May, 1892. Large Paper Edition printed May. +Ordinary Edition reprinted June, August, November, 1892; January, June, +October, November, 1893. + +Norwood Press: +J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith. +Boston, Mass., U.S.A. + + + + +TO + +Henry Irving + +IN MEMORY AND IN HONOUR +OF ALL THAT HE HAS DONE +TO DIGNIFY AND ADORN THE STAGE +AND TO ENNOBLE SOCIETY +THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED + + _"Cui laurus æternos honores + Delmatico peperit triumpho"_ + + + + +PREFACE. + + +_The papers contained in this volume, chosen out of hundreds that the +author has written on dramatic subjects, are assembled with the hope +that they may be accepted, in their present form, as a part of the +permanent record of our theatrical times. For at least thirty years it +has been a considerable part of the constant occupation of the author to +observe and to record the life of the contemporary stage. Since 1860 he +has written intermittently in various periodicals, and since the summer +of 1865 he has written continuously in the New York Tribune, upon actors +and their art; and in that way he has accumulated a great mass of +historical commentary upon the drama. In preparing this book he has been +permitted to draw from his contributions to the Tribune, and also from +his writings in Harper's Magazine and Weekly, in the London Theatre, and +in Augustin Daly's Portfolio of Players. The choice of these papers has +been determined partly by consideration of space and partly with the +design of supplementing the author's earlier dramatic books, namely: +Edwin Booth in Twelve Dramatic Characters; The Jeffersons; Henry Irving; +The Stage Life of Mary Anderson; Brief Chronicles, containing eighty-six +dramatic biographies; In Memory of McCullough; The Life of John Gilbert; +The Life and Works of John Brougham; The Press and the Stage; The Actor +and Other Speeches; and A Daughter of Comedy, being the life of Ada +Rehan. The impulse of all those writings, and of the present volume, is +commemorative. Let us save what we can._ + + _"Sed omnes una manet nox, + Et calcanda semel via leti."_ + +W.W. +APRIL 18, 1892. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + CHAP. PAGE + + I. THE GOOD OLD TIMES 13 + + II. IRVING IN FAUST 30 + + III. ADELAIDE NEILSON 47 + + IV. EDWIN BOOTH 63 + + V. MARY ANDERSON 90 + + VI. OLIVIA 119 + + VII. ON JEFFERSON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 130 + + VIII. ON JEFFERSON'S ACTING 151 + + IX. JEFFERSON AND FLORENCE 159 + + X. ON THE DEATH OF FLORENCE 169 + + XI. SHYLOCK AND PORTIA 178 + + XII. JOHN McCULLOUGH 185 + + XIII. CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 206 + + XIV. LAWRENCE BARRETT 215 + + XV. IRVING IN RAVENSWOOD 226 + + XVI. MERRY WIVES AND FALSTAFF 243 + + XVII. ADA REHAN 258 + + XVIII. TENNYSON'S FORESTERS 269 + + XIX. ELLEN TERRY: MERCHANT OF VENICE 286 + + XX. RICHARD MANSFIELD 301 + + XXI. GENEVIEVE WARD 315 + + XXII. EDWARD S. WILLARD 322 + + XXIII. SALVINI 339 + + XXIV. IRVING AS EUGENE ARAM 348 + + XXV. CHARLES FISHER 367 + + XXVI. MRS. GILBERT 374 + + XXVII. JAMES LEWIS 379 + +XXVIII. A LEAF FROM MY JOURNAL 383 + + + + + _"--It so fell out that certain players + We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him; + And there did seem in him a kind of joy + To hear of it."_ + +HAMLET. + + _"Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world--though + the cant of hypocrites may be the worst--the cant of criticism is + the most tormenting. I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not + a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man who will give + up the reins of his imagination into his author's hands,--be + pleased he knows not why and cares not wherefore."_ + +TRISTRAM SHANDY. + + + + +SHADOWS OF THE STAGE. + + + + +I. + +THE GOOD OLD TIMES. + + +It is recorded of John Lowin, an actor contemporary with Shakespeare and +associated with several of Shakespeare's greater characters (his range +was so wide, indeed, that it included Falstaff, Henry the Eighth, and +Hamlet), that, having survived the halcyon days of "Eliza and our James" +and lingered into the drab and russet period of the Puritans, when all +the theatres in the British islands were suppressed, he became poor and +presently kept a tavern, at Brentford, called The Three Pigeons. Lowin +was born in 1576 and he died in 1654--his grave being in London, in the +churchyard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields--so that, obviously, he was one +of the veterans of the stage. He was in his seventy-eighth year when he +passed away--wherefore in his last days he must have been "a mine of +memories." He could talk of the stirring times of Leicester, Drake, +Essex, and Raleigh. He could remember, as an event of his boyhood, the +execution of Queen Mary Stuart, and possibly he could describe, as an +eye-witness, the splendid funeral procession of Sir Philip Sidney. He +could recall the death of Queen Elizabeth; the advent of Scottish James; +the ruffling, brilliant, dissolute, audacious Duke of Buckingham; the +impeachment and disgrace of Francis Bacon; the production of the great +plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; the meetings of the wits and poets +at the Apollo and the Mermaid. He might have personally known Robert +Herrick--that loveliest of the wild song-birds of that golden age. He +might have been present at the burial of Edmund Spenser, in Westminster +Abbey--when the poet brothers of the author of _The Faerie Queene_ cast +into his grave their manuscript elegies and the pens with which those +laments had been written. He had acted Hamlet,--perhaps in the author's +presence. He had seen the burning of the old Globe Theatre. He had been, +in the early days of Charles the First, the chief and distinguished +Falstaff of the time. He had lived under the rule of three successive +princes; had deplored the sanguinary fate of the martyr-king (for the +actors were almost always royalists); had seen the rise of the +Parliament and the downfall of the theatre; and now, under the +Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, he had become the keeper of an humble +wayside inn. It is easy to fancy the old actor sitting in his chair of +state, the monarch of his tap-room, with a flagon of beer, and a +church-warden pipe of tobacco, and holding forth, to a select circle of +cronies, upon the vanished glories of the Elizabethan stage--upon the +days when there were persons in existence really worthy to be called +actors. He could talk of Richard Burbage, the first Romeo; of Armin, +famous in Shakespeare's clowns and fools; of Heminge and Condell, who +edited the First Folio of Shakespeare, which possibly he himself +purchased, fresh from the press; of Joseph Taylor, whom it is said +Shakespeare personally instructed how to play Hamlet, and the +recollection of whose performance enabled Sir William Davenant to impart +to Betterton the example and tradition established by the author--a +model that has lasted to the present day; of Kempe, the original +Dogberry, and of the exuberant, merry Richard Tarleton, after whom that +comic genius had fashioned his artistic method; of Alleyne, who kept the +bear-garden, and who founded the College and Home at Dulwich--where they +still flourish; of Gabriel Spencer, and his duel with Ben Jonson, +wherein he lost his life at the hands of that burly antagonist; of +Marlowe "of the mighty line," and his awful and lamentable +death--stabbed at Deptford by a drunken drawer in a tavern brawl. Very +rich and fine, there can be no doubt, were that veteran actor's +remembrances of "the good old times," and most explicit and downright, +it may surely be believed, was his opinion, freely communicated to the +gossips of The Three Pigeons, that--in the felicitous satirical phrase +of Joseph Jefferson--all the good actors are dead. + +It was ever thus. Each successive epoch of theatrical history presents +the same picturesque image of storied regret--memory incarnated in the +veteran, ruefully vaunting the vanished glories of the past. There has +always been a time when the stage was finer than it is now. Cibber and +Macklin, surviving in the best days of Garrick, Peg Woffington, and +Kitty Clive, were always praising the better days of Wilks, Betterton, +and Elizabeth Barry. Aged play-goers of the period of Edmund Kean and +John Philip Kemble were firmly persuaded that the drama had been buried, +never to rise again, with the dust of Garrick and Henderson, beneath the +pavement of Westminster Abbey. Less than fifty years ago an American +historian of the stage (James Rees, 1845) described it as a wreck, +overwhelmed with "gloom and eternal night," above which the genius of +the drama was mournfully presiding, in the likeness of an owl. The New +York veteran of to-day, although his sad gaze may not penetrate backward +quite to the effulgent splendours of the old Park, will sigh for +Burton's and the Olympic, and the luminous period of Mrs. Richardson, +Mary Taylor, and Tom Hamblin. The Philadelphia veteran gazes back to the +golden era of the old Chestnut Street theatre, the epoch of tie-wigs and +shoe-buckles, the illustrious times of Wood and Warren, when Fennell, +Cooke, Cooper, Wallack, and J.B. Booth were shining names in tragedy, +and Jefferson and William Twaits were great comedians, and the beautiful +Anne Brunton was the queen of the stage. The Boston veteran speaks +proudly of the old Federal and the old Tremont, of Mary Duff, Julia +Pelby, Charles Eaton, and Clara Fisher, and is even beginning to gild +with reminiscent splendour the first days of the Boston Theatre, when +Thomas Barry was manager and Julia Bennett Barrow and Mrs. John Wood +contended for the public favour. In a word, the age that has seen +Rachel, Seebach, Ristori, Charlotte Cushman, and Adelaide Neilson, the +age that sees Ellen Terry, Mary Anderson, Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, +Henry Irving, Salvini, Coquelin, Lawrence Barrett, John Gilbert, John S. +Clarke, Ada Rehan, James Lewis, Clara Morris, and Richard Mansfield, is +a comparatively sterile period--"Too long shut in strait and few, thinly +dieted on dew"--which ought to have felt the spell of Cooper and Mary +Buff, and known what acting was when Cooke's long forefinger pointed the +way, and Dunlap bore the banner, and pretty Mrs. Marshall bewitched the +father of his country, and Dowton raised the laugh, and lovely Mrs. +Barrett melted the heart, and the roses were "bright by the calm +Bendemeer." The present writer, who began theatre-going in earnest over +thirty years ago, finds himself full often musing over a dramatic time +that still seems brighter than this--when he could exult in the fairy +splendour and comic humour of _Aladdin_ and weep over the sorrows of +_The Drunkard_, when he was thrilled and frightened by J.B. Booth in +_The Apostate_, and could find an ecstasy of pleasure in the loves of +Alonzo and Cora and the sublime self-sacrifice of Rolla. Thoughts of +such actors as Henry Wallack, George Jordan, John Brougham, John E. +Owens, Mary Carr, Mrs. Barrow, and Charlotte Thompson, together in the +same theatre, are thoughts of brilliant people and of more than commonly +happy displays of talent and beauty. The figures that used to be seen on +Wallack's stage, at the house he established upon the wreck of John +Brougham's Lyceum, often rise in memory, crowned with a peculiar light. +Lester Wallack, in his peerless elegance; Laura Keene, in her spiritual +beauty; the quaint, eccentric Walcot; the richly humorous Blake, so +noble in his dignity, so firm and fine and easy in his method, so +copious in his natural humour; Mary Gannon, sweet, playful, bewitching, +irresistible; Mrs. Vernon, as full of character as the tulip is of +colour or the hyacinth of grace, and as delicate and refined as an +exquisite bit of old china--those actors made a group, the like of +which it would be hard to find now. Shall we ever see again such an +Othello as Edwin Forrest, or such a Lord Duberly and Cap'n Cuttle as +Burton, or such a Dazzle as John Brougham, or such an Affable Hawk as +Charles Mathews? Certainly there was a superiority of manner, a tinge of +intellectual character, a tone of grace and romance about the old +actors, such as is not common in the present; and, making all needful +allowance for the illusive glamour that memory casts over the distant +and the dim, it yet remains true that the veterans of our day have a +certain measure of right upon their side of the question. + +In the earlier periods of our theatrical history the strength of the +stage was concentrated in a few theatres. The old Park, for example, was +called simply The Theatre, and when the New York playgoer spoke of going +to the play he meant that he was going there. One theatre, or perhaps +two, might flourish, in a considerable town, during a part of the year, +but the field was limited, and therefore the actors were brought +together in two or three groups. The star system, at least till the time +of Cooper, seems to have been innocuous. Garrick's prodigious success +in London, more than a hundred years ago, had enabled him to engross the +control of the stage in that centre, where he was but little opposed, +and practically to exile many players of the first ability, whose lustre +he dimmed or whose services he did not require; and those players +dispersed themselves to distant places--to York, Dublin, Edinburgh, +etc.--or crossed the sea to America. With that beginning the way was +opened for the growth of superb stock-companies, in the early days of +the American theatre. The English, next to the Italians, were the first +among modern peoples to create a dramatic literature and to establish +the acted drama, and they have always led in this field--antedating, +historically, and surpassing in essential things the French stage which +nowadays it is fashionable to extol. English influence, at all times +stern and exacting, stamped the character of our early theatre. The tone +of society, alike in the mother country, in the colonies, and in the +first years of our Republic, was, as to these matters, formal and +severe. Success upon the stage was exceedingly difficult to obtain, and +it could not be obtained without substantial merit. The youths who +sought it were often persons of liberal education. In Philadelphia, New +York, and Boston the stock-companies were composed of select and +thoroughly trained actors, many of whom were well-grounded classical +scholars. Furthermore, the epoch was one of far greater leisure and +repose than are possible now--- when the civilised world is at the +summit of sixty years of scientific development such as it had not +experienced in all its recorded centuries of previous progress. +Naturally enough the dramatic art of our ancestors was marked by +scholar-like and thorough elaboration, mellow richness of colour, +absolute simplicity of character, and great solidity of merit. Such +actors as Wignell, Hodgkinson, Jefferson, Francis, and Blissett offered +no work that was not perfect of its kind. The tradition had been +established and accepted, and it was transmitted and preserved. +Everything was concentrated, and the public grew to be entirely familiar +with it. Men, accordingly, who obtained their ideas of acting at a time +when they were under influences surviving from those ancient days are +confused, bewildered, and distressed by much that is offered in the +theatres now. I have listened to the talk of an aged American +acquaintance (Thurlow Weed), who had seen and known Edmund Kean, and +who said that all modern tragedians were insignificant in comparison +with him. I have listened to the talk of an aged English acquaintance +(Fladgate), who had seen and known John Philip Kemble, and who said that +his equal has never since been revealed. The present day knows what the +old school was,[1] when it sees William Warren, Joseph Jefferson, +Charles Fisher, Mrs. John Drew, John Gilbert, J.H. Stoddart, Mrs. G.H. +Gilbert, William Davidge, and Lester Wallack--the results and the +remains of it. The old touch survives in them and is under their +control, and no one, seeing their ripe and finished art, can feel +surprise that the veteran moralist should be wedded to his idols of the +past, and should often be heard sadly to declare that all the good +actors--except these--are dead. He forgets that scores of theatres now +exist where once there were but two or three; that the population of the +United States has been increased by about fifty millions within ninety +years; that the field has been enormously broadened; that the character +of, the audience has become one of illimitable diversity; that the +prodigious growth of the star-system, together with all sorts of +experimental catch-penny theatrical management, is one of the inevitable +necessities of the changed condition of civilisation; that the feverish +tone of this great struggling and seething mass of humanity is +necessarily reflected in the state of the theatre; and that the forces +of the stage have become very widely diffused. Such a moralist would +necessarily be shocked by the changes that have come upon our theatre +within even the last twenty-five years--by the advent of "the sensation +drama," invented and named by Dion Boucicault; by the resuscitation of +the spectacle play, with its lavish tinsel and calcium glare and its +multitudinous nymphs; by the opera bouffe, with its frequent licentious +ribaldry; by the music-hall comedian, with his vulgar realism; and by +the idiotic burlesque; with its futile babble and its big-limbed, +half-naked girls. Nevertheless there are just as good actors now living +as have ever lived, and there is just as fine a sense of dramatic art in +the community as ever existed in any of "the palmy days"; only, what was +formerly concentrated is now scattered. + +The stage is keeping step with the progress of human thought in every +direction, and it will continue to advance. Evil influences impressed +upon it there certainly are, in liberal abundance--not the least of +these being that of the speculative shop-keeper, whose nature it is to +seize any means of turning a penny, and who deals in dramatic art +precisely as he would deal in groceries: but when we speak of "our +stage" we do not mean an aggregation of shows or of the schemes of +showmen. The stage is an institution that has grown out of a necessity +in human nature. It was as inevitable that man should evolve the theatre +as it was that he should evolve the church, the judiciary tribunal, the +parliament, or any other essential component of the State. Almost all +human beings possess the dramatic perception; a few possess the dramatic +faculty. These few are born for the stage, and each and every generation +contributes its number to the service of this art. The problem is one of +selection and embarkation. Of the true actor it may be said, as Ben +Jonson says of the true poet, that he is made as well as born. The +finest natural faculties have never yet been known to avail without +training and culture. But this is a problem which, in a great measure, +takes care of itself and in time works out and submits its own solution. +The anomaly, every day presented, of the young person who, knowing +nothing, feeling nothing, and having nothing to communicate except the +desire of communication, nevertheless rushes upon the stage, is felt to +be absurd. Where the faculty as well as the instinct exists, however, +impulse soon recognises the curb of common sense, and the aspirant finds +his level. In this way the dramatic profession is recruited. In this way +the several types of dramatic artist--each type being distinct and each +being expressive of a sequence from mental and spiritual ancestry--are +maintained. It is not too much to say that a natural law operates +silently and surely behind each seemingly capricious chance, in this +field of the conduct of life. A thoroughly adequate dramatic +stock-company may almost be said to be a thing of natural accretion. It +is made up, like every other group, of the old, the middle-aged, and the +young; but, unlike every other group, it must contain the capacity to +present, in a concrete image, each elemental type of human nature, and +to reproduce, with the delicate exaggeration essential to dramatic art, +every species of person; in order that all human life--whether of the +street, the dwelling, the court, the camp, man in his common joys and +sorrows, his vices, crimes, miseries, his loftiest aspirations and most +ideal state--may be so copied that the picture will express all its +beauty and sweetness, all its happiness and mirth, all its dignity, and +all its moral admonition and significance, for the benefit of the world. +Such a dramatic stock-company, for example (and this is but one of the +commendable products of the modern stage), has grown up and crystallised +into a form of refined power and symmetry, for the purpose to which it +is devoted, under the management of Augustin Daly. That purpose is the +acting of comedy. Mr. Daly began management in 1869, and he has remained +in it, almost continually, from that time to this. Many players, first +and last, have served under his direction. His company has known +vicissitudes. But the organisation has not lost its comprehensive form, +its competent force, and its attractive quality of essential grace. No +thoughtful observer of its career can have failed to perceive how prompt +the manager has been to profit by every lesson of experience; what keen +perception he has shown as to the essential constituents of a theatrical +troop; with what fine judgment he has used the forces at his disposal; +with what intrepid resolution and expeditious energy he has animated +their spirit and guided their art; and how naturally those players have +glided into their several stations and assimilated in one artistic +family. How well balanced, how finely equipped, how distinctively able +that company is, and what resources of poetry, thought, taste, +character, humour, and general capacity it contains, may not, perhaps, +be fully appreciated in the passing hour. "_Non, si male nunc, et olim +sic erit._" Fifty years from now, when perchance some veteran, still +bright and cheery "in the chimney-nook of age," shall sit in his +armchair and prose about the past, with what complacent exultation will +he speak of the beautiful Ada Rehan, so bewitching as Peggy in _The +Country Girl_, so radiant, vehement, and stormily passionate as +Katherine; of manly John Drew, with his nonchalant ease, incisive tone, +and crisp and graceful method; of noble Charles Fisher, and sprightly +and sparkling James Lewis, and genial, piquant, quaint Mrs. Gilbert! I +mark the gentle triumph in that aged reminiscent voice, and can respect +an old man's kindly and natural sympathy with the glories and delights +of his vanished youth. But I think it is not necessary to wait till you +are old before you begin to praise anything, and then to praise only the +dead. Let us recognise what is good in our own time, and honour and +admire it with grateful hearts. + + * * * * * + +NOTE.--At the Garrick club, London, June 26, 1885, it was my fortune to +meet Mr. Fladgate, "father of the Garrick," who was then aged 86. The +veteran displayed astonishing resources of memory and talked most +instructively about the actors of the Kemble period. He declared John +Philip Kemble to have been the greatest of actors, and said that his +best impersonations were Penruddock, Zanga, and Coriolanus. Mrs. +Siddons, he said, was incomparable, and the elder Mathews a great +genius,--the precursor of Dickens. For Edmund Kean he had no enthusiasm. +Kean, he said, was at his best in Sir Edward Mortimer, and after that in +Shylock. Miss O'Neill he remembered as the perfect Juliet: a beautiful, +blue-eyed woman, who could easily weep, and who retained her beauty to +the last, dying at 85, as Lady Wrixon Becher. + +[Footnote 1: This paper was written in 1888, and now, in 1892, Mr. +Jefferson, Mr. Stoddart, Mrs. Drew, and Mrs. Gilbert are the only +survivors of that noble group.] + + + + +II. + +HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN FAUST. + + +It is not surprising that the votaries of Goethe's colossal poem--a work +which, although somewhat deformed and degraded with the pettiness of +provincialism, is yet a grand and immortal creation of genius--should +find themselves dissatisfied with theatrical expositions of it. Although +dramatic in form the poem is not continuously, directly, and compactly +dramatic in movement. It cannot be converted into a play without being +radically changed in structure and in the form of its diction. More +disastrous still, in the eyes of those votaries, it cannot be and it +never has been converted into a play without a considerable sacrifice of +its contents, its comprehensive scope, its poetry, and its ethical +significance. In the poem it is the Man who predominates; it is not the +Fiend. Mephistopheles, indeed, might, for the purpose of philosophical +apprehension, be viewed as an embodied projection of the mind of Faust; +for the power of the one is dependent absolutely upon the weakness and +surrender of the other. The object of the poem was the portrayal of +universal humanity in a typical form at its highest point of development +and in its representative spiritual experience. Faust, an aged scholar, +the epitome of human faculties and virtues, grand, venerable, +beneficent, blameless, is passing miserably into the evening of life. He +has done no outward and visible wrong, and yet he is wretched. The utter +emptiness of his life--its lack of fulfilment, its lack of +sensation--wearies, annoys, disgusts, and torments him. He is divided +between an apathy, which heavily weighs him down into the dust, and a +passionate, spiritual longing, intense, unsatisfied, insatiable, which +almost drives him to frenzy. Once, at sunset, standing on a hillside, +and looking down upon a peaceful valley, he utters, in a poetic strain +of exquisite tenderness and beauty, the final wish of his forlorn and +weary soul. It is no longer now the god-like aspiration and imperious +desire of his prime, but it is the sufficient alternative. All he asks +now is that he may see the world always as in that sunset vision, in +the perfection of happy rest; that he may be permitted, soaring on the +wings of the spirit, to follow the sun in its setting ("The day before +me and the night behind"), and thus to circle forever round and round +this globe, the ecstatic spectator of happiness and peace. He has had +enough and more than enough of study, of struggle, of unfulfilled +aspiration. Lonely dignity, arid renown, satiety, sorrow, knowledge +without hope, and age without comfort,--these are his present portion; +and a little way onward, waiting for him, is death. Too old to play with +passion, too young not to feel desire, he has endured a long struggle +between the two souls in his breast--one longing for heaven and the +other for the world; but he is beaten at last, and in the abject +surrender of despair he determines to die by his own act. A childlike +feeling, responsive in his heart to the divine prompting of sacred +music, saves him from self-murder; but in a subsequent bitter revulsion +he utters a curse upon everything in the state of man, and most of all +upon that celestial attribute of patience whereby man is able to endure +and to advance in the eternal process of evolution from darkness into +light. And now it is, when the soul of the human being, utterly baffled +by the mystery of creation, crushed by its own hopeless sorrow, and +enraged by the everlasting command to renounce and refrain, has become +one delirium of revolt against God and destiny, that the spirit of +perpetual denial, incarnated in Mephistopheles, steps forth to proffer +guidance and help. It is as if his rejection and defiance had suddenly +become embodied, to aid him in his ruin. More in recklessness than in +trust, with no fear, almost with scorn and contempt, he yet agrees to +accept this assistance. If happiness be really possible, if the true +way, after all, should lie in the life of the senses, and not in +knowledge and reason; if, under the ministrations of this fiend, one +hour of life, even one moment of it, shall ever (which is an idle and +futile supposition) be so sweet that his heart shall desire it to +linger, then, indeed, he will surrender himself eternally to this at +present preposterous Mephistopheles, whom his mood, his magic, and the +revulsion of his moral nature have evoked:-- + + "Then let the death-bell chime the token! + Then art thou from thy service free! + The clock may stop, the hand be broken, + And time be finished unto me." + +Such an hour, it is destined, shall arrive, after many long and +miserable years, when, aware of the beneficence of living for others and +in the imagined prospect of leading, guiding, and guarding a free people +upon a free land, Faust shall be willing to say to the moment: "Stay, +thou art so fair"; and Mephistopheles shall harshly cry out: "The clock +stands still"; and the graybeard shall sink in the dust; and the holy +angels shall fly away with his soul, leaving the Fiend baffled and +morose, to gibe at himself over the failure of all his infernal arts. +But, meanwhile, it remains true of the man that no pleasure satisfies +him and no happiness contents, and "death is desired, and life a thing +unblest." + +The man who puts out his eyes must become blind. The sin of Faust is a +spiritual sin, and the meaning of all his subsequent terrible experience +is that spiritual sin must be--and will be--expiated. No human soul can +ever be lost. In every human soul the contest between good and evil must +continue until the good has conquered and the evil is defeated and +eradicated. Then, when the man's spirit is adjusted to its environment +in the spiritual world, it will be at peace--and not till then. And if +this conflict is not waged and completed now and here, it must be and it +will be fought out and finished hereafter and somewhere else. It is the +greatest of all delusions to suppose that you can escape from yourself. +Judgment and retribution proceed within the soul and not from sources +outside of it. That is the philosophic drift of the poet's thought +expressed and implied in his poem. It was Man, in his mortal ordeal--the +motive, cause, and necessity of which remain a mystery--whom he desired +and aimed to portray; it was not merely the triumph of a mocking devil, +temporarily victorious through ministration to animal lust and +intellectual revolt, over the weakness of the carnal creature and the +embittered bewilderment of the baffled mind. Mr. Irving may well say, as +he is reported to have said, that he will consider himself to have +accomplished a good work if his production of Faust should have the +effect of invigorating popular interest in Goethe's immortal poem and +bringing closer home to the mind of his public a true sense of its +sublime and far-reaching signification. + +The full metaphysical drift of thought and meaning in Goethe's poem, +however, can be but faintly indicated in a play. It is more distinctly +indicated in Mr. Wills's play, which is used by Mr. Irving, than in any +other play upon this subject that has been presented. This result, an +approximate fidelity to the original, is due in part to the preservation +of the witch scenes, in part to Mr. Irving's subtle and significant +impersonation of Mephistopheles, and in part to a weird investiture of +spiritual mystery with which he has artfully environed the whole +production. The substance of the piece is the love story of Faust and +Margaret, yet beyond this is a background of infinity, and over and +around this is a poetic atmosphere charged with suggestiveness of +supernatural agency in the fate of man. If the gaze of the observer be +concentrated upon the mere structure of the piece, the love story is +what he will find; and that is all he will find. Faust makes his compact +with the Fiend. He is rejuvenated and he begins a new life. In "the +Witch's Kitchen" his passions are intensified, and then they are +ignited, so that he may be made the slave of desire and afterward if +possible imbruted by sensuality. He is artfully brought into contact +with Margaret, whom he instantly loves, who presently loves him, whom +he wins, and upon whom, since she becomes a mother out of wedlock, his +inordinate and reckless love imposes the burden of pious contrition and +worldly shame. Then, through the puissant wickedness and treachery of +Mephistopheles, he is made to predominate over her vengeful brother, +Valentine, whom he kills in a street fray. Thus his desire to experience +in his own person the most exquisite bliss that humanity can enjoy and +equally the most exquisite torture that it can suffer, becomes +fulfilled. He is now the agonised victim of love and of remorse. Orestes +pursued by the Furies was long ago selected as the typical image of +supreme anguish and immitigable suffering; but Orestes is less a +lamentable figure than Faust--fortified though he is, and because he is, +with the awful but malign, treacherous, and now impotent sovereignty of +hell. To deaden his sensibility, destroy his conscience, and harden him +in evil the Fiend leads him into a mad revel of boundless profligacy and +bestial riot--denoted by the beautiful and terrible scene upon the +Brocken--and poor Margaret is abandoned to her shame, her wandering, her +despair, her frenzy, her crime, and her punishment. This desertion, +though, is procured by a stratagem of the Fiend and does not proceed +from the design of her lover. The expedient of Mephistopheles, to lull +his prey by dissipations, is a failure. Faust finds them "tasteless," +and he must return to Margaret. He finds her in prison, crazed and +dying, and he strives in vain to set her free. There is a climax, +whereat, while her soul is borne upward by angels he--whose destiny must +yet be fulfilled--is summoned by the terrible voice of Satan. This is +the substance of what is shown; but if the gaze of the observer pierces +beyond this, if he is able to comprehend that terrific but woeful image +of the fallen angel, if he perceives what is by no means obscurely +intimated, that Margaret, redeemed and beatified, cannot be happy unless +her lover also is saved, and that the soul of Faust can only be lost +through the impossible contingency of being converted into the likeness +of the Fiend, he will understand that a spectacle has been set before +him more august, momentous, and sublime than any episode of tragical +human love could ever be. + +Henry Irving, in his embodiment of Mephistopheles, fulfilled the +conception of the poet in one essential respect and transcended it in +another. His performance, superb in ideal and perfect in execution, was +a great work--and precisely here was the greatness of it. Mephistopheles +as delineated by Goethe is magnificently intellectual and sardonic, but +nowhere does he convey even a faint suggestion of the god-head of glory +from which he has lapsed. His own frank and clear avowal of himself +leaves no room for doubt as to the limitation intended to be established +for him by the poet. I am, he declares, the spirit that perpetually +denies. I am a part of that part which once was all--a part of that +darkness out of which came the light. I repudiate all things--because +everything that has been made is unworthy to exist and ought to be +destroyed, and therefore it is better that nothing should ever have been +made. God dwells in splendour, alone and eternal, but his spirits he +thrusts into darkness, and man, a poor creature fashioned to poke his +nose into filth, he sportively dowers with day and night. My province is +evil; my existence is mockery; my pleasure and my purpose are +destruction. In a word, this Fiend, towering to the loftiest summit of +cold intellect, is the embodiment of cruelty, malice, and scorn, +pervaded and interfused with grim humour. That ideal Mr. Irving made +actual. The omniscient craft and deadly malignity of his impersonation, +swathed in a most specious humour at some moments (as, for example, in +Margaret's bedroom, in the garden scene with Martha, and in the duel +scene with Valentine) made the blood creep and curdle with horror, even +while they impressed the sense of intellectual power and stirred the +springs of laughter. But if you rightly saw his face, in the fantastic, +symbolical scene of the Witch's Kitchen; in that lurid moment of sunset +over the quaint gables and haunted spires of Nuremburg, when the +sinister presence of the arch-fiend deepened the red glare of the +setting sun and seemed to bathe this world in the ominous splendour of +hell; and, above all, if you perceived the soul that shone through his +eyes in that supremely awful moment of his predominance over the hellish +revel upon the Brocken, when all the hideous malignities of nature and +all those baleful "spirits which tend on mortal consequence" are loosed +into the aerial abyss, and only this imperial horror can curb and subdue +them, you knew that this Mephistopheles was a sufferer not less than a +mocker; that his colossal malignity was the delirium of an angelic +spirit thwarted, baffled, shattered, yet defiant; never to be +vanquished; never through all eternity to be at peace with itself. The +infinite sadness of that face, the pathos, beyond words, of that +isolated and lonely figure--those are the qualities that irradiated all +its diversified attributes of mind, humour, duplicity, sarcasm, force, +horror, and infernal beauty, and invested it with the authentic quality +of greatness. There is no warrant for this treatment of the part to be +derived from Goethe's poem. There is every warrant for it in the +apprehension of this tremendous subject by the imagination of a great +actor. You cannot mount above the earth, you cannot transcend the +ordinary line of the commonplace, as a mere sardonic image of +self-satisfied, chuckling obliquity. Mr. Irving embodied Mephistopheles +not as a man but as a spirit, with all that the word implies, and in +doing that he not only heeded the fine instinct of the true actor but +the splendid teaching of the highest poetry--the ray of supernal light +that flashes from the old Hebrew Bible; the blaze that streams from the +_Paradise Lost_; the awful glory through which, in the pages of Byron, +the typical figure of agonised but unconquerable revolt towers over a +realm of ruin:-- + + "On his brow + The thunder-scars are graven; from his eye + Glares forth the immortality of hell." + +Ellen Terry, in her assumption of Margaret, once more displayed that +profound, comprehensive, and particular knowledge of human love--that +knowledge of it through the soul and not simply the mind--which is the +source of her exceptional and irresistible power. This Margaret was a +woman who essentially loves, who exists only for love, who has the +courage of her love, who gives all for love--not knowing that it is a +sacrifice--and whose love, at last, triumphant over death, is not only +her own salvation but that also of her lover. The point of strict +conformity to the conception of the poet, in physique and in spiritual +state, may be waived. Goethe's Margaret is a handsome, hardy girl, of +humble rank, who sometimes uses bad grammar and who reveals no essential +mind. She is just a delicious woman, and there is nothing about her +either metaphysical or mysterious. The wise Fiend, who knows that with +such a man as Faust the love of such a woman must outweigh all the +world, wisely tempts him with her, and infernally lures him to the +accomplishment of her ruin. But it will be observed that, aside from the +infraction of the law of man, the loves of Faust and Margaret are not +only innocent but sacred. This sanctity Mephistopheles can neither +pollute nor control, and through this he loses his victims. Ellen +Terry's Margaret was a delicious woman, and not metaphysical nor +mysterious; but it was Margaret imbued with the temperament of Ellen +Terry,--who, if ever an exceptional creature lived, is exceptional in +every particular. In her embodiment she transfigured the character: she +maintained it in an ideal world, and she was the living epitome of all +that is fascinating in essential womanhood--glorified by genius. It did +not seem like acting but like the revelation of a hallowed personal +experience upon which no chill worldly gaze should venture to intrude. + +In that suggestive book in which Lady Pollock records her recollections +of Macready it is said that once, after his retirement, on reading a +London newspaper account of the production of a Shakespearean play, he +remarked that "evidently the accessories swallow up the poetry and the +action": and he proceeded, in a reminiscent and regretful mood, to speak +as follows: "In my endeavour to give to Shakespeare all his attributes, +to enrich his poetry with scenes worthy of its interpretation, to give +to his tragedies their due magnificence and to his comedies their entire +brilliancy, I have set an example which is accompanied with great peril, +for the public is willing to have the magnificence without the tragedy, +and the poet is swallowed up in display." Mr. Irving is the legitimate +successor to Macready and he has encountered that same peril. There are +persons--many of them--who think that it is a sign of weakness to praise +cordially and to utter admiration with a free heart. They are mistaken, +but no doubt they are sincere. Shakespeare, the wisest of monitors, is +never so eloquent and splendid as when he makes one of his people +express praise of another. Look at those speeches in _Coriolanus_. Such +niggardly persons, in their detraction of Henry Irving, are prompt to +declare that he is a capital stage manager but not a great actor. This +has an impartial air and a sapient sound, but it is gross folly and +injustice. Henry Irving is one of the greatest actors that have ever +lived, and he has shown it over and over again. His acting is all the +more effective because associated with unmatched ability to insist and +insure that every play shall be perfectly well set, in every particular, +and that every part in it shall be competently acted. But his genius and +his ability are no more discredited than those of Macready were by his +attention to technical detail and his insistence upon total excellence +of result. It should be observed, however, that he has carried stage +garniture to an extreme limit. His investiture of _Faust_ was so +magnificent that possibly it may have tended in the minds of many +spectators, to obscure and overwhelm the fine intellectual force, the +beautiful delicacy, and the consummate art with which he embodied +Mephistopheles. It ought not to have produced that effect--because, in +fact, the spectacle presented was, actually and truly, that of a +supernatural being, predominant by force of inherent strength and charm +over the broad expanse of the populous and teeming world; but it might +have produced it: and, for the practical good of the art of acting, +progress in that direction has gone far enough. The supreme beauty of +the production was the poetic atmosphere of it--the irradiation of that +strange sensation of being haunted which sometimes will come upon you, +even at noon-day, in lonely places, on vacant hillside, beneath the dark +boughs of great trees, in the presence of the grim and silent rocks, and +by the solitary margin of the sea. The feeling was that of Goethe's own +weird and suggestive scene of the Open Field, the black horses, and the +raven-stone; or that of the shuddering lines of Coleridge:-- + + "As one that on a lonesome road + Doth walk in fear and dread, + And, having once turned round, walks on + And turns no more his head, + Because he knows a frightful fiend + Doth close behind him tread." + + + + +III. + +ADELAIDE NEILSON AS IMOGEN AND JULIET. + + +Shakespeare's drama of _Cymbeline_ seems not at any time in the history +of the stage to have been a favourite with theatrical audiences. In New +York it has had but five revivals in more than a hundred years, and +those occurred at long intervals and were of brief continuance. The +names of Thomas Barry, Mrs. Shaw-Hamblin (Eliza Marian Trewar), and +Julia Bennett Barrow are best remembered in association with it on the +American stage. It had slept for more than a generation when, in the +autumn of 1876, Adelaide Neilson revived it at Philadelphia; but since +then it has been reproduced by several of her imitators. She first +offered it on the New York stage in May 1877, and it was then seen that +her impersonation of Imogen was one of the best of her works. If it be +the justification of the stage as an institution of public benefit and +social advancement, that it elevates humanity by presenting noble +ideals of human nature and making them exemplars and guides, that +justification was practically accomplished by that beautiful +performance. + +The poetry of _Cymbeline_ is eloquent and lovely. The imagination of its +appreciative reader, gliding lightly over its more sinister incidents, +finds its story romantic, its accessories--both of the court and the +wilderness--picturesque, its historic atmosphere novel and exciting, and +the spirit of it tender and noble. Such a reader, likewise, fashions its +characters into an ideal form which cannot be despoiled by comparison +with a visible standard of reality. It is not, however, an entirely +pleasant play to witness. The acting version, indeed, is considerably +condensed from the original, by the excision of various scenes +explanatory of the conduct of the story, and by the omission of the +cumbersome vision of Leonatus; and the gain of brevity thereby made +helps to commend the work to a more gracious acceptance than it would be +likely to obtain if acted exactly according to Shakespeare. Its movement +also is imbued with additional alacrity by a rearrangement of its +divisions. It is customarily presented in six acts. Yet, +notwithstanding the cutting and editing to which it has been subjected, +_Cymbeline_ remains somewhat inharmonious alike with the needs of the +stage and the apprehension of the public. + +For this there are several causes. One perhaps is its mixed character, +its vague, elusive purpose, and its unreality of effect. From the nature +of his story--a tale of stern facts and airy inventions, respecting +Britain and Rome, two thousand years ago--the poet seems to have been +compelled to make a picture of human life too literal to be viewed +wholly as an ideal, and too romantic to be viewed wholly as literal. In +the unequivocally great plays of Shakespeare the action moves like the +mighty flow of some resistless river. In this one it advances with the +diffusive and straggling movement of a summer cloud. The drift and +meaning of the piece, accordingly, do not stand boldly out. That astute +thinker, Ulrici, for instance, after much brooding upon it, ties his +mental legs in a hard knot and says that Shakespeare intended, in this +piece, to illustrate that man is not the master of his own destiny. +There must be liberal scope for conjecture when a philosopher can make +such a landing as that. + +The persons in _Cymbeline_, moreover--aside from the exceptional +character of Imogen--do not come home to a spectator's realisation, +whether of sympathy or repugnance. It is like the flower that thrives +best under glass but shivers and wilts in the open air. Its poetry seems +marred by the rude touch of the actual. Its delicious mountain scenes +lose their woodland fragrance. Its motive, bluntly disclosed in the +wager scene, seems coarse, unnatural, and offensive. Its plot, really +simple, moves heavily and perplexes attention. It is a piece that lacks +pervasive concentration and enthralling point. It might be defined as +_Othello_ with a difference--the difference being in favour of +_Othello_. Jealousy is the pivot of both: but in _Othello_ jealousy is +treated with profound and searching truth, with terrible intensity of +feeling, and with irresistible momentum of action. A spectator will +honour and pity Othello, and hate and execrate Iago--with some infusion, +perhaps of impatience toward the one and of admiration for the +other--but he is likely to view both Leonatus and Iachimo with +considerable indifference; he will casually recognise the infrequent +Cymbeline as an ill-tempered, sonorous old donkey; he will give a +passing smile of scornful disgust to Cloten--that vague hybrid of +Roderigo and Oswald; and of the proceedings of the Queen and the +fortunes of the royal family--whether as affected by the chemical +experiments of Doctor Cornelius or the bellicose attitude of Augustus +Cæsar, in reaching for his British tribute--he will be practically +unconscious. This result comes of commingling stern fact and pastoral +fancy in such a way that an auditor of the composition is dubious +whether to fix his senses steadfastly on the one or yield up his spirit +to poetic reverie on the other. + +Coleridge--whose intuitions as to such matters were usually as good as +recorded truth--thought that Shakespeare wrote _Cymbeline_ in his +youthful period. He certainly does not manifest in it the cogent and +glittering dramatic force that is felt in _Othello_ and _Macbeth_. The +probability is that he wrought upon the old legend of Holinshed in a +mood of intellectual caprice, inclining towards sensuous and fanciful +dalliance with a remote and somewhat intangible subject. Those persons +who explain the immense fecundity of his creative genius by alleging +that he must steadily have kept in view the needs of the contemporary +theatre seem to forget that he went much further in his plays than there +was any need for him to go, in the satisfaction of such a purpose, and +that those plays are, in general, too great for any stage that has +existed. Shakespeare, it is certain, could not have been an exception to +the law that every author must be conscious of a feeling, apart from +intellectual purpose, that carries him onward in his art. The feeling +that shines through _Cymbeline_ is a loving delight in the character of +Imogen. + +The nature of that feeling and the quality of that character, had they +been obscure, would have been made clear by Adelaide Neilson's +embodiment. The personality that she presented was typical and unusual. +It embodied virtue, neither hardened by austerity nor vapid with excess +of goodness, and it embodied seductive womanhood, without one touch of +wantonness or guile. It presented a woman innately good and radiantly +lovely, who amid severest trials spontaneously and unconsciously acted +with the ingenuous grace of childhood, the grandest generosity, the most +constant spirit. The essence of Imogen's nature is fidelity. Faithful to +love, even till death, she is yet more faithful to honour. Her scorn of +falsehood is overwhelming; but she resents no injury, harbours no +resentment, feels no spite, murmurs at no misfortune. From every blow of +evil she recovers with a gentle patience that is infinitely pathetic. +Passionate and acutely sensitive, she yet seems never to think of +antagonising her affliction or to falter in her unconscious fortitude. +She has no reproach--but only a grieved submission--for the husband who +has wronged her by his suspicions and has doomed her to death. She +thinks only of him, not of herself, when she beholds him, as she +supposes, dead at her side; but even then she will submit and +endure--she will but "weep and sigh" and say twice o'er "a century of +prayers." She is only sorry for the woman who was her deadly enemy and +who hated her for her goodness--so often the incitement of mortal +hatred. She loses without a pang the heirship to a kingdom. An ideal +thus poised in goodness and radiant in beauty might well have +sustained--as undoubtedly it did sustain--the inspiration of +Shakespeare. + +Adelaide Neilson, with her uncommon graces of person, found it easy to +make the chamber scene and the cave scenes pictorial and charming. Her +ingenuous trepidation and her pretty wiles, as Fidele, in the cave, +were finely harmonious with the character and arose from it like odour +from a flower. The innocence, the glee, the feminine desire to please, +the pensive grace, the fear, the weakness, and the artless simplicity +made up a state of gracious fascination. It was, however, in the revolt +against Iachimo's perfidy, in the fall before Pisanio's fatal +disclosure, and in the frenzy over the supposed death of Leonatus that +the actress put forth electrical power and showed how strong emotion, +acting through the imagination, can transfigure the being and give to +love or sorrow a monumental semblance and an everlasting voice. The +power was harmonious with the individuality and did not mar its grace. +There was a perfect preservation of sustained identity, and this was +expressed with such a sweet elocution and such an airy freedom of +movement and naturalness of gesture that the observer almost forgot to +notice the method of the mechanism and quite forgot that he was looking +upon a fiction and a shadow. That her personation of Imogen, though more +exalted in its nature than any of her works, excepting Isabella, would +rival in public acceptance her Juliet, Viola, or Rosalind, was not to +be expected: it was too much a passive condition--delicate and +elusive--and too little an active effort. She woke into life the +sleeping spirit of a rather repellant drama, and was "alone the Arabian +bird." + +Shakespeare's Juliet, the beautiful, ill-fated heroine of his consummate +poem of love and sorrow, was the most effective, if not the highest of +Adelaide Neilson's tragic assumptions. It carried to every eye and to +every heart the convincing and thrilling sense equally of her beauty and +her power. The exuberant womanhood, the celestial affection, the +steadfast nobility, and the lovely, childlike innocence of Imogen--shown +through the constrained medium of a diffusive romance--were not to all +minds appreciable on the instant. The gentle sadness of Viola, playing +around her gleeful animation and absorbing it as the cup of the white +lily swallows the sunshine, might well be, for the more blunt senses of +the average auditor, dim, fitful, evanescent, and ineffective. Ideal +heroism and dream-like fragrance--the colours of Murillo or the poems of +Heine--are truly known but to exceptional natures or in exceptional +moods. The reckless, passionate idolatry of Juliet, on the +contrary,--with its attendant sacrifice, its climax of disaster, and its +sequel of anguish and death,--stands forth as clearly as the white line +of the lightning on a black midnight sky, and no observer can possibly +miss its meaning. All that Juliet is, all that she acts and all that she +suffers, is elemental. It springs directly from the heart and it moves +straight onward like a shaft of light. Othello, the perfection of +simplicity, is not simpler than Juliet. In him are embodied passion and +jealousy, swayed by an awful instinct of rude justice. In her is +embodied unmixed and immitigable passion, without law, limit, reason, +patience, or restraint. She is love personified and therefore a fatality +to herself. Presented in that way--and in that way she was presented by +Adelaide Neilson--her nature and her experience come home to the +feelings as well as the imagination, and all that we know, as well as +all that we dream, of beauty and of anguish are centred in one image. In +this we may see all the terrors of the moving hand of fate. In this we +may almost hear a warning voice out of heaven, saying that nowhere +except in duty shall the human heart find refuge and peace--or, if not +peace, submission. + +The question whether Shakespeare's Juliet be correctly interpreted is +not one of public importance. It might be ever so correctly interpreted +without producing the right effect. There have been many Juliets. There +has, in our time, been no Juliet so completely fascinating and +irresistible as that of Adelaide Neilson. Through the medium of that +Shakespearean character the actress poured forth that strange, +thrilling, indescribable power which more than anything else in the +world vindicates by its existence the spiritual grandeur and destiny of +the human soul. Neither the accuracy of her ideals nor the fineness of +her execution would have accomplished the result that attended her +labours and crowned her fame. There was an influence back of these--a +spark of the divine fire--a consecration of the individual life--as +eloquent to inform as it was potent to move. Adelaide Neilson was one of +those strange, exceptional natures that, often building better than they +know, not only interpret "the poet's dream" but give to it an added +emphasis and a higher symbolism. Each element of her personality was +rich and rare. The eyes--now glittering with a mischievous glee that +seemed never to have seen a cloud or felt a sorrow, now steady, frank, +and sweet, with innocence and trust,--could, in one moment, flash with +the wild fire of defiance or the glittering light of imperious command, +or, equally in one moment, could soften with mournful thought and sad +remembrance, or darken with the far-off look of one who hears the waving +wings of angels and talks with the spirits of the dead. The face, just +sufficiently unsymmetrical to be brimful of character, whether piquant +or pensive; the carriage of body,--easy yet quaint in its artless grace, +like that of a pretty child in the unconscious fascination of infancy; +the restless, unceasing play of mood, and the instantaneous and perfect +response of expression and gesture,--all these were the denotements of +genius; and, above all these, and not to be mistaken in its irradiation +of the interior spirit of that extraordinary creature, was a voice of +perfect music--rich, sonorous, flexible, vibrant, copious in volume, yet +delicate as a silver thread--a voice + + "Like the whisper of the woods + In prime of even, when the stars are few." + +It did not surprise that such a woman should truly act Juliet. Much +though there be in a personality that is assumed, there is much more in +the personality that assumes it. Golden fire in a porcelain vase would +not be more luminous than was the soul of that actress as it shone +through her ideal of Juliet. The performance did not stop short at the +interpretation of a poetic fancy. It was amply and completely that--but +it was more than that, being also a living experience. The subtlety of +it was only equalled by its intensity, and neither was surpassed except +by its reality. The moment she came upon the scene all eyes followed +her, and every imaginative mind was vaguely conscious of something +strange and sad--a feeling of perilous suspense--a dark presentiment of +impending sorrow. In that was felt at once the presence of a nature to +which the experience of Juliet would be possible; and thus the conquest +of human sympathy was effected at the outset--by a condition, and +without the exercise of a single effort. Fate no less than art +participated in the result. Though it was the music of Shakespeare that +flowed from the harp, it was the hand of living genius that smote the +strings; it was the soul of a great woman that bore its vital testimony +to the power of the universal passion. + +Never was poet truer to the highest truth of spiritual life than +Shakespeare is when he invests with ineffable mournfulness--shadowy as +twilight, vague as the remembrance of a dream--those creatures of his +fancy who are preordained to suffering and a miserable death. Never was +there sounded a truer note of poetry than that which thrills in +Othello's, "If it were now to die," or sobs in Juliet's "Too early seen +unknown, and known too late." It was the exquisite felicity of Adelaide +Neilson's acting of Juliet that she glided into harmony with that +tragical undertone, and, with seemingly a perfect unconsciousness of +it--whether prattling to the old nurse, or moving, sweetly grave and +softly demure, through the stately figures of the minuet--was already +marked off from among the living, already overshadowed by a terrible +fate, already alone in the bleak loneliness of the broken heart. +Striking the keynote thus, the rest followed in easy sequence. The +ecstasy of the wooing scene, the agony of the final parting from Romeo, +the forlorn tremor and passionate frenzy of the terrible night before +the burial, the fearful awakening, the desperation, the paroxysm, the +death-blow that then is mercy and kindness,--all these were in unison +with the spirit at first denoted, and through these was naturally +accomplished its prefigured doom. If clearly to possess a high purpose, +to follow it directly, to accomplish it thoroughly, to adorn it with +every grace, to conceal every vestige of its art, and to cast over the +art that glamour of poetry which ennobles while it charms, and while it +dazzles also endears,--if this is greatness in acting, then was Adelaide +Neilson's Juliet a great embodiment. It never will be forgotten. Its +soft romance of tone, its splendour of passion, its sustained energy, +its beauty of speech, and its poetic fragrance are such as fancy must +always cherish and memory cannot lose. Placing this embodiment beside +Imogen and Viola, it was easy to understand the secret of her +extraordinary success. She satisfied for all kinds of persons the sense +of the ideal. To youthful fancy she was the radiant vision of love and +pleasure; to grave manhood, the image of all that chivalry should honour +and strength protect; to woman, the type of noble goodness and constant +affection; to the scholar, a relief from thought and care; to the +moralist, a spring of tender pity--that loveliness, however exquisite, +must fade and vanish. Childhood, mindful of her kindness and her frolic, +scattered flowers at her feet; and age, that knows the thorny pathways +of the world, whispered its silent prayer and laid its trembling hands +in blessing on her head. She sleeps beneath a white marble cross in +Brompton cemetery, and all her triumphs and glories have dwindled to a +handful of dust. + + * * * * * + +NOTE ON CYMBELINE.--Genest records productions of Shakespeare's +_Cymbeline_, in London, as follows: Haymarket, November 8, 1744; Covent +Garden, April 7, 1746; Drury Lane, November 28, 1761; Covent Garden, +December 28, 1767; Drury Lane, December 1, 1770; Haymarket, August 9, +1782; Covent Garden, October 18, 1784; Drury Lane, November 21, 1785, +and January 29 and March 20, 1787; Covent Garden, May 13, 1800, January +18, 1806, June 3, 1812, May 29, 1816, and June 2, 1825; and Drury Lane, +February 9, 1829; Imogen was represented, successively, by Mrs. +Pritchard, Miss Bride, Mrs. Yates, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bulkley, Miss +Younge, Mrs. Jordan, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Pope, Miss Smith, Mrs. H. +Johnston Miss Stephens, Miss Foote, and Miss Phillips. Later +representatives of it were Sally Booth, Helen Faucit, and Laura +Addison. + + + + +IV. + +EDWIN BOOTH. + + +There was a great shower of meteors on the night of November 13, 1833, +and on that night, near Baltimore, Maryland, was born the most famous +tragic actor of America in this generation, Edwin Booth. No other +American actor of this century has had a rise so rapid or a career so +early and continuously brilliant as that of Edwin Booth. His father, the +renowned Junius Brutus Booth, had hallowed the family name with +distinction and romantic interest. If ever there was a genius upon the +stage the elder Booth was a genius. His wonderful eyes, his tremendous +vitality, his electrical action, his power to thrill the feelings and +easily and inevitably to awaken pity and terror,--all these made him a +unique being and obtained for him a reputation with old-time audiences +distinct from that of all other men. He was followed as a marvel, and +even now the mention of his name stirs, among those who remember him, +an enthusiasm such as no other theatrical memory can evoke. His sudden +death (alone, aboard a Mississippi river steamboat, November 30, 1852) +was pathetic, and the public thought concerning him thenceforward +commingled tenderness with passionate admiration. When his son Edwin +began to rise as an actor the people everywhere rejoiced and gave him an +eager welcome. With such a prestige he had no difficulty in making +himself heard, and when it was found that he possessed the same strange +power with which his father had conquered and fascinated the dramatic +world the popular exultation was unbounded. + +Edwin Booth went on the stage in 1849 and accompanied his father to +California in 1852, and between 1852 and 1856 he gained his first +brilliant success. The early part of his California life was marked by +hardship and all of it by vicissitude, but his authentic genius speedily +flamed out, and long before he returned to the Atlantic seaboard the +news of his fine exploits had cleared the way for his conquest of all +hearts. He came back in 1856-57, and from that time onward his fame +continually increased. He early identified himself with two of the most +fascinating characters in the drama--the sublime and pathetic Hamlet and +the majestic, romantic, picturesque, tender, and grimly humorous +Richelieu. He first acted Hamlet in 1854; he adopted Richelieu in 1856; +and such was his success with the latter character that for many years +afterward he made it a rule (acting on the sagacious advice of the +veteran New Orleans manager, James H. Caldwell), always to introduce +himself in that part before any new community. The popular sentiment +toward him early took a romantic turn and the growth of that sentiment +has been accelerated and strengthened by every important occurrence of +his private life. In July 1860 he was married to a lovely and +interesting woman, Miss Mary Devlin, of Troy, and in February 1863 she +died. In 1867 he lost the Winter Garden theatre, which was burnt down on +the night of March 22, that year, after a performance of John Howard +Payne's _Brutus_. He had accomplished beautiful revivals of _Hamlet_, +_Othello_, _The Merchant of Venice_, and other plays at the Winter +Garden, and had obtained for that theatre an honourable eminence; but +when in 1869 he built and opened Booth's Theatre in New York, he +proceeded to eclipse all his previous efforts and triumphs. The +productions of _Romeo and Juliet_, _Othello_, _Richelieu_, _Hamlet_, _A +Winter's Tale_, and _Julius Cæsar_ were marked by ample scholarship and +magnificence. When the enterprise failed and the theatre passed out of +Edwin Booth's hands (1874) the play-going public endured a calamity. But +the failure of the actor's noble endeavour to establish a great theatre +in the first city of America, like every other conspicuous event in his +career, served but to deepen the public interest in his welfare. He has +more than retrieved his losses since then, and has made more than one +triumphal march throughout the length and breadth of the Republic, +besides acting in London and other cities of Great Britain, and gaining +extraordinary success upon the stage of Germany. To think of Edwin Booth +is immediately to be reminded of those leading events in his career, +while to review them, even in a cursory glance, is to perceive that, +notwithstanding calamities and sorrows, notwithstanding a bitter +experience of personal bereavement and of the persecution of envy and +malice, Edwin Booth has ever been a favourite of fortune. + +The bust of Booth as Brutus and that of John Gilbert as Sir Peter, +standing side by side in the Players' Club, stir many memories and +prompt many reflections. Gilbert was a young man of twenty-three, and +had been six years on the stage, before Edwin Booth was born; and when, +at the age of sixteen, Booth made his first appearance (September 10, +1849, at the Boston Museum, as Tressil to his father's Richard), Gilbert +had become a famous actor. The younger man, however, speedily rose to +the higher level of the best dramatic ability as well as the best +theatrical culture of his time; and it is significant of the splendid +triumph of tragic genius, and of the advantage it possesses over that of +comedy in its immediate effect upon mankind, that when the fine and +exceptional combination was made (May 21, 1888, at the Metropolitan +Opera House, New York), for a performance of _Hamlet_ for the benefit of +Lester Wallack, Edwin Booth acted Hamlet, with John Gilbert for +Polonius, and Joseph Jefferson for the first Grave-digger. Booth has had +his artistic growth in a peculiar period in the history of dramatic art +in America. Just before his time the tragic sceptre was in the hands of +Edwin Forrest, who never succeeded in winning the intellectual part of +the public, but was constantly compelled to dominate a multitude that +never heard any sound short of thunder and never felt anything till it +was hit with a club. The bulk of Forrest's great fortune was gained by +him with _Metamora_, which is rant and fustian. He himself despised it +and deeply despised and energetically cursed the public that forced him +to act in it. Forrest's best powers, indeed, were never really +appreciated by the average mind of his fervent admirers. He lived in a +rough period and he had to use a hard method to subdue and please it. +Edwin Booth was fortunate in coming later, when the culture of the +people had somewhat increased, and when the old sledge-hammer style was +going out, so that he gained almost without an effort the refined and +fastidious classes. As long ago as 1857, with all his natural grace, +refinement, romantic charm, and fine bearing, his impetuosity was such +that even the dullest sensibilities were aroused and thrilled and +astonished by him,--and so it happened that he also gained the +multitude. To think of these things is to realise the steady advance of +the stage in the esteem of the best people, and to feel grateful that we +do not live in "the palmy days"--those raw times that John Brougham +used to call the days of light houses and heavy gas bills. + +Mrs. Asia Booth Clarke, wife of the distinguished and excellent comedian +John S. Clarke, wrote a life of her father, Junius Brutus Booth, in +which she has recounted interesting passages in his career, and +chronicled significant and amusing anecdotes of his peculiarities. He +was on the stage from 1813 to 1852, in which latter year he died, aged +fifty-six. In his youth he served for a while in the British navy, +showed some talent for painting, learned the printer's trade, wrote a +little, and dabbled in sculpture--all before he turned actor. The +powerful hostility of Edmund Kean and his adherents drove him from the +London stage, though not till after he had gained honours there, and he +came to America in 1821, and bought a farm near Baltimore, where he +settled, and where his son Edwin (the seventh of ten children) was born. +That farm remained in the family till 1880, when for the first time it +changed hands. There is a certain old cherry-tree growing upon +it--remarkable among cherry-trees for being large, tall, straight, +clean, and handsome--amid the boughs of which the youthful Edwin might +often have been found in his juvenile days. It is a coincidence that +Edwin L. Davenport and John McCullough, also honoured names in American +stage history, were born on the same day in the same month with Edwin +Booth, though in different years. + +From an early age Edwin Booth was associated with his father in all the +wanderings and strange and often sad adventures of that wayward man of +genius, and no doubt the many sorrowful experiences of his youth +deepened the gloom of his inherited temperament. Those who know him well +are aware that he has great tenderness of heart and abundant playful +humour; that his mind is one of extraordinary liveliness, and that he +sympathises keenly and cordially with the joys and sorrows of others; +and yet that he seems saturated with sadness, isolated from +companionship, lonely and alone. It is this temperament, combined with a +sombre and melancholy aspect of countenance, that has helped to make him +so admirable in the character of Hamlet. Of his fitness for that part +his father was the first to speak, when on a night many years ago, in +Sacramento, they had dressed for Pierre and Jaffier, in _Venice +Preserved_. Edwin, as Jaffier, had put on a close-fitting robe of black +velvet. "You look like Hamlet," the father said. The time was destined +to come when Edwin Booth would be accepted all over America as the +greatest Hamlet of the day. In the season of 1864-65, at the Winter +Garden theatre, New York, he acted that part for a hundred nights in +succession, accomplishing a feat then unprecedented in theatrical +annals. Since then Henry Irving, in London, has acted Hamlet two hundred +consecutive times in one season; but this latter achievement, in the +present day and in the capital city of the world, was less difficult +than Edwin Booth's exploit, performed in turbulent New York in the +closing months of the terrible civil war. + +The elder Booth was a short, spare, muscular man, with a splendid chest, +a symmetrical Greek head, a pale countenance, a voice of wonderful +compass and thrilling power, dark hair, and blue eyes. His son's +resemblance to him is chiefly obvious in the shape of the head and face, +the arch and curve of the heavy eyebrows, the radiant and constantly +shifting light of expression that animates the countenance, the natural +grace of carriage, and the celerity of movement. Booth's eyes are dark +brown, and seem to turn black in moments of excitement, and they are +capable of conveying, with electrical effect, the most diverse +meanings--the solemnity of lofty thought, the tenderness of affection, +the piteousness of forlorn sorrow, the awful sense of spiritual +surroundings, the woful weariness of despair, the mocking glee of wicked +sarcasm, the vindictive menace of sinister purpose, and the lightning +glare of baleful wrath. In range of facial expressiveness his +countenance is thus fully equal to that of his father. The present +writer saw the elder Booth but once, and then in a comparatively +inferior part--Pescara, in Shiel's ferocious tragedy of _The Apostate_. +He was a terrible presence. He was the incarnation of smooth, specious, +malignant, hellish rapacity. His exultant malice seemed to buoy him +above the ground. He floated rather than walked. His glance was deadly. +His clear, high, cutting, measured tone was the exasperating note of +hideous cruelty. He was acting a fiend then, and making the monster not +only possible but actual. He certainly gave a greater impression of +overwhelming power than is given by Edwin Booth, and seemed a more +formidable and tremendous man. But his face was not more brilliant than +that of his renowned son; and in fact it was, if anything, somewhat less +splendid in power of the eye. There is a book about him, called _The +Tragedian_, written by Thomas R. Gould, who also made a noble bust of +him in marble; and those who never saw him can obtain a good idea of +what sort of an actor he was by reading that book. It conveys the image +of a greater actor, but not a more brilliant one, than Edwin Booth. Only +one man of our time has equalled Edwin Booth in this singular splendour +of countenance--the great New England orator Rufus Choate. Had Choate +been an actor upon the stage--as he was before a jury--with those +terrible eyes of his, and that passionate Arab face, he must have +towered fully to the height of the tradition of George Frederick Cooke. + +The lurid flashes of passion and the vehement outbursts in the acting of +Edwin Booth are no doubt the points that most persons who have seen him +will most clearly remember. Through these a spectator naturally discerns +the essential nature of an actor. The image of George Frederick Cooke, +pointing with his long, lean forefinger and uttering Sir Giles's +imprecation upon Marrall, never fades out of theatrical history. +Garrick's awful frenzy in the storm scene of King Lear, Kean's colossal +agony in the farewell speech of Othello, Macready's heartrending yell in +_Werner_, Junius Booth's terrific utterance of Richard's "What do they +i' the north?" Forrest's hyena snarl when, as Jack Cade, he met Lord Say +in the thicket, or his volumed cry of tempestuous fury when, as Lucius +Brutus, he turned upon Tarquin under the black midnight sky--those are +things never to be forgotten. Edwin Booth has provided many such great +moments in acting, and the traditions of the stage will not let them +die. To these no doubt we must look for illuminative manifestations of +hereditary genius. Garrick, Henderson, Cooke, Edmund Kean, Junius Booth, +and Edwin Booth are names that make a natural sequence in one +intellectual family. Could we but see them together, we should +undoubtedly find them, in many particulars, kindred. Henderson +flourished in the school of nature that Garrick had created--to the +discomfiture of Quin and all the classics. Cooke had seen Henderson +act, and was thought to resemble him. Edmund Kean worshipped the memory +of Cooke and repeated many of the elder tragedian's ways. So far, +indeed, did he carry his homage that when he was in New York in 1824 he +caused Cooke's remains to be taken from the vault beneath St. Paul's +church and buried in the church-yard, where a monument, set up by Kean +and restored by his son Charles, by Sothern, and by Edwin Booth, still +marks their place of sepulture. That was the occasion when, as Dr. +Francis records, in his book on old New York, Kean took the index finger +of Cooke's right hand, and he, the doctor, took his skull, as relics. "I +have got Cooke's style in acting," Kean once said, "but the public will +never know it, I am so much smaller." It was not the imitation of a +copyist; it was the spontaneous devotion and direction of a kindred +soul. The elder Booth saw Kean act, and although injured by a rivalry +that Kean did not hesitate to make malicious, admired him with honest +fervour. "I will yield Othello to him," he said, "but neither Richard +nor Sir Giles." Forrest thought Edmund Kean the greatest actor of the +age, and copied him, especially in Othello. Pathos, with all that it +implies, seems to have been Kean's special excellence. Terror was the +elder Booth's. Edwin Booth may be less than either, but he unites +attributes of both. + +In the earlier part of his career Edwin Booth was accustomed to act Sir +Giles Overreach, Sir Edward Mortimer, Pescara, and a number of other +parts of the terrific order, that he has since discarded. He was fine in +every one of them. The first sound of his voice when, as Sir Edward +Mortimer, he was heard speaking off the scene, was eloquent of deep +suffering, concentrated will, and a strange, sombre, formidable +character. The sweet, exquisite, icy, infernal joy with which, as +Pescara, he told his rival that there should be "music" was almost +comical in its effect of terror: it drove the listener across the line +of tragical tension and made him hysterical with the grimness of a +deadly humour. His swift defiance to Lord Lovell, as Sir Giles, and +indeed the whole mighty and terrible action with which he carried that +scene--from "What, are you pale?" down to the grisly and horrid viper +pretence and reptile spasm of death--were simply tremendous. This was in +the days when his acting yet retained the exuberance of a youthful +spirit, before "the philosophic mind" had checked the headlong currents +of the blood or curbed imagination in its lawless flight. And those +parts not only admitted of bold colour and extravagant action but +demanded them. Even his Hamlet was touched with that elemental fire. Not +alone in the great junctures of the tragedy--the encounters with the +ghost, the parting with Ophelia, the climax of the play-scene, the +slaughter of poor old Polonius in delirious mistake for the king, and +the avouchment to Laertes in the graveyard--was he brilliant and +impetuous; but in almost everything that quality of temperament showed +itself, and here, of course, it was in excess. He no longer hurls the +pipe into the flies when saying "Though you may fret me, you can not +play upon me"; but he used to do so then, and the rest of the +performance was kindred with that part of it. He needed, in that period +of his development, the more terrible passions to express. Pathos and +spirituality and the mountain air of great thought were yet to be. His +Hamlet was only dazzling--the glorious possibility of what it has since +become. But his Sir Giles was a consummate work of genius--as good then +as it ever afterward became, and better than any other that has been +seen since, not excepting that of E.L. Davenport. And in all kindred +characters he showed himself a man of genius. His success was great. The +admiration that he inspired partook of zeal that almost amounted to +craziness. When he walked in the streets of Boston in 1857 his shining +face, his compact figure, and his elastic step drew every eye, and +people would pause and turn in groups to look at him. + +The actor is born but the artist must be made, and the actor who is not +an artist only half fulfils his powers. Edwin Booth had not been long +upon the stage before he showed himself to be an actor. During his first +season he played Cassio in _Othello_, Wilford in _The Iron Chest_, and +Titus in _The Fall of Tarquin_, and he played them all auspiciously +well. But his father, not less wise than kind, knew that the youth must +be left to himself to acquire experience, if he was ever to become an +artist, and so left him in California, "to rough it," and there, and in +the Sandwich Islands and Australia, he had four years of the most severe +training that hardship, discipline, labour, sorrow, and stern reality +can furnish. When he came east again, in the autumn of 1856, he was no +longer a novice but an educated, artistic tragedian, still crude in some +things, though on the right road, and in the fresh, exultant vigour, if +not yet the full maturity, of extraordinary powers. He appeared first at +Baltimore, and after that made a tour of the south, and during the +ensuing four years he was seen in many cities all over the country. In +the summer of 1860 he went to England, and acted in London, Liverpool, +and Manchester, but he was back again in New York in 1862, and from +September 21, 1863 to March 23, 1867 he managed what was known as the +Winter Garden theatre, and incidentally devoted himself to the +accomplishment of some of the stateliest revivals of standard plays that +have ever been made in America. On February 3, 1869 he opened Booth's +Theatre and that he managed for five years. In 1876 he made a tour of +the south, which, so great was the enthusiasm his presence aroused, was +nothing less than a triumphal progress. In San Francisco, where he +filled an engagement of eight weeks, the receipts exceeded $96,000, a +result at that time unprecedented on the dramatic stage. + +The circumstances of the stage and of the lives of actors have greatly +changed since the generation went out to which such men as Junius Booth +and Augustus A. Addams belonged. No tragedian would now be so mad as to +put himself in pawn for drink, as Cooke is said to have done, nor be +found scraping the ham from the sandwiches provided for his luncheon, as +Junius Booth was, before going on to play Shylock. Our theatre has no +longer a Richardson to light up a pan of red fire, as that old showman +once did, to signalise the fall of the screen in _The School for +Scandal_. The eccentrics and the taste for them have passed away. It +seems really once to have been thought that the actor who did not often +make a maniac of himself with drink could not be possessed of the divine +fire. That demonstration of genius is not expected now, nor does the +present age exact from its favourite players the performance of all +sorts and varieties of parts. Forrest was the first of the prominent +actors to break away from the old usage in this latter particular. +During the most prosperous years of his life, from 1837 to 1850, he +acted only about a dozen parts, and most of them were old. The only new +parts that he studied were Claude Melnotte, Richelieu, Jack Cade, and +Mordaunt, the latter in the play of _The Patrician's Daughter_, and he +"recovered" Marc Antony, which he particularly liked. Edwin Booth, who +had inherited from his father the insanity of intemperance, conquered +that utterly, many years ago, and nobly and grandly trod it beneath his +feet; and as he matured in his career, through acting every kind of +part, from a dandy negro up to Hamlet, he at last made choice of the +characters that afford scope for his powers and his aspirations, and so +settled upon a definite, restricted repertory. His characters were +Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, Iago, Richard the Second, Richard the +Third, Shylock, Cardinal Wolsey, Benedick, Petruchio, Richelieu, Lucius +Brutus, Bertuccio, Ruy Blas, and Don Cæsar de Bazan. These he acted in +customary usage, and to these he occasionally added Marcus Brutus, +Antony, Cassius, Claude Melnotte, and the Stranger. The range thus +indicated is extraordinary; but more extraordinary still was the +evenness of the actor's average excellence throughout the breadth of +that range. + +Booth's tragedy is better than his elegant comedy. There are other +actors who equal or surpass him in Benedick or Don Cæsar. The comedy in +which he excels is that of silvery speciousness and bitter sarcasm, as +in portions of Iago and Richard the Third and the simulated madness of +Lucius Brutus, and the comedy of grim drollery, as in portions of +Richelieu--his expression of those veins being wonderfully perfect. But +no other actor who has trod the American stage in our day has equalled +him in certain attributes of tragedy that are essentially poetic. He is +not at his best, indeed, in all the tragic parts that he acts; and, like +his father, he is an uneven actor in the parts to which he is best +suited. No person can be said to know Edwin Booth's acting who has not +seen him play the same part several times. His artistic treatment will +generally be found adequate, but his mood or spirit will continually +vary. He cannot at will command it, and when it is absent his +performance seems cold. This characteristic is, perhaps, inseparable +from the poetic temperament. Each ideal that he presents is poetic; and +the suitable and adequate presentation of it, therefore, needs poetic +warmth and glamour. Booth never goes behind his poet's text to find a +prose image in the pages of historic fact. The spectator who takes the +trouble to look into his art will find it, indeed, invariably accurate +as to historic basis, and will find that all essential points and +questions of scholarship have been considered by the actor. But this is +not the secret of its power upon the soul. That power resides in its +charm, and that charm consists in its poetry. Standing on the lonely +ramparts of Elsinore, and with awe-stricken, preoccupied, involuntary +glances questioning the star-lit midnight air, while he talks with his +attendant friends, Edwin Booth's Hamlet is the simple, absolute +realisation of Shakespeare's haunted prince, and raises no question, and +leaves no room for inquiry, whether the Danes in the Middle Ages wore +velvet robes or had long flaxen hair. It is dark, mysterious, +melancholy, beautiful--a vision of dignity and of grace, made sublime by +suffering, made weird and awful by "thoughts beyond the reaches of our +souls." Sorrow never looked more wofully and ineffably lovely than his +sorrow looks in the parting scene with Ophelia, and frenzy never spoke +with a wilder glee of horrid joy and fearful exultation than is heard +in his tempestuous cry of delirium, "Nay, I know not: is it the king?" + +An actor who is fine only at points is not, of course, a perfect actor. +The remark of Coleridge about the acting of Edmund Kean, that it was +like "reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning," has misled many +persons as to Kean's art. Macready bears a similar testimony. But the +weight of evidence will satisfy the reader that Kean was, in fact, a +careful student and that he never neglected any detail of his art. This +is certainly true of Edwin Booth. In the level plains that lie between +the mountain-peaks of expression he walks with as sure a footstep and as +firm a tread as on the summit of the loftiest crag or the verge of the +steepest abyss. In 1877-78, in association with the present writer, he +prepared for the press an edition of fifteen of the plays in which he +acts, and these were published for the use of actors. There is not a +line in either of those plays that he has not studiously and thoroughly +considered; not a vexed point that he has not scanned; not a +questionable reading that he has not, for his own purposes in acting, +satisfactorily settled. His Shakespearean scholarship is extensive and +sound, and it is no less minute than ample. His stage business has been +arranged, as stage business ought to be, with scientific precision. If, +as king Richard the Third, he is seen to be abstractedly toying with a +ring upon one of his fingers, or unsheathing and sheathing his dagger, +those apparently capricious actions would be found to be done because +they were illustrative parts of that monarch's personality, warranted by +the text and context. Many years ago an accidental impulse led him, as +Hamlet, to hold out his sword, hilt foremost, toward the receding +spectre, as a protective cross--the symbol of that religion to which +Hamlet so frequently recurs. The expedient was found to justify itself +and he made it a custom. In the graveyard scene of this tragedy he +directs that one of the skulls thrown up by the first clown shall have a +tattered and mouldy fool's-cap adhering to it, so that it may attract +attention, and be singled out from the others, as "Yorick's skull, the +king's jester." These are little things; but it is of a thousand little +things that a dramatic performance is composed, and without this care +for detail--which must be precise, logical, profound, vigilant, +unerring, and at the same time always unobtrusive and seemingly +involuntary--there can be neither cohesion, nor symmetry, nor an +illusory image consistently maintained; and all great effects would +become tricks of mechanism and detached exploits of theatrical force. + +The absence of this thoroughness in such acting as that of Edwin Booth +would instantly be felt; its presence is seldom adequately appreciated. +We feel the perfect charm of the illusion in the great fourth act of +_Richelieu_--one of the most thrilling situations, as Booth fills it, +that ever were created upon the stage; but we should not feel this had +not the foreground of character, incident, and experience been prepared +with consummate thoroughness. The character of Richelieu is one that the +elder Booth could never act. He tried it once, upon urgent solicitation, +but he had not proceeded far before he caught Joseph around the waist, +and with that astonished friar in his arms proceeded to dash into a +waltz, over which the curtain was dropped. He had no sympathy with the +moonlight mistiness and lace-like complexity of that weird and +many-fibred nature. It lacked for him the reality of the imagination, +the trumpet blare and tempest rush of active passion. But Edwin Booth, +coming after Forrest, who was its original in America, has made +Richelieu so entirely his own that no actor living can stand a +comparison with him in the character. Macready was the first +representative of the part, as everybody knows, and his performance of +it was deemed magnificent; but when Edwin Booth acted it in London in +1880, old John Ryder, the friend and advocate of Macready, who had +participated with him in all his plays, said to the American tragedian, +with a broken voice and with tears in his eyes, "You have thrown down my +idol." Two at least of those great moments in acting that everybody +remembers were furnished by Booth in this character--the defiance of the +masked assailant, at Rouel, and the threat of excommunication delivered +upon Barradas. No spectator possessed of imagination and sensibility +ever saw, without utter forgetfulness of the stage, the imperial +entrance of that Richelieu into the gardens of the Louvre and into the +sullen presence of hostile majesty. The same spell of genius is felt in +kindred moments of his greater impersonations. His Iago, standing in the +dark street, with sword in hand, above the prostrate bodies of Cassio +and Roderigo, and as the sudden impulse to murder them strikes his +brain, breathing out in a blood-curdling whisper, "How silent is this +town!" his Bertuccio, begging at the door of the banquet-hall, and +breaking down in hysterics of affected glee and maddening agony; his +Lear, at that supreme moment of intolerable torture when he parts away +from Goneril and Regan, with his wild scream of revenges that shall be +the terrors of the earth; his Richard the Third, with the gigantic +effrontery of his "Call him again," and with his whole matchless and +wonderful utterance of the awful remorse speech with which the king +awakens from his last earthly sleep--those, among many others, rank with +the best dramatic images that ever were chronicled, and may well be +cited to illustrate Booth's invincible and splendid adequacy at the +great moments of his art. + +Edwin Booth has been tried by some of the most terrible afflictions that +ever tested the fortitude of a human soul. Over his youth, plainly +visible, impended the lowering cloud of insanity. While he was yet a +boy, and when literally struggling for life in the semi-barbarous wilds +of old California, he lost his beloved father, under circumstances of +singular misery. In early manhood he laid in her grave the woman of his +first love--the wife who had died in absence from him, herself scarcely +past the threshold of youth, lovely as an angel and to all that knew her +precious beyond expression. A little later his heart was well-nigh +broken and his life was well-nigh blasted by the crime of a lunatic +brother that for a moment seemed to darken the hope of the world. +Recovering from that blow, he threw all his resources and powers into +the establishment of the grandest theatre in the metropolis of America, +and he saw his fortune of more than a million dollars, together with the +toil of some of the best years of his life, frittered away. Under all +trials he has borne bravely up, and kept the even, steadfast tenor of +his course; strong, patient, gentle, neither elated by public homage nor +imbittered by private grief. Such a use of high powers in the dramatic +art, and the development and maintenance of such a character behind +them, entitle him to the affection of his countrymen, proud equally of +his goodness and his renown. + + + + +V. + +MARY ANDERSON: HERMIONE: PERDITA. + + +On November 25, 1875 an audience was assembled in one of the theatres of +Louisville, Kentucky, to see "the first appearance upon any stage" of "a +young lady of Louisville," who was announced to play Shakespeare's +Juliet. That young lady was in fact a girl, in her sixteenth year, who +had never received any practical stage training, whose education had +been comprised in five years of ordinary schooling, whose observation of +life had never extended beyond the narrow limits of a provincial city, +who was undeveloped, unheralded, unknown, and poor, and whose only +qualifications for the task she had set herself to accomplish were the +impulse of genius and the force of commanding character. She dashed at +the work with all the vigour of abounding and enthusiastic youth, and +with all the audacity of complete inexperience. A rougher performance of +Juliet probably was never seen, but through all the disproportion and +turbulence of that effort the authentic charm of a beautiful nature was +distinctly revealed. The sweetness, the sincerity, the force, the +exceptional superiority and singular charm of that nature could not be +mistaken. The uncommon stature and sumptuous physical beauty of the girl +were obvious. Above all, her magnificent voice--copious, melodious, +penetrating, loud and clear, yet soft and gentle--delighted every ear +and touched every heart. The impersonation of Juliet was not highly +esteemed by judicious hearers; but some persons who saw that performance +felt and said that a new actress had risen and that a great career had +begun. Those prophetic voices were right. That "young lady of +Louisville" was Mary Anderson. + +It is seldom in stage history that the biographer comes upon such a +character as that of Mary Anderson, or is privileged to muse over the +story of such a career as she has had. In many cases the narrative of +the life of an actress is a narrative of talents perverted, of +opportunity misused, of failure, misfortune, and suffering. For one +story like that of Mrs. Siddons there are many like that of Mrs. +Robinson. For one name like that of Charlotte Cushman or that of Helen +Faucit there are many like that of Lucille Western or that of Matilda +Heron--daughters of sorrow and victims of trouble. The mind lingers, +accordingly, impressed and pleased with a sense of sweet personal worth +as well as of genius and beauty upon the record of a representative +American actress, as noble as she was brilliant, and as lovely in her +domestic life as she was beautiful, fortunate, and renowned in her +public pursuits. The exposition of her nature, as apprehended through +her acting, constitutes the principal part of her biography. + +Mary Anderson, a native of California, was born at Sacramento, July 28, +1859. Her father, Charles Joseph Anderson, who died in 1863, aged +twenty-nine, and was buried in Magnolia cemetery, Mobile, Alabama, was +an officer in the service of the Southern Confederacy at the time of his +death, and he is said to have been a handsome and dashing young man. Her +mother, Marie Antoinette Leugers, was a native of Philadelphia. Her +earlier years were passed in Louisville, whither she was taken in 1860, +and she was there taught in a Roman Catholic school and reared in the +Roman Catholic faith under the guidance of a Franciscan priest, Anthony +Miller, her mother's uncle. She left school before she was fourteen +years old and she went upon the stage before she was sixteen. She had +while a child seen various theatrical performances, notably those given +by Edwin Booth, and her mind had been strongly drawn toward the stage +under the influence of those sights. The dramatic characters that she +first studied were male characters--those of Hamlet, Wolsey, Richelieu, +and Richard III.--and to those she added Schiller's Joan of Arc. She +studied those parts privately, and she knew them all and knew them well. +Professor Noble Butler, of Louisville, gave her instruction in English +literature and elocution, and in 1874, at Cincinnati, Charlotte Cushman +said a few encouraging words to her, and told her to persevere in +following the stage, and to "begin at the top." George Vandenhoff gave +her a few lessons before she came out, and then followed her début as +Juliet, leading to her first regular engagement, which began at Barney +Macaulay's Theatre, Louisville, January 20, 1876. From that time onward +for thirteen years she was an actress,--never in a stock company but +always as a star,--and her name became famous in Great Britain as well +as America. She had eight seasons of steadily increasing prosperity on +the American stage before she went abroad to act, and she became a +favourite all over the United States. She filled three seasons at the +Lyceum Theatre, London (from September 1, 1883, to April 5, 1884; from +November 1, 1884, to April 25, 1885; and from September 10, 1887, to +March 24, 1888), and her success there surpassed, in profit, that of any +American actor who had appeared in England. She revived _Romeo and +Juliet_ with much splendour at the London Lyceum on November 1, 1884, +and she restored _A Winter's Tale_ to the stage, bringing forward that +comedy on September 10, 1887, and carrying it through the season. She +made several prosperous tours of the English provincial theatres, and +established herself as a favourite actress in fastidious Edinburgh, +critical Manchester, and impulsive but exacting Dublin. The repertory +with which she gained fame and fortune included Juliet, Hermione, +Perdita, Rosalind, Lady Macbeth, Julia, Bianca, Evadne, Parthenia, +Pauline, The Countess, Galatea, Clarice, Ion, Meg Merrilies, Berthe, +and the Duchess de Torrenueva. She incidentally acted a few other parts, +Desdemona being one of them. Her distinctive achievements were in +Shakespearean drama. She adopted into her repertory two plays by +Tennyson, _The Cup_ and _The Falcon_, but never produced them. This +record signifies the resources of mind, the personal charm, the exalted +spirit, and the patient, wisely directed and strenuous zeal that +sustained her achievements and justified her success. + +Aspirants in the field of art are continually coming to the surface. In +poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and in acting--which involves and +utilises those other arts--the line of beginners is endless. Constantly, +as the seasons roll by, these essayists emerge, and as constantly, after +a little time, they disappear. The process is sequent upon an obvious +law of spiritual life,--that all minds which are conscious of the art +impulse must at least make an effort toward expression, but that no mind +can succeed in the effort unless, in addition to the art impulse, it +possesses also the art faculty. For expression is the predominant +necessity of human nature. Out of this proceed forms and influences of +beauty. These react upon mankind, pleasing an instinct for the +beautiful, and developing the faculty of taste. Other and finer forms +and influences of beauty ensue, civilisation is advanced, and thus +finally the way is opened toward that condition of immortal spiritual +happiness which this process of experience prefigures and prophesies. +But the art faculty is of rare occurrence. At long intervals there is a +break in the usual experience of stage failure, and some person hitherto +unknown not only takes the field but keeps it. When Garrick came out, as +the Duke of Gloster, in the autumn of 1741, in London, he had never been +heard of, but within a brief time he was famous. "He at once decided the +public taste," said Macklin; and Pope summed up the victory in the +well-known sentence, "That young man never had an equal, and will never +have a rival." Tennyson's line furnishes the apt and comprehensive +comment--"The many fail, the one succeeds." Mary Anderson in her day +furnished the most conspicuous and striking example, aside from that of +Adelaide Neilson, to which it is possible to refer of this exceptional +experience. And yet, even after years of trial and test, it is doubtful +whether the excellence of that remarkable actress was entirely +comprehended in her own country. The provincial custom of waiting for +foreign authorities to discover our royal minds is one from which many +inhabitants of America have not yet escaped. As an actress, indeed, Mary +Anderson was, probably, more popular than any player on the American +stage excepting Edwin Booth or Joseph Jefferson; but there is a +difference between popularity and just and comprehensive intellectual +recognition. Many actors get the one; few get the other. + +Much of the contemporary criticism that is lavished upon actors in this +exigent period--so bountifully supplied with critical observations, so +poorly furnished with creative art--touches only upon the surface. +Acting is measured with a tape and the chief demand seems to be for +form. This is right, and indeed is imperative, whenever it is certain +that the actor at his best is one who never can rise above the +high-water mark of correct mechanism. There are cases that need a deeper +method of inquiry and a more searching glance. A wise critic, when this +emergency comes, is something more than an expert who gives an opinion +upon a professional exploit. The special piece of work may contain +technical flaws, and yet there may be within it a soul worth all the +"icily regular and splendidly null" achievements that ever were possible +to proficient mediocrity. That soul is visible only to the observer who +can look through the art into the interior spirit of the artist, and +thus can estimate a piece of acting according to its inspirational drift +and the enthralling and ennobling personality out of which it springs. +The acting of Mary Anderson, from the first moment of her career, was of +the kind that needs that deep insight and broad judgment,--aiming to +recognise and rightly estimate its worth. Yet few performers of the day +were so liberally favoured with the monitions of dullness and the +ponderous patronage of self-complacent folly. + +Conventional judgment as to Mary Anderson's acting expressed itself in +one statement--"she is cold." There could not be a greater error. That +quality in Mary Anderson's acting--a reflex from her spiritual +nature--which produced upon the conventional mind the effect of coldness +was in fact distinction, the attribute of being exceptional. The +judgment that she was cold was a resentful judgment, and was given in a +spirit of detraction. It proceeded from an order of mind that can never +be content with the existence of anything above its own level. "He +hath," said Iago, speaking of Cassio, "a daily beauty in his life that +makes me ugly." Those detractors did not understand themselves as well +as the wily Italian understood himself, and they did not state their +attitude with such precision; in fact, they did not state it at all, for +it was unconscious with them and involuntary. They saw a being unlike +themselves, they vaguely apprehended the presence of a superior nature, +and that they resented. The favourite popular notion is that all men are +born free and equal; which is false. Free and equal they all are, +undoubtedly, in the eye of the law. But every man is born subject to +heredity and circumstance, and whoever will investigate his life will +perceive that he never has been able to stray beyond the compelling and +constraining force of his character--which is his fate. All men, +moreover, are unequal. To one human being is given genius; to another, +beauty; to another, strength; to another, exceptional judgment; to +another, exceptional memory; to another, grace and charm; to still +another, physical ugliness and spiritual obliquity, moral taint, and +every sort of disabling weakness. To the majority of persons Nature +imparts mediocrity, and it is from mediocrity that the derogatory denial +emanates as to the superior men and women of our race. A woman of the +average kind is not difficult to comprehend. There is nothing +distinctive about her. She is fond of admiration; rather readily +censorious of other women; charitable toward male rakes; and partial to +fine attire. The poet Wordsworth's formula, "Praise, blame, love, +kisses, tears, and smiles," comprises all that is essential for her +existence, and that bard has himself precisely described her, in a +grandfatherly and excruciating couplet, as + + "A creature not too bright and good + For human nature's daily food." + +Women of that sort are not called "cold." The standard is ordinary and +it is understood. But when a woman appears in art whose life is not +ruled by the love of admiration, whose nature is devoid of vanity, who +looks with indifference upon adulation, whose head is not turned by +renown, whose composure is not disturbed by flattery, whose simplicity +is not marred by wealth, who does not go into theatrical hysterics and +offer that condition of artificial delirium as the mood of genius in +acting, who above all makes it apparent in her personality and her +achievements that the soul can be sufficient to itself and can exist +without taking on a burden of the fever or dulness of other lives, there +is a flutter of vague discontent among the mystified and bothered rank +and file, and we are apprised that she is "cold." That is what happened +in the case of Mary Anderson. + +What are the faculties and attributes essential to great success in +acting? A sumptuous and supple figure that can realise the ideals of +statuary; a mobile countenance that can strongly and unerringly express +the feelings of the heart and the workings of the mind; eyes that can +awe with the majesty or startle with the terror or thrill with the +tenderness of their soul-subduing gaze; a voice, deep, clear, resonant, +flexible, that can range over the wide compass of emotion and carry its +meaning in varying music to every ear and every heart; intellect to +shape the purposes and control the means of mimetic art; deep knowledge +of human nature; delicate intuitions; the skill to listen as well as +the art to speak; imagination to grasp the ideal of a character in all +its conditions of experience; the instinct of the sculptor to give it +form, of the painter to give it colour, and of the poet to give it +movement; and, back of all, the temperament of genius--the genialised +nervous system--to impart to the whole artistic structure the thrill of +spiritual vitality. Mary Anderson's acting revealed those faculties and +attributes, and those observers who realised the poetic spirit, the +moral majesty, and the isolation of mind that she continually suggested +felt that she was an extraordinary woman. Such moments in her acting as +that of Galatea's mute supplication at the last of earthly life, that of +Juliet's desolation after the final midnight parting with the last human +creature whom she may ever behold, and that of Hermione's despair when +she covers her face and falls as if stricken dead, were the eloquent +denotements of power, and in those and such as those--with which her art +abounded--was the fulfilment of every hope that her acting inspired and +the vindication of every encomium that it received. + +Early in her professional career, when considering her acting, the +present essayist quoted as applicable to her those lovely lines by +Wordsworth:-- + + "The stars of midnight shall be dear + To her, and she shall lean her ear + In many a secret place + Where rivulets dance their wayward round, + And beauty born of murmuring sound + Shall pass into her face." + +In the direction of development thus indicated she steadily advanced. +Her affiliations were with grandeur, purity, and loveliness. An inherent +and passionate tendency toward classic stateliness increased in her more +and more. Characters of the statuesque order attracted her +imagination--Ion, Galatea, Hermione--but she did not leave them +soulless. In the interpretation of passion and the presentation of its +results she revealed the striking truth that her perceptions could +discern those consequences that are recorded in the soul and in +comparison with which the dramatic entanglements of visible life are +puny and evanescent. Though living in the rapid stream of the social +world she dwelt aloof from it. She thought deeply, and in mental +direction she took the pathway of intellectual power. It is not +surprising that the true worth of such a nature was not accurately +apprehended. Minds that are self-poised, stately, irresponsive to human +weakness, unconventional and self-liberated from allegiance to the +commonplace are not fully and instantly discernible, and may well +perplex the smiling glance of frivolity; but they are permanent forces +in the education of the human race. Mary Anderson retired from the +stage, under the pressure of extreme fatigue, in the beginning of 1889 +and entered upon a matrimonial life on June 17, 1890. It is believed +that her retirement is permanent. The historical interest attaching to +her dramatic career justifies the preservation of this commemorative +essay. + +There is so much beauty in the comedy of _A Winter's Tale_--so much +thought, character, humour, philosophy, sweetly serene feeling and +loveliness of poetic language--that the public ought to feel obliged to +any one who successfully restores it to the stage, from which it usually +is banished. The piece was written in the maturity of Shakespeare's +marvellous powers, and indeed some of the Shakespearean scholars believe +it to be the last work that fell from his hand. Human life, as depicted +in _A Winter's Tale_, shows itself like what it always seems to be in +the eyes of patient, tolerant, magnanimous experience--the eyes "that +have kept watch o'er man's mortality"--for it is a scene of inexplicable +contrasts and vicissitudes, seemingly the chaos of caprice and chance, +yet always, in fact, beneficently overruled and guided to good ends. +Human beings are shown in it as full of weakness; often as the puppets +of laws that they do not understand and of universal propensities and +impulses into which they never pause to inquire; almost always as +objects of benignant pity. The woful tangle of human existence is here +viewed with half-cheerful, half-sad tolerance, yet with the hope and +belief that all will come right at last. The mood of the comedy is +pensive but radically sweet. The poet is like the forest in Emerson's +subtle vision of the inherent exultation of nature:-- + + "Sober, on a fund of joy, + The woods at heart are glad." + +Mary Anderson doubled the characters of Hermione and Perdita. This had +not been conspicuously done until it was done by her, and her +innovation, in that respect, was met with grave disapproval. The moment +the subject is examined, however, objection to that method of procedure +is dispelled. Hermione, as a dramatic person, disappears in the middle +of the third act of Shakespeare's comedy and comes no more until the end +of the piece, when she emerges as a statue. Her character has been +entirely expressed and her part in the action of the drama has been +substantially fulfilled before she disappears. There is no intermediate +passion to be wrought to a climax, nor is there any intermediate mood, +dramatically speaking, to be sustained. The dramatic environment, the +dramatic necessities, are vastly unlike, for example, those of Lady +Macbeth--one of the hardest of all parts to play well, because exhibited +intermittently, at long intervals, yet steadily constrained by the +necessity of cumulative excitement. The representative of Lady Macbeth +must be identified with that character, whether on the stage or off, +from the beginning of it to the end. Hermione, on the contrary, is at +rest from the moment when she faints upon receiving information of the +death of her boy. A lapse of sixteen years is assumed, and then, +standing forth as a statue, she personifies majestic virtue and +victorious fortitude. When she descends from the pedestal she silently +embraces Leontes, speaks a few pious, maternal and tranquil lines (there +are precisely seven of them in the original, but Mary Anderson added +two, from "All's Well"), and embraces Perdita, whom she has not seen +since the girl's earliest infancy. This is their only meeting, and +little is sacrificed by the use of a substitute for the daughter in that +scene. Perdita's brief apostrophe to the statue has to be cut, but it is +not missed in the representation. The resemblance between mother and +daughter heightens the effect of illusion, in its impress equally upon +fancy and vision; and a more thorough elucidation is given than could be +provided in any other way of the spirit of the comedy. It was a +judicious and felicitous choice that the actress made when she selected +those two characters, and the fact that her impersonation of them +carried a practically disused Shakespearean comedy through a season of +one hundred and fifty nights at the Lyceum Theatre in London furnishes +an indorsement alike of her wisdom and her ability. She played in a +stage version of the piece, in five acts, containing thirteen scenes, +arranged by herself. + +While Mary Anderson was acting those two parts in London the sum of +critical opinion seemed to be that her performance of Perdita was better +than her performance of Hermione; but beneath that judgment there was, +apparently, the impression that Hermione is a character fraught with +superlatively great passions, powers, and qualities, such as are only to +be apprehended by gigantic sagacity and conveyed by herculean talents +and skill. Those vast attributes were not specified, but there was a +mysterious intimation of their existence--as of something vague, +formidable, and mostly elusive. But in truth Hermione, although a +stronger part than Perdita, is neither complex, dubious, nor +inaccessible; and Mary Anderson, although more fascinating in Perdita, +could and did rise, in Hermione, to a noble height of tragic power--an +excellence not possible for her, nor for anybody, in the more juvenile +and slender character. + +Hermione has usually been represented as an elderly woman and by such an +actress as is technically called "heavy." She ought to be represented as +about thirty years of age at the beginning of the piece, and forty-six +at the end of it. Leontes is not more than thirty-four at the opening, +and he would be fifty at the close. He speaks, in his first scene, of +his boyhood as only twenty-three years gone, when his dagger was worn +"muzzled, lest it should bite its master"--at which time he may have +been ten years old; certainly not more, probably less. His words, toward +the end of act third, "so sure as this beard's gray," refer to the beard +of Antigonus, not to his own. He is a young man when the play begins, +and Polixenes is about the same age, and Hermione is a young woman. +Antigonus and Paulina are middle-aged persons in the earlier scenes and +Paulina is an elderly woman in the statue scene--almost an old woman, +though not too old to be given in marriage to old Camillo, the +ever-faithful friend. In Mary Anderson's presentation of _A Winter's +Tale_ those details received thoughtful consideration and correct +treatment. + +In Hermione is seen a type of the celestial nature in woman--infinite +love, infinite charity, infinite patience. Such a nature is rare; but it +is possible, it exists, and Shakespeare, who depicted everything, did +not omit to portray that. To comprehend Hermione the observer must +separate her, absolutely and finally, from association with the +passions. Mrs. Jameson acutely and justly describes her character as +exhibiting "dignity without pride, love without passion, and tenderness +without weakness." That is exactly true. Hermione was not easily won, +and the best thing known about Leontes is that at last she came to love +him and that her love for him survived his cruel and wicked treatment, +chastened him, reinstated him, and ultimately blessed him. Hermione +suffers the utmost affliction that a good woman can suffer. Her boy +dies, heart-broken, at the news of his mother's alleged disgrace. Her +infant daughter is torn from her breast and cast forth to perish. Her +husband becomes her enemy and persecutor. Her chastity is assailed and +vilified. She is subjected to the bitter indignity of a public trial. It +is no wonder that at last her brain reels and she falls as if stricken +dead. The apparent anomaly is her survival for sixteen years, in lonely +seclusion, and her emergence, after that, as anything but a forlorn +shadow of her former self. The poet Shelley has recorded the truth that +all great emotions either kill themselves or kill those who feel them. +It is here, however, that the exceptional temperament of Hermione +supplies an explanatory and needed qualification. Her emotions are never +of a passionate kind. Her mind predominates. Her life is in the +affections and therefore it is one of thought. She sees clearly the +facts of her experience and condition, and she knows exactly how those +facts look in the eyes of others. She is one of those persons who +possess a keen and just prescience of events, who can look far into the +future and discern those resultant consequences of the present which, +under the operation of inexorable moral law, must inevitably ensue. +Self-poised in the right and free from the disturbing force of impulse +and desire, she can await the justice of time, she can live, and she can +live in the tranquil patience of resignation. True majesty of the person +is dependent on repose of the soul, and there can be no repose of the +soul without moral rectitude and a far-reaching, comprehensive, wise +vision of events. Mary Anderson embodied Hermione in accordance with +that ideal. By the expression of her face and the tones of her voice, in +a single speech, the actress placed beyond question her grasp of the +character:-- + + "Good my lords, + I am not prone to weeping, as our sex + Commonly are--the want of which vain dew + Perchance shall dry your pities--but I have + That honourable grief lodged here, which burns + Worse than tears drown." + +The conspicuous, predominant, convincing artistic beauty in Mary +Anderson's impersonation of Hermione was her realisation of the part, in +figure, face, presence, demeanour, and temperament. She did not afflict +her auditor with the painful sense of a person struggling upward toward +an unattainable identity. She made you conscious of the presence of a +queen. This, obviously, is the main thing--that the individuality shall +be imperial, not merely wearing royal attire but being invested with the +royal authenticity of divine endowment and consecration. Much emphasis +has been placed by Shakespeare upon that attribute of innate grandeur. +Leontes, at the opening of the trial scene, describes his accused wife +as "the daughter of a king," and in the same scene her father is +mentioned as the Emperor of Russia. The gentleman who, in act fifth, +recounts to Autolycus the meeting between Leontes and his daughter +Perdita especially notes "the majesty of the creature, in resemblance of +the mother." Hermione herself, in the course of her +vindication--expressed in one of the most noble and pathetic strains of +poetical eloquence in our language--names herself "a great king's +daughter," therein recalling those august and piteous words of +Shakespeare's Katharine:-- + + "We are a Queen, or long have thought so, certain + The daughter of a king." + +Poor old Antigonus, in his final soliloquy, recounting the vision of +Hermione that had come upon him in the night, declares her to be a woman +royal and grand not by descent only but by nature:-- + + "I never saw a vessel of like sorrow, + So filled and so becoming. In pure white robes, + Like very sanctity, she did approach." + +That image Mary Anderson embodied, and therefore the ideal of +Shakespeare was made a living thing--that glorious ideal, in shaping +which the great poet "from all that are took something good, to make a +perfect woman." Toward Polixenes, in the first scene, her manner was +wholly gracious, delicately playful, innocently kind, and purely frail. +Her quiet archness at the question, "Will you go yet?" struck exactly +the right key of Hermione's mood. With the baby prince Mamillius her +frolic and banter, affectionate, free, and gay, were in a happy vein of +feeling and humour. Her simple dignity, restraining both resentment and +grief, in face of the injurious reproaches of Leontes, was entirely +noble and right, and the pathetic words, "I never wished to see you +sorry, now I trust I shall," could not have been spoken with more depth +and intensity of grieved affection than were felt in her composed yet +tremulous voice. The entrance, at the trial scene, was made with the +stateliness natural to a queenly woman, and yet with a touch of +pathos--the cold patience of despair. The delivery of Hermione's +defensive speeches was profoundly earnest and touching. The simple cry +of the mother's breaking heart, and the action of veiling her face and +falling like one dead, upon the announcement of the prince's death, were +perfect denotements of the collapse of a grief-stricken woman. The skill +with which the actress, in the monument scene--which is all repose and +no movement--contrived nevertheless to invest Hermione with steady +vitality of action, and to imbue the crisis with a feverish air of +suspense, was in a high degree significant of the personality of genius. +For such a performance of Hermione Shakespeare himself has provided the +sufficient summary and encomium:-- + + "Women will love her, that she is a woman + More worth than any man; men that she is + The rarest of all women." + +It is one thing to say that Mary Anderson was better in Perdita than in +Hermione, and another thing to say that the performance of Perdita was +preferred. Everybody preferred it--even those who knew that it was not +the better of the two; for everybody loves the sunshine more than the +shade. Hermione means grief and endurance. Perdita means beautiful youth +and happy love. It does not take long for an observer to choose between +them. Suffering is not companionable. By her impersonation of Hermione +the actress revealed her knowledge of the stern truth of life, its +trials, its calamities, and the possible heroism of character under its +sorrowful discipline. Into that identity she passed by the force of her +imagination. The embodiment was majestic, tender, pitiable, +transcendent, but its colour was the sombre colour of pensive melancholy +and sad experience. That performance was the higher and more significant +of the two. But the higher form of art is not always the most +alluring--never the most alluring when youthful beauty smiles and rosy +pleasure beckons another way. All hearts respond to happiness. By her +presentment of Perdita the actress became the glittering image and +incarnation of glorious youthful womanhood and fascinating joy. No +exercise of the imagination was needful to her in that. There was an +instantaneous correspondence between the part and the player. The +embodiment was as natural as a sunbeam. Shakespeare has left no doubt +about his meaning in Perdita. The speeches of all around her continually +depict her fresh and piquant loveliness, her innate superiority, her +superlative charm; while her behaviour and language as constantly show +forth her nobility of soul. One of the subtlest side lights thrown upon +the character is in the description of the manner in which Perdita heard +the story of her mother's death--when "attentiveness wounded" her +"till, from one sign of dolour to another, she did bleed tears." And of +the fibre of her nature there is perhaps no finer indication than may be +felt in her comment on old Camillo's worldly view of prosperity as a +vital essential to the permanence of love:-- + + "I think affliction may subdue the cheek, + But not take in the mind." + +In the thirty-seven plays of Shakespeare there is no strain of the +poetry of sentiment and grace essentially sweeter than that which he has +put into the mouth of Perdita; and poetry could not be more sweetly +spoken than it was by Mary Anderson in that delicious scene of the +distribution of the flowers. The actress evinced comprehension of the +character in every fibre of its being, and she embodied it with the +affluent vitality of splendid health and buoyant temperament--presenting +a creature radiant with goodness and happiness, exquisite in natural +refinement, piquant with archness, soft, innocent, and tender in +confiding artlessness, and, while gleeful and triumphant in beautiful +youth, gently touched with an intuitive pitying sense of the thorny +aspects of this troubled world. The giving of the flowers completely +bewitched her auditors. The startled yet proud endurance of the king's +anger was in an equal degree captivating. Seldom has the stage displayed +that rarest of all combinations, the passionate heart of a woman with +the lovely simplicity of a child. Nothing could be more beautiful than +she was to the eyes that followed her lithe figure through the merry +mazes of her rustic dance--an achievement sharply in contrast with her +usually statuesque manner. It "makes old hearts fresh" to see a +spectacle of grace and joy, and that spectacle they saw then and will +not forget. The value of those impersonations of Hermione and Perdita, +viewing them as embodied interpretations of poetry was great, but they +possessed a greater value and a higher significance as denotements of +the guiding light, the cheering strength, the elevating loveliness of a +noble human soul. They embodied the conception of the poet, but at the +same time they illumined an actual incarnation of the divine spirit. +They were like windows to a sacred temple, and through them you could +look into the soul of a true woman--always a realm where thoughts are +gliding angels, and feelings are the faces of seraphs, and sounds are +the music of the harps of heaven. + + + + +VI. + +HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN OLIVIA. + + +It has sometimes been thought that the acting of Henry Irving is seen at +its best in those impersonations of his that derive their vitality from +the grim, ghastly, and morbid attributes of human nature. That he is a +unique actor, and distinctively a great actor, in Hamlet, Mathias, +Eugene Aram, Louis XI., Lesurque, and Dubosc, few judges will deny. His +performances of those parts have shown him to be a man of weird +imagination, and they have shown that his characteristics, mental and +spiritual, are sombre. Accordingly, when it was announced that he would +play Dr. Primrose--Goldsmith's simple, virtuous, homely, undramatic +village-preacher, the _Vicar of Wakefield_,--a doubt was felt as to his +suitability for the part and as to the success of his endeavour. He +played Dr. Primrose, and he gained in that character some of the +brightest laurels of his professional career. The doubt proved +unwarranted. More than one competent observer of that remarkable +performance has granted it an equal rank with the best of Henry Irving's +achievements; and now, more clearly than before, it is perceived that +the current of his inspiration flows as freely from the silver spring of +goodness as from the dark and troubled fountain of human misery. + +On the first night of _Olivia_, at the Lyceum Theatre (it was May 27, +1885, when the present writer happened to be in London), Henry Irving's +performance of Dr. Primrose was fettered by a curb of constraint. The +actor's nerves had been strained to a high pitch of excitement and he +was obviously anxious. His spirit, accordingly, was not fully liberated +into the character. He advanced with cautious care and he executed each +detail of his design with precise accuracy. To various auditors, for +that reason, the work seemed a little Methodistical; and drab is a +colour at which the voice of the scoffer is apt to scoff. But the +impersonation of Dr. Primrose soon became equally a triumph of +expression and of ideal; not only flowing out of goodness, but flowing +smoothly and producing the effect of nature. It was not absolutely and +identically the Vicar that Goldsmith has drawn, for its personality was +unmarked by either rusticity or strong humour; but it was a kindred and +higher type of the simple truth, the pastoral sweetness, the benignity, +and the human tenderness of that delightful original. To invest goodness +with charm, to make virtue piquant, and to turn common events of +domestic life to exquisite pathos and noble exaltation was the actor's +purpose. It was accomplished; and Dr. Primrose, thitherto an idyllic +figure, existent only in the chambers of fancy, is henceforth as much a +denizen of the stage as Luke Fielding or Jesse Rural; a man not merely +to be read of, as one reads of Uncle Toby and Parson Adams, but to be +known, remembered, and loved. + +Wills's drama of _Olivia_, based upon an episode in Goldsmith's story, +is one of extreme simplicity. It may be described as a series of +pictures displaying the consequences of action rather than action +itself. It contains an abundance of incident, but the incident is mostly +devoid of inherent dramatic force and therefore is such as must derive +its chief effect from the manner in which it is treated by the actors +who represent the piece. Nevertheless, the piece was found to be, +during its first three acts, an expressive, coherent, interesting play. +It tells its story clearly and entirely, not by narrative but by the +display of characters in their relations to each other. Its language, +flavoured here and there with the phraseology of the novel, is +consistently appropriate. The fourth and last act is feeble. Nobody can +sympathise with "the late remorse of love" in a nature so trivial as +that of Thornhill, and the incident of the reconciliation between Olivia +and her husband, therefore, goes for nothing. It is the beautiful +relation between the father and his daughter that animates the play. It +is paternal love that thrills its structure with light, warmth, colour, +sincerity, moral force, and human significance. Opinion may differ as to +the degree of skill with which Wills selected and employed the materials +of Goldsmith's story; but nobody can justly deny that he wrought for the +stage a practical dramatic exposition of the beauty and sanctity of the +holiest relation that is possible in human life; and to have done that +is to have done a noble thing. + +Many persons appear to think that criticism falls short of its duty +unless it wounds and hurts. Goldsmith himself observed that fact. It +was in the story of _The Vicar of Wakefield_ that he made his playful +suggestion that a critic should always take care to say that the picture +would have been better if the painter had taken more pains. Wills +probably heard more than enough for his spiritual welfare about the +faults of his piece; yet there is really nothing weak in the play except +the conclusion. It is not easy to suggest, however, in what way the +fourth act could be strengthened, unless it were by a recasting and +renovation of the character of Squire Thornhill. But the victory was +gained, in spite of a feeble climax. Many persons also appear to think +that it is a sort of sacrilege to lay hands upon the sacred ark of a +classic creation. Dion Boucicault, perceiving this when he made a play +about _Clarissa Harlowe_, felt moved to deprecate anticipated public +resentment of the liberties that he had taken with Richardson's novel. +Yet it is difficult to see why the abundant details of that excellent +though protracted narrative should not be curtailed, in order to +circumscribe its substance within the limits of a practical drama. +Jefferson was blamed for condensing and slightly changing the comedy of +_The Rivals_. Yet the author, who probably knew something about his +work, deemed it a wretchedly defective piece, and expressed the +liveliest regret for having written it. Wills did not reproduce +Goldsmith's Vicar upon the stage: in some particulars he widely diverged +from it--and his work, accordingly, may be censured. Yet _The Vicar of +Wakefield_ is far from being a faultless production, such as a divinity +should be supposed to hedge. Critical students are aware of this. It is +not worth while to traverse the old ground. The reader who will take the +trouble--and pleasure--to refer to that excellent chapter on Goldsmith +in Dr. Craik's _History of English Literature_ will find the structural +defects of the novel specifically enumerated. If the dramatist has +ignored many details he has at least extracted from the narrative the +salient points of a consistent, harmonious story. The spectator can +enjoy the play, whether he has read the original or not. At the end of +its first act he knows the Vicar and his family, their home, their way +of life, their neighbours, the two suitors for the two girls, the +motives of each and every character, and the relations of each to all; +and he sees, what is always touching in the spectacle of actual human +life, the contrasted states of circumstance and experience surrounding +and enmeshing all. After this preparation the story is developed with +few and rapid strokes. Two of the pictures were poems. At the end of act +first the Vicar, who has been apprised of the loss of his property, +imparts this sad news to his family. The time is the gloaming. The +chimes are sounding in the church-tower. It is the hour of evening +prayer. The gray-haired pastor calls his loved ones around him, in his +garden, and simply and reverently tells them of their misfortune, which +is to be accepted submissively, as Heaven's will. The deep religious +feeling of that scene, the grouping, the use of sunset lights and +shadows, the melody of the chimes, the stricken look in the faces of the +women and children, the sweet gravity of the Vicar--instinct with the +nobleness of a sorrow not yet become corrosive and lachrymose, as is the +tendency of settled grief--and, over all, the sense of blighted +happiness and an uncertain future, made up a dramatic as well as a +pictorial effect of impressive poetic significance. In act second--which +is pictorial almost without intermission--there was a companion +picture, when the Vicar reads, at his fireside, a letter announcing the +restitution of his estate; while his wife and children and Mr. Burchell +are assembled around the spinet singing an old song. The repose with +which Henry Irving made that scene tremulous, almost painful, in its +suspense, was observed as one of the happiest strokes of his art. The +face and demeanour of Dr. Primrose, changing from the composure of +resignation to a startled surprise, and then to almost an hysterical +gladness, presented a study not less instructive than affecting of the +resources of acting. Only two contemporary actors have presented +anything kindred with Mr. Irving's acting in that situation and +throughout the scene that is sequent on the discovery of Olivia's +flight--Jefferson in America and Got in France. + +Evil is restless and irresistibly prone to action. Goodness is usually +negative and inert. Dr. Primrose is a type of goodness. In order to +invest him with piquancy and dramatic vigour Henry Irving gave him +passion, and therewithal various attributes of charming eccentricity. +The clergyman thus presented is the fruition of a long life of virtue. +He has the complete repose of innocence, the sweet candour of absolute +purity, the mild demeanour of spontaneous, habitual benevolence, the +supreme grace of unconscious simplicity. But he is human and passionate; +he shows--in his surroundings, in his quick sympathy with natural +beauty, and in his indicated rather than directly stated ideals of +conduct--that he has lived an imaginative and not a prosaic life; he is +vaguely and pathetically superstitious; and while essentially grand in +his religious magnanimity he is both fascinating and morally formidable +as a man. Those denotements point at Henry Irving's ideal. For his +method it is less easy to find the right description. His mechanical +reiteration of the words that are said to him by Sophia, in the moment +when the fond father knows that his idolised Olivia has fled with her +lover; his collapse, when the harmless pistols are taken from his +nerveless hands; his despairing cry, "If she had but died!"; his +abortive effort to rebuke his darling child in the hour of her +abandonment and misery, and the sudden tempest of passionate affection +with which the great tender heart sweeps away that inadequate and paltry +though eminently appropriate morality, and takes its idol to itself as +only true love can do--those were instances of high dramatic achievement +for which epithets are inadequate, but which the memory of the heart +will always treasure. + +It was said by the poet Aaron Hill, in allusion to Barton Booth, that +the blind might have seen him in his voice and the deaf might have heard +him in his visage. Such a statement made concerning an actor now would +be deemed extravagant. But, turning from the Vicar to his cherished +daughter, that felicitous image comes naturally into the mind. To think +of Ellen Terry as Olivia will always be to recall one especial and +remarkable moment of beauty and tenderness. It is not her distribution +of the farewell gifts, on the eve of Olivia's flight--full although that +was of the emotion of a good heart torn and tortured by the conflict +between love and duty--and it is not the desperate resentment with which +Olivia beats back her treacherous betrayer, when, at the climax of his +baseness, he adds insult to heartless perfidy. Those, indeed, were made +great situations by the profound sincerity and the rich, woman-like +passion of the actress. But there was one instant, in the second act of +the play, when the woman's heart has at length yielded to her lover's +will, and he himself, momentarily dismayed by his own conquest, strives +to turn back, that Ellen Terry made pathetic beyond description. The +words she spoke are simply these, "But I said I would come!" What +language could do justice to the voice, to the manner, to the sweet, +confiding, absolute abandonment of the whole nature to the human love by +which it had been conquered? The whole of that performance was +astonishing, was thrilling, with knowledge of the passion of love. That +especial moment was the supreme beauty of it. At such times human nature +is irradiated with a divine fire, and art fulfils its purpose. + + + + +VII. + +ON JEFFERSON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. + + +Joseph Jefferson has led a life of noble endeavour and has had a career +of ample prosperity, culminating in honourable renown and abundant +happiness. He was born in Philadelphia, February 20, 1829. He went on +the stage when he was four years old and he has been on the stage ever +since. His achievements as an actor have been recognised and accepted +with admiration in various parts of the world; in Australia and New +Zealand and in England, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as in the United +States. Among English-speaking actors he is the foremost living +representative of the art of eccentric comedy. He has not, of late +years, played a wide range of parts, but, restricting himself to a few +characters, and those of a representative kind, the manner in which he +has acted them is a perfect manner--and it is this that has gained for +him his distinctive eminence. Jefferson, however, is not simply and +exclusively an actor. His mind is many sided. He has painted landscape +pictures of a high order of merit,--pictures in which elusive moods and +subtle sentiments of nature are grasped with imaginative insight and +denoted and interpreted with a free, delicate, and luminous touch. He +has also addressed the public as an author. He has written an easy, +colloquial account of his own life, and that breezy, off-hand, +expeditious work,--after passing it as a serial through their Century +Magazine,--the Century Company has published in a beautiful volume. It +is a work that, for the sake of the writer, will be welcomed everywhere, +and, for its own sake as well as his, will everywhere be preserved. + +Beginning a theatrical career nearly sixty years ago (1833), roving up +and down the earth ever since, and seldom continuing in one place, +Jefferson has had uncommon opportunities of noting the development of +the United States and of observing, in both hemispheres, the changeful +aspect of one of the most eventful periods in the history of the world. +Actors, as a class, know nothing but the stage and see nothing but the +pursuit in which they are occupied. Whoever has lived much among them +knows that fact, from personal observation. Whoever has read the various +and numerous memoirs that have from time to time been published by +elderly members of that profession must have been amused to perceive +that, while they conventionally agree that "all the world's a stage," +they are enthusiastically convinced that the stage is all the world. +Jefferson's book, although it contains much about the theatre, shows him +to be an exception in this respect, even as he is in many others. He has +seen many countries and many kinds of men and things, and he has long +looked upon life with the thoughtful gaze of a philosopher as well as +the wise smile of a humourist. He can, if he likes, talk of something +besides the shop. His account of his life "lacks form a little," and his +indifference to "accurate statistics"--which he declares to be "somewhat +tedious"--is now and then felt to be an embarrassment. One would like to +know, for instance, while reading about the primitive theatrical times, +when actors sailed the western rivers in flatboats, and shot beasts and +birds on the bank, precisely the extent and limits of that period. Nor +is this the only queer aspect of the dramatic past that might be +illumined. The total environment of a man's life is almost equally +important with the life itself--being, indeed, the scenery amid which +the action passes--and a good method for the writing of a biography is +that which sharply defines the successive periods of childhood, youth, +manhood, and age, and, while depicting the development of the individual +from point to point, depicts also the entire field through which he +moves, and the mutations, affecting his life, that occur in the historic +and social fabric around him. Jefferson, while he has painted vigorously +and often happily, on a large canvas, has left many spaces empty and +others but thinly filled. The reader who accompanies him may, +nevertheless, with a little care, piece out the story so as to perceive +it as a sequent, distinct, harmonious, and rounded narrative. Meanwhile +the companionship of this heedless historian is delightful--for whether +as actor, painter, or writer, Jefferson steadily exerts the charm of a +genial personality. You are as one walking along a country road, on a +golden autumn day, with a kind, merry companion, who knows all about +the trees that fringe your track and the birds that flit through their +branches, and who beguiles the way with many a humorous tale and many a +pleasant remembrance, now impressing your mind by the sagacity of his +reflections, now touching your heart by some sudden trait of sentiment +or pathos, and always pleasing and satisfying you with the consciousness +of a sweet, human, broad, charitable, piquant nature. Although an +autobiographer Jefferson is not egotistical, and although a moralist he +is not a bore. There is a tinge of the Horatian mood in him--for his +reader often becomes aware of that composed, sagacious, half-droll, +quizzical mind that indicates, with grave gentleness, the folly of +ambition, the vanity of riches, the value of the present hour, the +idleness of borrowing trouble, the blessing of the golden medium in +fortune, the absurdity of flatterers, and the comfort of keeping a +steadfast spirit amid the inevitable vicissitudes of this mortal state. + +Jefferson has memories of a boyhood that was passed in Washington, +Baltimore, and New York. He went to Chicago in 1838, when that place was +scarcely more than a village--making the journey from New York to +Buffalo in a canal-boat, and sailing thence, aboard a steamer, through +the lakes of Erie, Huron, and Michigan. He travelled with his parents, +and they gave dramatic performances, in which he assisted, in western +towns. It was a time of poverty and hardship, but those ills were borne +cheerfully--the brighter side of a hard life being kept steadily in +view, and every comic incident of it being seen and appreciated. His +father was a gentleman of the Mark Tapley temperament, who came out +strong amid adverse circumstances, and the early disappearance from the +book of that delightful person (who died in 1842, of yellow fever, at +Mobile), is a positive sorrow. His mother, a refined and gentle lady, of +steadfast character and of uncommon musical and dramatic talents and +accomplishments, survived till 1849, and her ashes rest in Ronaldson's +cemetery, in Philadelphia. Jefferson might have said much more about his +parents, and especially about his famous grandfather, without risk of +becoming tedious--for they were remarkably interesting people; but he +was writing his own life and not theirs, and he has explained that he +likes not to dwell much upon domestic matters. The story of his long +ancestry of actors, which reaches back to the days of Garrick (for there +have been five generations of the Jeffersons upon the stage), he has not +mentioned; and the story of his own young days is hurried rapidly to a +conclusion. He was brought on the stage, when a child, at the theatre in +Washington, D.C., by the negro comedian Thomas D. Rice, who emptied him +out of a bag; and thereupon, being dressed as "a nigger dancer," in +imitation of Rice, he performed the antics of Jim Crow. He adverts to +his first appearance in New York and remembers his stage combat with +Master Titus; and he thinks that Master Titus must remember it +also,--since one of that boy's big toes was nearly cut off in the fray. +That combat occurred at the Franklin theatre, September 30, 1837--a +useful fact that the autobiographer cares not to mention. He speedily +becomes a young man, as the reader follows him through the first three +chapters of his narrative,--of which there are seventeen,--and he is +found to be acting, as a stock player, in support of James W. Wallack, +Junius Brutus Booth, W.C. Macready, and Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Wallack, Jr. +Upon the powers and peculiarities of those actors, and upon the traits +of many others who, like them, are dead and gone (for there is scarcely +a word in the book about any of his living contemporaries), he comments +freely and instructively. He was "barn-storming" in Texas when the +Mexican war began, and he followed in the track of the American army, +and acted in the old Spanish theatre in Matamoras, in the spring of +1846; and, subsequently, finding that this did no good, he opened a +stall there for the sale of coffee and other refreshments, in the corner +of a gambling hell. He calls to mind the way of domestic life and the +every-day aspect of houses, gardens, people, and manners in Matamoras, +and those he describes with especial skill--deftly introducing the +portraiture of a dusky, black-eyed, volatile Mexican girl, to whom he +lost, temporarily, the light heart of youth, and whom he thinks that he +might have married had he not deemed it prudent to journey northward +toward a cooler clime. In New Orleans, at about that time, he first saw +the then young comedian John E. Owens: and he records the fact that his +ambition to excel as an actor was awakened by the spectacle of that +rival's success. Owens has had his career since then,--and a brilliant +one it was,--and now he sleeps in peace. + +After that experience Jefferson repaired to Philadelphia, and during the +next ten years, from 1846 to 1856, he wrought in that city and in New +York, Baltimore, Richmond, and other places, sometimes as a stock actor, +sometimes as a star, and sometimes as a manager. He encountered various +difficulties. He took a few serious steps and many comic ones. He was +brought into contact with some individuals that were eminent and with +some that were ludicrous. He crossed the Allegheny mountains in +mid-winter, from Wheeling to Cumberland, in a cold stage-coach, and +almost perished. He was a member of Burton's company at the Arch Street +theatre, Philadelphia, and was one of the chorus in that great actor's +revival of _Antigone_--which there is little doubt that the chorus +extinguished. He was the low comedian in Joseph Foster's amphitheatre, +where he sang _Captain Kidd_ to fill up the "carpenter scenes," and +where he sported amid the turbulent rhetorical billows of _Timour the +Tartar_ and _The Terror of the Road_. He acted in New York at the +Franklin theatre and also at the Chatham. He managed theatres in Macon +and Savannah, where he brought out the blithe Sir William Don; and one +of the sprightliest episodes of his memoir is the chapter in which he +describes that tall, elegant, nonchalant adventurer. Don was a +Scotchman, born in 1826, who made his first appearance in America in +November 1850 at the Broadway theatre, New York, and afterward drifted +aimlessly through the provincial theatres. Don was married in 1857 to +Miss Emily Sanders, and he died at Tasmania, March 19, 1862, and was +buried at Hobartstown. Jefferson saw the dawn of promise in the career +of Julia Dean,--when that beautiful girl was acting with him, in the +stock--and afterwards he saw the noonday splendour of her prosperity; +and he might have recalled, but that sad touches are excluded from his +biography, her mournful decline. In 1853 he was stage manager of the +Baltimore museum, for Henry C. Jarrett, and in 1854 he was manager of +the Richmond theatre, for John T. Ford. Among the players whom he met, +and who deeply influenced him, were James E. Murdoch, Henry Placide, +Edwin Forrest, Edwin Adams, and Agnes Robertson. But the actor who most +affected the youth of Joseph Jefferson, whose influence sank deepest +into his heart and has remained longest in his memory and upon his +style, was his half-brother, Charles Burke: and certainly, as a +serio-comic actor, it may be doubted whether Charles Burke ever was +surpassed. That comedian was born March 27, 1822, in Philadelphia, and +he died in New York, November 10, 1854. Jefferson's mother, Cornelia +Frances Thomás, born in New York, October 1, 1796, the daughter of +French parents, was married in her girlhood to the Irish comedian Thomas +Burke, who died in 1824; and she contracted her second marriage, with +Jefferson's father, in 1826. Jefferson writes at his best in the +description of scenery, in the analysis of character, and in the +statement of artistic principles. His portraiture of Murdoch, as a +comedian, is particularly clear and fine. His account of Julia Dean's +hit, as Lady Priory, is excellent and will often be cited. His portrayal +of the reciprocal action of Burton and Charles Burke, when they were +associated in the same piece, conveys a valuable lesson. His anecdotes +of Edwin Forrest present that grim figure as yet again the involuntary +cause of mirth. It often was so. Jefferson, however, draws a veil of +gentle charity over those misused powers, that perverse will, that +wasted life. The most striking dramatic portraiture in the book is that +bestowed on Charles Burke, William Warren, George Holland, Tom Glessing, +and Edwin Adams. Those were men who lived in Jefferson's affections, and +when he wrote about them he wrote from the heart. The sketch of +Glessing, whom everybody loved that ever knew him, is in a touching +strain of tender remembrance. + +Jefferson visited England and France in 1856, but not to act. At that +time he saw the famous English comedians Compton, Buckstone, Robson, and +Wright, and that extraordinary actor, fine alike in tragedy and comedy, +the versatile Samuel Phelps. In 1857 he was associated with Laura Keene +at her theatre in New York; and from that date onward his career has +been upon a high and sunlit path, visible to the world. His first part +at Laura Keene's theatre was Dr. Pangloss. Then came _Our American +Cousin_, in which he gained a memorable success as Asa Trenchard, and in +which Edward A. Sothern laid the basis of that fantastic structure of +whim and grotesque humour that afterward became famous as Lord +Dundreary. Sothern, Laura Keene, and William Rufus Blake, of course, +gained much of Jefferson's attention at that time, and he has not +omitted to describe them. His account of Blake, however, does not impart +an adequate idea of the excellence of that comedian. In 1858 he went to +the Winter Garden theatre, and was associated with the late Dion +Boucicault. His characters then were Newman Hoggs, Caleb Plummer, and +Salem Scudder--in _Nicholas Nickleby_, _The Cricket on the Hearth_, and +_The Octoroon_. Mr. Boucicault told him not to make Caleb Plummer a +solemn character at the beginning--a deliverance that Jefferson seems to +have cherished as one of colossal wisdom. He made a brilliant hit in +Salem Scudder, and it was then that he determined finally to assume the +position of a star. "Art has always been my sweetheart," exclaims +Jefferson, "and I have loved her for herself alone." No observer can +doubt that who has followed his career. It was in 1859 that he reverted +to the subject of Rip Van Winkle, as the right theme for his dramatic +purpose. He had seen Charles Burke as Rip, and he knew the several +versions of Washington Irving's story that had been made for the theatre +by Burke, Hackett, and Yates. The first Rip Van Winkle upon the stage, +of whom there is any record in theatrical annals, was Thomas Flynn +(1804-1849). That comedian, the friend of the elder Booth, acted the +part for the first time on May 24, 1828, at Albany. Charles B. Parsons, +who afterward acted in many theatres as Rip, and ultimately became a +preacher, was, on that night, the performer of Derrick. Jefferson's +predecessors as Rip Van Winkle were remarkably clever men--Flynn, +Parsons, Burke, Chapman, Hackett, Yates, and William Isherwood. But it +remained for Jefferson to do with that character what no one else had +ever thought of doing--to lift it above the level of the tipsy rustic +and make it the poetical type of the drifting and dreaming +vagrant--half-haunted, half-inspired, a child of the trees and the +clouds. Jefferson records that he was lying on the hay in a barn in +Paradise Valley, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1859, taking advantage +of a rainy day to read Washington Irving's _Life and Letters_, when that +plan came to him. It proved an inspiration of happiness to thousands of +people all over the world. The comedian made a play for himself, on the +basis of Charles Burke's play, but with one vital improvement--he +arranged the text and business of the supernatural scene so that Rip +only should speak, while the ghosts should remain silent. That stroke of +genius accomplished his object. The man capable of that exploit in +dramatic art could not fail to win the world, because he would at once +fascinate its imagination while touching its heart. + +In 1861 Jefferson went to California and thence to Australia, and in the +latter country he remained four years. He has written a fine description +of the entrance to the harbour at Sydney. His accounts of "the skeleton +dance," as he saw it performed by the black natives of that land; of his +meeting with the haunted hermit in the woods; of the convict audience at +Tasmania, for whom he acted in _The Ticket-of-Leave Man_; and of the +entertainment furnished in a Chinese theatre, are compositions that +would impart to any book the interest of adventure and the zest of +novelty. Such pictures as those have a broad background; they are not +circumscribed within the proscenium frame. The man is seen in those +passages as well as the actor; and he plays his part well, amid +picturesque surroundings of evil and peril, of tragedy and of pathos. In +Australia Jefferson met Charles Kean and his wife (Ellen Tree), of whom +his sketches are boldly drawn and his memories are pleasant. Mr. and +Mrs. Kean afterward made their farewell visit to the United States, +beginning, when they reached New York (from San Francisco, in April +1865), with _Henry VIII._, and closing with _The Jealous Wife_. In 1865 +Jefferson went from Australia to South America and passed some time in +Lima, where he saw much tropical luxury and many beautiful ladies--an +inspiriting spectacle, fittingly described by him in some of the most +felicitous of his fervent words. In June 1865 he reached London, and +presently he came forth, at the Adelphi, as Rip Van Winkle,--having +caused the piece to be rewritten by Mr. Boucicault, who introduced the +colloquy of the children, paraphrased for it the recognition scene +between King Lear and Cordelia, and kept Gretchen alive to be married to +Derrick. Mr. Boucicault, however, had no faith in the piece or the +actor's plan, and down to the last moment prophesied failure. +Jefferson's success was unequivocal. Friends surrounded him and in the +gentle and genial record that he has made of those auspicious days some +of the brightest names of modern English literature sparkle on his page. +Benjamin Webster, Paul Bedford, John Billington, John Brougham, and +Marie Wilton were among the actors who were glad to be his associates. +Robertson, the dramatist, was his constant companion--one of the most +intellectual and one of the wittiest of men. Planché, aged yet hearty +and genial (and no man had more in his nature of the sweet spirit of the +comrade), speedily sought him. Charles Reade and Anthony Trollope became +his cronies; and poor Artemas Ward arrived and joined the party just as +Jefferson was leaving it--as bright a spirit, as kind a heart, and as +fine and quaint a humourist as ever cheered this age--from which he +vanished too soon for the happiness of his friends and for the fruition +of his fame. "I was much impressed," says the comedian, "with Ward's +genial manner; he was not in good health, and I advised him to be +careful lest the kindness of London should kill him." That advice was +not heeded, and the kindness of London speedily ended Ward's days. + +Jefferson came home in 1866 and passed ten years in America--years of +fame and fortune, whereof the record is smooth prosperity. Its most +important personal incident was his second marriage, on December 20, +1867, at Chicago, to Miss Sarah Warren. In July 1873 he made a voyage to +Europe, with his wife and William Warren, the comedian, and remained +there till autumn. From November 1, 1875 to April 29, 1876 and from +Easter 1877 until midsummer he was again acting in London, where he +redoubled his former success. In October 1877 he returned home, and +since then he has remained in America. The chronicle that he has written +glides lightly over these latter years, only now and then touching on +their golden summits. The manifest wish of the writer has been to people +his pages as much as possible with the men and women of his artistic +circle and knowledge who would be likely to interest the reader. Robert +Browning, Charles Kingsley, and George Augustus Sala come into the +picture, and there is a pleasing story of Browning and Longfellow +walking arm in arm in London streets till driven into a cab by a summer +shower, when Longfellow insisted on passing his umbrella through the +hole in the roof, for the protection of the cab-driver. Jefferson lived +for one summer in an old mansion at Morningside, Edinburgh, and he +dwells with natural delight on his recollections of that majestic city. +He had many a talk, at odd times, with the glittering farceur Charles +Mathews, about dramatic art, and some of this is recorded in piquant +anecdotes. "By many," says the amiable annalist, "he was thought to be +cold and selfish; I do not think he was so." There is a kind word for +Charles Fechter, whose imitations of Frederick Lemaitre, in _Belphegor, +the Mountebank_, live in Jefferson's remembrance as wonderfully graphic. +There are glimpses of James Wallack, Walter Montgomery, Peter Richings, +E.A. Sothern, Laura Keene, James G. Burnett, John Gilbert, Tyrone Power, +Lester Wallack, John McCullough, John T. Raymond, Mr. and Mrs. Barney +Williams, John Drew (the elder), F.S. Chanfrau, Charlotte Cushman, Mrs. +Drake, and many others; and the record incorporates two letters, not +before published, from John Howard Payne, the author of _Home, Sweet +Home_--a melody that is the natural accompaniment of Jefferson's life. +There is a pretty picture of that ancient supper-room at No. 2 Bulfinch +Place, Boston--Miss Fisher's kitchen--as it appeared when William Warren +sat behind the mound of lobsters, at the head of the table, while the +polished pewters reflected the cheerful light, and wit and raillery +enlivened the happy throng, and many a face was wreathed with smiles +that now is dark and still forever. In one chapter Jefferson sets forth +his views upon the art of acting; and seldom within so brief a compass +will so many sensible reflections be found so simply and tersely +expressed. The book closes with words of gratitude for many blessings, +and with an emblematic picture of a spirit resigned to whatever +vicissitudes of fortune may yet be decreed. + +Jefferson's memoir is a simple message to simple minds. It will find its +way to thousands of readers to whom a paper by Addison or an essay by +Hume would have no meaning. It will point for them the moral of a good +life. It will impress them with the spectacle of a noble actor, +profoundly and passionately true to the high art by which he lives, +bearing eloquent testimony to its beauty and its worth, and to the fine +powers and sterling virtues of the good men and women with whom he has +been associated in its pursuit. It will display to them--and to all +others who may chance to read it--a type of that absolute humility of +spirit which yet is perfectly compatible with a just pride of intellect. +It will help to preserve interesting traits of famous actors of an +earlier time, together with bright stories that illumine the dry +chronicle of our theatrical history. And, in its simple record of the +motives by which he has been impelled, and the artistic purposes that he +has sought to accomplish, it will remain an eloquent, vital, +indestructible memorial to the art and the character of a great +comedian, when the present reality of his exquisite acting shall have +changed to a dim tradition and a fading memory of the past. + + + + +VIII. + +ON JEFFERSON'S ACTING. + + +Fifty years from now the historian of the American stage, if he should +be asked to name the actor of this period who was most beloved by the +people of this generation, will answer that it was Joseph Jefferson. +Other actors of our time are famous, and they possess in various degrees +the affection of the public. Jefferson is not only renowned but +universally beloved. To state the cause of this effect is at once to +explain his acting and to do it the honour to which it is entitled. That +cause can be stated in a single sentence. Jefferson is at once a poetic +and a human actor, and he is thus able to charm all minds and to win all +hearts. His success, therefore, is especially important not to himself +alone but to the people. + +Public taste is twofold. It has a surface liking, and it has a deep, +instinctive, natural preference. The former is alert, capricious, +incessant, and continually passes from fancy to fancy. It scarcely knows +what it wants, except that it wants excitement and change. Those persons +in the dramatic world who make a point to address it are experimental +speculators, whose one and only object is personal gain, and who are +willing and ready to furnish any sort of entertainment that they think +will please a passing caprice, and thereby will turn a penny for +themselves. To judge the public entirely by this surface liking is to +find the public what Tennyson once called it--a many-headed beast. With +that animal every paltry and noxious thing can be made, for a time, to +flourish; and that fact leads observers who do not carefully look +beneath the surface to conclude that the public is always wrong. But the +deep preference of the public comes into the question, and observers who +are able to see and to consider that fact presently perceive that the +artist, whether actor or otherwise, who gives to the public, not what it +says it wants but what it ought to have, is in the long run the victor. +The deep preference is for the good thing, the real thing, the right. It +is not intelligent. It does not go with thinking and reasoning. It does +not pretend to have grounds of belief. It simply responds. But upon the +stage the actor who is able to reach it is omnipotent. Jefferson +conspicuously is an actor who appeals to the deep, instinctive, natural +preference of humanity, and who reaches it, arouses it, and satisfies +it. Throughout the whole of his mature career he has addressed the +nobler soul of humanity and given to the people what they ought to have; +and the actor who is really able to do that naturally conquers +everything. It is not a matter of artifice and simulation; it is a +matter of being genuine and not a sham. + +Still further, Jefferson has aroused and touched and satisfied the +feelings of the people, not by attempting to interpret literature but by +being an actor. An actor is a man who acts. He may be an uneducated man, +deficient in learning and in mental discipline, and yet a fine actor. +The people care not at all for literature. They do not read it, and they +know nothing about it until it is brought home to their hearts by some +great interpreter of it. What they do know is action. They can see and +they can feel, and the actor who makes them see and feel can do +anything with them that he pleases. It is his privilege and his +responsibility. Jefferson is one of those artists (and they are few) who +depend for their effects not upon what authors have written but upon +impersonation. He takes liberties with the text. It would not perhaps be +saying too much to say that he does not primarily heed the text at all. +He is an actor; and speaking with reference to him and to others like +him it would perhaps be well if those persons who write criticisms upon +the stage would come to a definite conclusion upon this point and +finally understand that an actor must produce his effects on the instant +by something that he does and is, and not by rhetoric and elocution, and +therefore that he should not be expected to repeat every word of every +part, or to be a translator of somebody else, but that he must be +himself. If we want the full, literal text of Shakespeare we can stop at +home and read it. What we want of the actor is that he should give +himself; and the true actor does give himself. The play is the medium. A +man who acts Romeo must embody, impersonate, express, convey, and make +evident what he knows and feels about love. He need not trouble himself +about Shakespeare. That great poet will survive; while if Romeo, being +ever so correct, bores the house, Romeo will be damned. Jefferson is an +actor who invariably produces effect, and he produces it by +impersonation, and by impersonation that is poetic and human. + +Jefferson's performance of Acres conspicuously exemplifies the +principles that have been stated here. He has not hesitated to alter the +comedy of _The Rivals_, and in his alteration of it he has improved it. +Acres has been made a better part for an actor, and a more significant +and sympathetic part for an audience. You could not care particularly +for Acres if he were played exactly as he is written. You might laugh at +him, and probably would, but he would not touch your feelings. Jefferson +embodies him in such a way that he often makes you feel like laughing +and crying at the same moment, and you end with loving the character, +and storing it in your memory with such cherished comrades of the fancy +as Mark Tapley and Uncle Toby. There is but little human nature in Acres +as Sheridan has drawn him, and what there is of human nature is coarse; +but as embodied by Jefferson, while he never ceases to be comically +absurd, he becomes fine and sweet, and wins sympathy and inspires +affection, and every spectator is glad to have seen him and to remember +him. It is not possible to take that sort of liberty with every author. +You can do it but seldom with Shakespeare; never in any but his juvenile +plays. But there are authors who can be improved by that process, and +Sheridan--in _The Rivals_, not in _The School for Scandal_--is one of +them. And anyway, since it ought to be felt, known, understood, and +practically admitted that an actor is something more than a telegraph +wire, that his personal faculty and testimony enter into the matter of +embodiment and expression, Jefferson's rare excellence and great success +as Acres should teach a valuable lesson, correcting that pernicious +habit of the critical mind which measures an actor by the printed text +of a play-book and by the hide-bound traditions of custom on the stage. +Jefferson has had a royal plenitude of success as an actor, chiefly with +the part of Rip Van Winkle, but also with the characters of Caleb +Plummer, Bob Brierly, Dr. Pangloss, Dr. Ollapod, Mr. Golightly, and Hugh +de Brass. The reason of that success cannot be found in conventional +adherence to stage customs and critical standards. + +Jefferson has gained his great power over the people--of which his great +fame is the shadow--- by giving himself in his art--his own rich and +splendid nature and the crystallised conclusions of his experience. As +an artist, when it comes to execution, he leaves nothing to chance. The +most seemingly artless of his proceedings is absolutely defined in +advance, and never is what heedless observers call impulsive and +spontaneous. But his temperament is free, fluent, opulent, and +infinitely tender; and when the whole man is aroused, this flows into +the moulds of literary and dramatic art and glorifies them. When you are +looking at Jefferson as Acres in the duel scene in _The Rivals_, you +laugh at him, but almost you laugh through your tears. When you see +Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle confronting the ghosts on the lonely +mountain-top at midnight, you see a display of imaginative personality +quite as high as that of Hamlet in tremulous sensibility to supernatural +influence, although wholly apart from Hamlet in altitude of intellect +and in anguish of experience. The poetry of the impersonation, though, +is entirely consonant with Hamlet, and that is the secret of Jefferson's +exceptional hold upon the heart and the imagination of his time. The +public taste does not ask Jefferson to trifle with his art. Its deep, +spontaneous, natural preference feels that he is a true actor, and so +yields to his power, and enjoys his charm, and is all the time improved +and made fitter to enjoy it. He has reached as great a height as it is +possible to reach in his profession. He could if he chose play greater +parts than he has ever attempted; he could not give a better +exemplification than he gives, in his chose and customary achievement, +of all that is distinctive, beautiful, and beneficent in the art of the +actor. + + + + +IX. + +JEFFERSON AND FLORENCE IN OLD COMEDY. + + +A revival of _The Heir at Law_ was accomplished in the New York season +of 1890, with Joseph Jefferson in the character of Dr. Pangloss and +William James Florence in that of Zekiel Homespun. That play dates back +to 1797, a period in which a sedulous deference to conventionality +prevailed in the British theatre, as to the treatment of domestic +subjects; and, although the younger Colman wrote in a more flexible +style than was possessed by any other dramatist of the time, excepting +Sheridan, he was influenced to this extent by contemporary usage, that +often when he became serious he also became artificial and stilted. The +sentimental part of _The Heir at Law_ is trite in plan and hard in +expression. Furthermore that portion of it which, in the character of +Dr. Pangloss, satirises the indigent, mercenary, disreputable private +tutors who constituted a distinct and pernicious class of social +humbugs in Colman's day, has lost its direct point for the present age, +through the disappearance of the peculiar type of imposture against +which its irony was directed. Dr. Pangloss, nevertheless, remains +abstractly a humorous personage; and when he is embodied by an actor +like Jefferson, who can elucidate his buoyant animal spirits, his gay +audacity, his inveterate good-nature, his nimble craft, his jocular +sportiveness, his shrewd knowledge of character and of society, and his +scholar-like quaintness, he becomes a delightful presence; for his +mendacity disappears in the sunshine of his humour; his faults seem +venial; and we entertain him much as we do the infinitely greater and +more disreputable character of Falstaff,--knowing him to be a vagabond, +but finding him a charming companion, for all that. This is one great +relief to the hollow and metallic sentimentality of the piece. Persons +like Henry Moreland, Caroline Dormer, and Mr. Steadfast would be +tiresome in actual life; they belong, with Julia and Falkland and +Peregrine and Glenroy, to the noble army of the bores, and they are +insipid on the stage; but the association of the sprightly and jocose +Pangloss with those drab-tinted and preachy people irradiates even their +constitutional platitude with a sparkle of mirth. They shine, in spite +of themselves. + +Colman's humour is infectious and penetrating. In that quality he was +original and affluent. As we look along the line of the British +dramatists for the last hundred years we shall find no parallel to his +felicity in the use of comic inversion and equivoke, till we come to +Gilbert. Though he was tedious while he deferred to that theatrical +sentimentality which was the fashion of his day (and against which +Goldsmith, in _She Stoops to Conquer_, was the first to strike), he +could sometimes escape from it; and when he did escape he was brilliant. +In _The Heir at Law_ he has not only illumined it by the contrast of Dr. +Pangloss but by the unctuous humour and irresistible comic force of the +character of Daniel Dowlas, Lord Duberly. Situations in a play, in order +to be invested with the enduring quality of humour, must result from +such conduct as is the natural and spontaneous expression of comic +character. The idea of the comic parvenue is ancient. It did not +originate with Colman. His application of it, however, was novel and his +treatment of it--taking fast hold of the elemental springs of mirth--is +as fresh to-day as it was a hundred years ago. French minds, indeed, and +such as subscribe to French notions, would object that the means +employed to elicit character and awaken mirth are not scientifically and +photographically correct, and that they are violent. Circumstances, they +would say, do not so fall out that a tallow-chandler is made a lord. The +Christopher Sly expedient, they would add, is a forced expedient. +Perhaps it is. But English art sees with the eyes of the imagination and +in dramatic matters it likes to use colour and emphasis. Daniel Dowlas, +as Lord Duberly, is all the droller for being a retired tallow-chandler, +ignorant, greasy, conventional, blunt, a sturdy, honest, ridiculous +person, who thinks he has observed how lords act and who intends to put +his gained knowledge into practical use. We shall never again see him +acted as he was acted by Burton, or by that fine actor William Rufus +Blake, or even by John Gilbert--who was of rather too choleric a +temperament and too fine a texture for such an oily and stupidly +complacent personage. But whenever and however he is acted he will be +recognised as an elemental type of absurd human nature made ludicrous by +comic circumstances; and he will give rich and deep amusement. + +It is to be observed, in the analysis of this comedy, that according to +Colman's intention the essential persons in it are all, at heart, human. +The pervasive spirit of the piece is kindly. Old Dowlas, restricted to +his proper place in life, is a worthy man. Dick Dowlas, intoxicated by +vanity and prosperity, has no harm in him, and he turns out well at +last. Even Dr. Pangloss--although of the species of rogue that subsists +by artfully playing upon the weakness of human vanity--is genial and +amiable; he is a laughing philosopher; he gives good counsel; he hurts +nobody; he is but a mild type of sinner--and the satirical censure that +is bestowed upon him is neither merciless nor bitter. Pangloss, in Milk +Alley, spinning his brains for a subsistence, might be expected to prove +unscrupulous; but the moraliser can imagine Pangloss, if he were only +made secure by permanent good fortune, leading a life of blameless +indolence and piquant eccentricity. From that point of view Jefferson +formed his ideal of the character; and, indeed, his treatment of the +whole piece denoted an active practical sympathy with that gentle view +of the subject. He placed before his audience a truthful picture of old +English manners; telling them, in rapid and cheery action, Colman's +quaint story--in which there is no malice and no bitterness, but in +which simple virtue proves superior to temptation, and integrity is +strong amid vicissitudes--and leaving in their minds, at the last, an +amused conviction that indeed "Nature hath framed strange fellows in her +time." His own performance was full of nervous vitality and mental +sparkle, and of a humour deliciously quaint and droll. Dr. Panglass, as +embodied by Jefferson, is a man who always sees the comical aspect of +things and can make you see it with him, and all the while can be +completely self-possessed and grave without ever once becoming slow or +heavy. There was an air of candour, of ingenuous simplicity, of demure +propriety, about the embodiment, that made it inexpressibly funny. There +was no effort and no distortion. The structure of the impersonation +tingled with life, and the expression of it--in demeanour, movement, +facial play, intonation and business--was clear and crisp, with that +absolute precision and beautiful finish for which the acting of +Jefferson has always been distinguished. He is probably the only +American comedian now left, excepting John S. Clarke, who knows all the +traditional embellishments that have gone to the making of this part +upon the stage--embellishments fitly typified by the bank-note business +with Zekiel Homespun; a device, however, that perhaps suggests a greater +degree of moral obliquity in Dr. Pangloss than was intended by the +author. It was exceedingly comical, though, and it served its purpose. +Jefferson has had the character of Pangloss in his repertory for almost +forty years. He first acted it in New York as long ago as 1857, at Laura +Keene's theatre, when that beautiful woman played Cicely and when +Duberly was represented by the lamented James G. Burnett. It takes the +playgoer a long way back, to be thinking about this old piece and the +casts that it has had upon the American stage. _The Heir at Law_ was a +great favourite in Boston thirty years ago and more, when William Warren +was in his prime and could play Dr. Pangloss with the best of them, and +when Julia Bennett Barrow was living and acting, who could play Cicely +in a way that no later actress has excelled. John E. Owens as Pangloss +will never be forgotten. It was a favourite part with John Brougham. And +the grotesque fun of John S. Clarke in that droll character has been +recognised on both sides of the Atlantic. + +In Jefferson's impersonation of Dr. Pangloss the predominant beauty was +spontaneous and perfectly graceful identification with the part. The +felicity of the apt quotations seemed to be accidental. The manner was +buoyant, but the alacrity of the mind was more nimble than the celerity +of the body, and those wise and witty comments that Pangloss makes upon +life, character, and manners flowed naturally from a brain that was in +the vigour and repose of intense animation. The actor was completely +merged in the character, which nevertheless his judgment dominated and +his will directed. No other representative of Pangloss has quite +equalled Jefferson in the element of authoritative and convincing +sincerity. His demure sapience was of the most intense order and it +arose out of great mental excitement. No other actor of the part has +equalled him in softness and winning charm of humour. His embodiment of +Dr. Pangloss has left in the memory of his time an image of eccentric +character not less lovable than ludicrous. + +With Zekiel Homespun, an actor who is true to the author's plan will +produce the impression of an affectionate heart, virtuous principles, +and absolute honesty of purpose, combined with rustic simplicity. +Florence easily reached that result. His preservation of a dialect was +admirably exact. The soul of the part is fraternal love, and when Zekiel +finds that his trusted friend has repulsed him and would wrong his +sister, there is a fine flash of noble anger in the pride and scorn with +which he confronts this falsehood and dishonour. Florence in days when +he used to act the Irish Emigrant proved himself the consummate master +of simple pathos. He struck that familiar note again in the lovely +manner of Zekiel toward his sister Cicely, and his denotement of the +struggle between affection and resentment in the heart of the brother +when wounded by the depravity of his friend was not less beautiful in +the grace of art than impressive in simple dignity and touching in +passionate fervour. In point of natural feeling Zekiel Homespun is a +stronger part than Dr. Pangloss, although not nearly so complex nor so +difficult to act. The sentiments by which it is animated awaken instant +sympathy and the principles that impel command universal respect. No +actor who has attempted Zekiel Homespun in this generation on the +American stage has approached the performance that was given by +Florence, in conviction, in artless sweetness, in truth of passion, and +in the heartfelt expression of the heart. + +Purists customarily insist that the old comedies are sacred; that no one +of their celestial commas or holy hyphens can be omitted without sin; +and that the alteration of a sentence in them is sacrilege. The truth +stands, however, without regard to hysterics: and it is a truth that the +old comedies owe their vitality mostly to the actors who now and then +resuscitate them. No play of the past is ever acted with scrupulous +fidelity to the original text. The public that saw the _Heir-at-Law_ and +the _Rivals_, when Jefferson and Florence acted in them, saw condensed +versions, animated by a living soul of to-day, and therefore it was +impressed. The one thing indispensable on the stage is the art of the +actor. + + + + +X. + +ON THE DEATH OF FLORENCE. + + +The melancholy tidings of the death of Florence came suddenly (he died +in Philadelphia, after a brief illness, November 19, 1891), and struck +the hearts of his friends not simply with affliction but with dismay. +Florence was a man of such vigorous and affluent health that the idea of +illness and death was never associated with him. Whoever else might go, +he at least would remain, and for many cheerful years he would please +our fancy and brighten our lives. His spirit was so buoyant and +brilliant that it seemed not possible it could ever be dimmed. Yet now, +in a moment, his light was quenched and there was darkness on his mirth. +We shall hear his pleasant voice no more and see no more the sunshine of +a face that was never seen without joy and can never be remembered +without sorrow. The loss to the public was great. Few actors within the +last forty years have stood upon a level with Florence in versatility +and charm. His gentleness, his simplicity, his modesty, his affectionate +fidelity, his ready sympathy, his inexhaustibly patience, his fine +talents--all those attributes united with his spontaneous drollery to +enshrine him in tender affection. + +William James Florence, whose family name was Conlin, was born in +Albany, July 26, 1831. When a youth he joined the Murdoch Dramatic +Association, and he early gave evidence of extraordinary dramatic +talent. On December 9, 1849 he made his first appearance on the regular +stage, at the Marshall theatre in Richmond, Virginia, where he +impersonated Tobias, in _The Stranger_. After that he met with the usual +vicissitudes of a young player. He was a member of various stock +companies--notably that of W.C. Forbes, of the Providence museum, and +that of the once-popular John Nickinson, of Toronto and Quebec--the +famous Havresack of his period. Later he joined the company at Niblo's +theatre, New York, under the management of Chippendale and John Sefton, +appearing there on May 8, 1850. He also acted at the Broadway, under +Marshall's management, and in 1852 he was a member of the company at +Brougham's Lyceum. On January 1, 1853 he married Malvina Pray, sister of +the wife of Barney Williams; and in that way those two Irish comedians +came to be domestically associated. + +At that time Florence wrote several plays, upon Irish and Yankee +subjects, then very popular, and he began to figure as a star--his wife +standing beside him. They appeared at Purdy's National theatre, June 8, +1853, and then, and for a long time afterward, they had much popularity +and success. Florence had composed many songs of a sprightly character +(one of them, called _Bobbing Around_, had a sale of more than 100,000 +copies), and those songs were sung by his wife, to the delight of the +public. The Irish drama served his purpose for many years, but he varied +that form of art by occasional resort to burlesque and by incursions +into the realm of melodrama. One of his best performances was that of +O'Bryan, in John Brougham's play of _Temptation, or the Irish Emigrant_, +with which he often graced the stage of the Winter Garden. In that he +touched the extremes of gentle humour and melting pathos. He was +delightfully humorous, also, in Handy Andy, and in all that long line of +Irish characters that came to our stage with Tyrone Power and the elder +John Drew. He had exceptional talent for burlesque, and that was often +manifested in his early days. _Fra Diavolo_, _Beppo_, _Lallah Rookh_, +_The Lady of the Lions_, and _The Colleen Bawn_, were among the +burlesques that he produced, and with those he was the pioneer. + +Engagements were filled by Mr. and Mrs. Florence, at the outset of their +starring tour, in many cities of the republic, and everywhere they met +with kindness and honour. Among the plays written by Florence were _The +Irish Princess_, _O'Neil the Great_, _The Sicilian Bride_, _Woman's +Wrongs_, _Eva_, and _The Drunkard's Doom_. On April 2, 1856 Mr. and Mrs. +Florence sailed for England, and presently they appeared at Drury Lane +theatre, where they at once stepped into favour. The performance of the +_Yankee Gal_ by Mrs. Florence aroused positive enthusiasm--for it was +new, and Mrs. Florence was the first American comic actress that had +appeared upon the English stage. More than two hundred representations +of it were given at that time. Florence used to relate that his +fortunes were greatly benefited by his success in London, and he +habitually spoke with earnest gratitude of the kindness that he received +there. From that time onward he enjoyed almost incessant prosperity. A +tour of the English provincial cities followed his London season. He +acted at Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, and Dublin, +and both his wife and himself became favourites--so that their songs +were sung and whistled in the streets, wherever they went. + +Returning to the United States Mr. and Mrs. Florence renewed their +triumphs, all over the land. In 1861 Florence played some of Burton's +characters in Wallack's theatre--among them being Toodle and Cuttle. At +a later period he made it a custom to lease Wallack's theatre during the +summer, and there he produced many burlesques. In 1863, at the Winter +Garden, he offered _The Ticket-of-Leave Man_ and acted Bob Brierly, +which was one of the best exploits of his life. In 1867 Wallack's old +theatre being then called the Broadway and managed by Barney Williams, +he brought to that house the comedy of _Caste_ and presented it with a +distribution of the parts that has not been equalled. The actors were +Mrs. Chanfrau, Mrs. Gilbert, Mrs. Florence, William Davidge, Owen +Marlowe, Edward Lamb, and Florence--who played George D'Alroy. In 1868 +he presented _No Thoroughfare_ and enacted Obenreizer,--a performance +that established his rank among the leading actors of the time. In 1876 +he made a remarkable hit as the Hon. Bardwell Slote in the play of _The +Mighty Dollar_, by Benjamin E. Woolff. That was the last important new +play that he produced. During the last fifteen years of his life he +offered selections from his accepted repertory. For a time he was +associated with Jefferson--to whom he brought a strength that was deeply +valued and appreciated, equally by that famous actor and by the +public--acting Sir Lucius O'Trigger in _The Rivals_ and Zekiel Homespun +in _The Heir-at-Law_. + +The power of Florence was that of impersonation. He was imaginative and +sympathetic; his style was flexible; and he had an unerring instinct of +effect. The secret of his success lay in his profound feeling, guided by +perfect taste and perfect self-control. He was an actor of humanity, and +he diffused an irresistible charm of truth and gentleness. His place +was his own and it can never be filled. + + * * * * * + +An Epitaph. + +_Here Rest the Ashes of_ +WILLIAM JAMES FLORENCE, +_Comedian_. + +_His Copious and Varied Dramatic Powers, together with the Abundant +Graces of his Person, combined with Ample Professional Equipment and a +Temperament of Peculiar Sensibility and Charm, made him one of the Best +and Most Successful Actors of his Time, alike in Comedy and in Serious +Drama. He ranged easily from Handy Andy to Bob Brierly, and from Cuttle +to Obenreizer. In Authorship, alike of Plays, Stories, Music, and Song, +he was Inventive, Versatile, Facile, and Graceful. In Art Admirable; in +Life Gentle; he was widely known, and he was known only to be loved._ + +HE WAS BORN IN ALBANY, N.Y., + JULY 26, 1831. +HE DIED IN PHILADELPHIA PENN., + NOVEMBER 19, 1891. + + * * * * * + + By Virtue cherished, by Affection mourned, + By Honour hallowed and by Fame adorned, + Here FLORENCE sleeps, and o'er his sacred rest + Each word is tender and each thought is blest. + Long, for his loss, shall pensive Mem'ry show, + Through Humour's mask, the visage of her woe, + Day breathe a darkness that no sun dispels, + And Night be full of whispers and farewells; + While patient Kindness, shadow-like and dim, + Droops in its loneliness, bereft of him, + Feels its sad doom and sure decadence nigh,-- + For how should Kindness live, when he could die! + + The eager heart, that felt for every grief, + The bounteous hand, that loved to give relief, + The honest smile, that blessed where'er it lit, + The dew of pathos and the sheen of wit, + The sweet, blue eyes, the voice of melting tone, + That made all hearts as gentle as his own, + The Actor's charm, supreme in royal thrall, + That ranged through every field and shone in all-- + For these must Sorrow make perpetual moan, + Bereaved, benighted, hopeless, and alone? + Ah, no; for Nature does no act amiss, + And Heaven were lonely but for souls like this. + + + + +XI. + +HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. + + +In his beautiful production of _The Merchant of Venice_ Henry Irving +restored the fifth act, the jailer scene, and the casket scenes in full, +and the piece was acted with strict fidelity to Shakespeare. With Ellen +Terry for Portia that achievement became feasible. With an ordinary +actress in that character the comedy might be tedious--notwithstanding +its bold and fine contrasts of character, its fertility of piquant +incident, and its lovely poetry. Radiant with her fine spirit and +beautiful presence, and animated and controlled in every fibre by his +subtle and authoritative intellect, judiciously cast and correctly +dressed and mounted, Henry Irving's revival of _The Merchant of Venice_ +captured the public fancy; and in every quarter it was sincerely felt +and freely proclaimed that here, at last, was the perfection of stage +display. That success has never faded. The performance was round, +symmetrical, and thorough--every detail being kept subordinate to +intelligent general effect, and no effort being made toward overweening +individual display. + +Shakespeare's conception of Shylock has long been in controversy. +Burbage, who acted the part in Shakespeare's presence, wore a red wig +and was frightful in form and aspect. The red wig gives a hint of low +comedy, and it may be that the great actor made use of low comedy +expedients to cloak Shylock's inveterate malignity and sinister purpose. +Dogget, who played the part in Lord Lansdowne's alteration of +Shakespeare's piece, turned Shylock into farce. Macklin, when he +restored the original play to the stage--at Drury Lane, February 14, +1741--- wore a red hat, a peaked beard, and a loose black gown, playing +Shylock as a serious, almost a tragic part, and laying great emphasis +upon a display of revengeful passion and hateful malignity. So terrible +was he, indeed, that persons who saw him on the stage in that character +not infrequently drew the inference and kept the belief that he was +personally a monster. His look was iron-visaged; the cast of his +manners was relentless and savage. Quin said that his face contained not +lines but cordage. In portraying the contrasted passions of joy for +Antonio's losses and grief for Jessica's elopement he poured forth all +his fire. When he whetted his knife, in the trial scene, he was silent, +grisly, ominous, and fatal. No human touch, no hint of race-majesty or +of religious fanaticism, tempered the implacable wickedness of that +hateful ideal. Pope, who saw that Shylock, hailed it as "the Jew that +Shakespeare drew"--and Pope, among other things, was one of the editors +of Shakespeare. Cooke, who had seen Macklin's Shylock, and also those of +Henderson, King, Kemble, and Yates, adopted, maintained, and transmitted +the legend of Macklin. Edmund Kean, who worshipped Cooke, was +unquestionably his imitator in Shylock; but it seems to have been Edmund +Kean who, for the first time, gave prominence to the Hebraic majesty and +fanatical self-consecration of that hateful but colossal character. +Jerrold said that Kean's Shylock was like a chapter of Genesis. +Macready--whose utterance of "Nearest his heart" was the blood-curdling +keynote of his whole infernal ideal--declared the part to be "composed +of harshness," and he saw no humanity in the lament for the loss of +Leah's ring, but only a lacerated sense of the value of that jewel. +Brooke, a great Shylock, concurred with Kean's ideal and made the Jew +orientally royal, the avenger of his race, having "an oath in heaven," +and standing on the law of "an eye for an eye." Edwin Forrest, the elder +Wallack, E.L. Davenport, Edwin Booth, Bogumil Davison, and Charles Kean +steadily kept Shylock upon the stage,--some walking in the religious +track and some leaving it. But the weight of opinion and the spirit and +drift of the text would justify a presentment of the Jew as the +incarnation not alone of avarice and hate, but of the stern, terrible +Mosaic law of justice. That is the high view of the part, and in +studying Shakespeare it is safe to prefer the high view. + +There must be imagination, or pathos, or weirdness, or some form of +humour, or a personal charm in the character that awakens the soul of +Henry Irving and calls forth his best and finest powers. There is little +of that quality in Shylock. But Henry Irving took the high view of him. +This Jew "feeds fat the ancient grudge" against Antonio--until the law +of Portia, more subtle than equitable, interferes to thwart him; but +also he avenges the wrongs that his "sacred nation" has suffered. His +ideal was right, his grasp of it firm, his execution of it flexible with +skill and affluent with intellectual power. If memory carries away a +shuddering thought of his baleful gaze upon the doomed Antonio and of +his horrid cry of the summons "Come, prepare!" it also retains the image +of a father convulsed with grief--momentarily, but sincerely--and of a +man who at least can remember that he once loved. It was a most austere +Shylock, inveterate of purpose, vindictive, malignant, cruel, ruthless; +and yet it was human. No creature was ever more logical and consistent +in his own justification. By purity, sincerity, decorum, fanaticism, the +ideal was aptly suggestive of such men as Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes, +and John Felton--persons who, with prayer on their lips, were +nevertheless capable of hideous cruelty. The street scene demands +utterance, not repression. The Jew raves there, and no violence would +seem excessive. Macklin, Kean, Cooke, and the elder Booth, each must +have been terrific at that point. Henry Irving's method was that of the +intense passion that can hardly speak--the passion that Kean is said to +have used so grandly in giving the curse of Junius Brutus upon Tarquin. +But, there was just as much of Shylock's nature in Henry Irving's +performance as in any performance that is recorded. The lack was +overwhelming physical power--not mentality and not art. At "No tears but +of my shedding" Henry Irving's Shylock took a strong clutch upon the +emotions and created an effect that will never be forgotten. + +Ellen Terry's Portia long ago became a precious memory. The part makes +no appeal to the tragic depths of her nature, but it awakens her fine +sensibility, stimulates the nimble play of her intellect, and cordially +promotes that royal exultation in the affluence of physical vitality and +of spiritual freedom that so often seems to lift her above the common +earth. There have been moments when it seemed not amiss to apply +Shakespeare's own beautiful simile to the image of queen-like +refinement, soft womanhood, and spiritualised intellect that this +wonderful actress presented--"as if an angel dropped down from the +clouds." Her Portia was stately, yet fascinating; a woman to inspire awe +and yet to captivate every heart. Nearer to Shakespeare's meaning than +that no actress can ever go. The large, rich, superb manner never +invalidated the gentle blandishments of her sex. The repressed ardour, +the glowing suspense, the beautiful modesty and candour with which she +awaited the decision of the casket scene, showed her to be indeed all +woman, and worthy of a true man's love. Here was no paltering of a puny +nature with great feelings and a great experience. And never in our day +has the poetry of Shakespeare fallen from human lips in a strain of such +melody--with such teeming freedom of felicitous delivery and such dulcet +purity of diction. + + + + +XII. + +JOHN McCULLOUGH IN SEVERAL CHARACTERS. + + +There is no greater gratification to the intellect than the sense of +power and completeness in itself or the perception of power and +completeness in others. Those attributes were in John McCullough's +acting and were at the heart of its charm. His repertory consisted of +thirty characters, but probably the most imposing and affecting of his +embodiments was Virginius. The massive grandeur of adequacy in that +performance was a great excellence. The rugged, weather-beaten plainness +of it was full of authority and did not in the least detract from its +poetic purity and ideal grace. The simplicity of it was like the lovely +innocence that shines through the ingenuous eyes of childhood, while its +majesty was like the sheen of white marble in the sunlight. It was a +very high, serious, noble work; yet,--although, to his immeasurable +credit, the actor never tried to apply a "natural" treatment to +artificial conditions or to speak blank verse in a colloquial +manner,--it was made sweetly human by a delicate play of humour in the +earlier scenes, and by a deep glow of paternal tenderness that suffused +every part of it and created an almost painful sense of sincerity. +Common life was not made commonplace life by McCullough, nor blank verse +depressed to the level of prose. The intention to be real--the intention +to love, suffer, feel, act, defend, and avenge, as a man of actual life +would do--was obvious enough, through its harmonious fulfilment; yet the +realism was shorn of all triteness, all animal excess, all of those +ordinary attributes which are right in nature, and wrong because +obstructive in the art that is nature's interpretation. + +Just as the true landscape is the harmonious blending of selected +natural effects, so the true dramatic embodiment is the crystallization +of selected attributes in any given type of human nature, shown in +selected phases of natural condition. McCullough did not present +Virginius brushing his hair or paying Virginia's school-bills; yet he +suggested him, clearly and beautifully, in the sweet domestic repose +and paternal benignity of his usual life--making thus a background of +loveliness, on which to throw, in lines of living light, the terrible +image of his agonising sacrifice. And when the inevitable moment came +for his dread act of righteous slaughter it was the moral grandeur, the +heart-breaking paternal agony, and the overwhelming pathos of the deed +that his art diffused--not the "gashed stab," the blood, the physical +convulsion, the revolting animal shock. Neither was there druling, or +dirt, or physical immodesty, or any other attribute of that class of the +natural concomitants of insanity, in the subsequent delirium. + +A perfect and holy love is, in one aspect of it, a sadder thing to see +than the profoundest grief. Misery, at its worst, is at least final: and +for that there is the relief of death. But love, in its sacred +exaltation,--the love of the parent for the child,--is so fair a mark +for affliction that one can hardly view it without a shudder of +apprehensive dread. That sort of love was personified in McCullough's +embodiment of Virginius, and that same nameless thrill of fear was +imparted by its presence,--even before the tragedian, with an exquisite +intuition of art, made Virginius convey his vague presentiment, not +admitted but quickly thrust aside, of some unknown doom of peril and +agony. There was, in fact, more heart in that single piece of acting +than in any hundred of the most pathetic performances of the "natural" +school; and all the time it was maintained at the lofty level of classic +grace. It would be impossible to overstate the excellence of all that +McCullough did and said, in the forum scene--the noble severity of the +poise, the grace of the outlines, the terrible intensity of the mood, +the heartrending play of the emotions, the overwhelming delirium of the +climax. Throughout the subsequent most difficult portraiture of +shattered reason the actor never, for an instant, lost his steadfast +grasp upon sympathy and inspiration. Every heart knew the presence of a +nature that could feel all that Virginius felt and suffer and act all +that Virginius suffered and acted; and, beyond this, in his wonderful +investiture of the mad scenes with the alternate vacancy and lamentable +and forlorn anguish of a special kind of insanity, every judge of the +dramatic art recognised the governing touch of a splendid intellect, +imperial over all its resources and instruments of art. + +Virginius as embodied by McCullough was a man of noble and refined +nature; lovely in life; cruelly driven into madness; victorious over +dishonour, by a deed of terrible heroism; triumphant over crime, even in +forlorn and pitiable dethronement and ruin; and, finally, released by +the celestial mercy of death. And this was shown by a poetic method so +absolute that Virginius, while made an actual man to every human heart, +was kept a hero to the universal imagination, whether of scholar or +peasant, and a white ideal of manly purity and grace to that great +faculty of taste which is the umpire and arbiter of the human mind. + +The sustained poetic exaltation of that embodiment, its unity as a grand +and sympathetic personage, and its exquisite simplicity were the +qualities that gave it vitality in popular interest, and through those +it will have permanence in theatrical history. There were many subtle +beauties in it. The illimitable tenderness, back of the sweet dignity, +in the betrothal of Virginia to Icilius; the dim, transitory, evanescent +touch of presentiment, in the forecasting of the festival joys that are +to succeed the war; the self-abnegation and simple homeliness of grief +for the dead Dentatus; the alternate shock of freezing terror and cry of +joy, in the camp scene--closing with that potent repression and +thrilling outburst, "Prudence, but no patience!"--a situation and words +that call at once for splendid manliness of self-command and an ominous +and savage vehemence; the glad, saving, comforting cry to Virginia, "Is +she here?"--that cry which never failed to precipitate a gush of joyous +tears; the rapt preoccupation and the exquisite music of voice with +which he said, "I never saw thee look so like thy mother, in all my +life"; the majesty of his demeanour in the forum; the look that saw the +knife; the mute parting glance at Servia; the accents of broken reason, +but unbroken and everlasting love, that called upon the name of the poor +murdered Virginia; and then the last low wail of the dying father, +conscious and happy in the great boon of death--those, as McCullough +gave them, were points of impressive beauty, invested with the +ever-varying light and shadow of a delicate artistic treatment, and all +the while animated with passionate sincerity. The perfect finish of the +performance, indeed, was little less than marvellous, when viewed with +reference to the ever-increasing volume of power and the evident reality +of afflicting emotion with which the part was carried. If acting ever +could do good the acting of McCullough did. If ever dramatic art +concerns the public welfare it is when such an ideal of manliness and +heroism is presented in such an image of nobility. + +In Lear and in Othello,--as in Virginius,--the predominant quality of +McCullough's acting was a profound and beautiful sincerity. His +splendidly self-poised nature--a solid rock of truth, which enabled him, +through years of patient toil, to hold a steadfast course over all the +obstacles that oppose and amid all the chatter that assails a man who is +trying to accomplish anything grand and noble in art--bore him bravely +up in those great characters, and made him, in each of them, a stately +type of the nobility of the human soul. As the Moor, his performance was +well-nigh perfect. There was something a little fantastic, indeed, in +the facial style that he used; and that blemish was enhanced by the +display of a wild beast's head on the back of one of Othello's robes. +The tendency of that sort of ornamentation--however consonant it may be +deemed with the barbaric element in the Moor--is to suggest him as +heedful of appearances, and thus to distract regard from his experience +to his accessories. But the spirit was true. Simplicity, urged almost to +the extreme of barrenness, would not be out of place in Othello, and +McCullough, in his treatment of the part, testified to his practical +appreciation of that truth. His ideal of Othello combined manly +tenderness, spontaneous magnanimity, and trusting devotion, yet withal a +volcanic ground-swell of passion, that early and clearly displayed +itself as capable of delirium and ungovernable tempest. His method had +the calm movement of a summer cloud, in every act and word by which this +was shown. For intensity and for immediate, adequate, large, and +overwhelming response of action to emotion, that performance has not +been surpassed. There were points in it, though, at which the massive +serenity of the actor's temperament now and then deadened the glow of +feeling and depressed him to undue calmness; he sometimes recovered too +suddenly and fully from a tempest of emotion--as at the agonising appeal +to Iago, "Give me a living reason she's disloyal"; and he was not +enough delirious in the speech about the sybil and the handkerchief. On +the other hand, once yielded to the spell of desecrated feeling, his +mood and his expression of it were immeasurably pathetic and noble. +Those two great ebullitions of despair, "O, now forever," and "Had it +pleased heaven," could not be spoken in a manner more absolutely +heart-broken or more beautifully simple than the manner that was used by +him. In his obvious though silent suffering at the disgrace and +dismissal of Cassio; in the dazed, forlorn agony that blended with his +more active passion throughout the scene of Iago's wicked conquest of +his credulity; in his occasional quick relapses into blind and sweet +fidelity to the old belief in Desdemona; in his unquenchable tenderness +for her, through the delirium and the sacrifice; and in the tone of +soft, romantic affection--always spiritualised, never sensual--that his +deep and loving sincerity diffused throughout the work, was shown the +grand unity of the embodiment; a unity based on the simple passion of +love. To hear that actor say the one supreme line to Iago, "I am bound +to thee forever," was to know that he understood and felt the meaning +of the character, to its minutest fibre and its profoundest depth. + +There were touches of fresh and aptly illustrative "business" in the +encounter of Othello and Iago, in the great scene of the third act. The +gasping struggles of Iago heightened the effect of the Moor's fury, and +the quickly suppressed impulse and yell of rage with which he finally +bounded away made an admirable effect of nature. In the last scene +McCullough rounded his performance with a solemn act of sacrifice. There +was nothing animal, nothing barbaric, nothing insane, in the slaughter +of Desdemona. It was done in an ecstasy of justice, and the atmosphere +that surrounded the deed was that of awe and not of horror. + +For the character of King Lear McCullough possessed the imposing +stature, the natural majesty, the great reach of voice, and the human +tenderness that are its basis and equipment. No actor of Lear can ever +satisfy a sympathetic lover of the part unless he possesses a greatly +affectionate heart, a fiery spirit, and,--albeit the intellect must be +shown in ruins,--a regal mind. Within that grand and lamentable image of +shattered royalty the man must be noble and lovable. Nothing that is +puny or artificial can ever wear the investiture of that colossal +sorrow. McCullough embodied Lear as, from the first, stricken in +mind--already the unconscious victim of incipient decay and dissolution; +not mad but ready to become so. There is a subtle apprehensiveness all +about the presence of the king, in all the earlier scenes. He diffuses +disquietude and vaguely presages disaster, and the observer looks on him +with solicitude and pain. He is not yet decrepit but he will soon break; +and the spectator loves him and is sorry for him and would avert the +destiny of woe that is darkly foreshadowed in his condition. McCullough +gave the invectives--as they ought to be given--with the impetuous rush +and wild fury of the avalanche; and yet they were felt to come out of +agony as well as out of passion. The pathos of those tremendous passages +is in their chaotic disproportion; in their lawlessness and lack of +government; in the evident helplessness of the poor old man who hurls +them forth from a breaking heart and a distracted mind. He loves, and he +loathes himself for loving: every fibre of his nature is in horrified +revolt against such lack of reverence, gratitude, and affection toward +such a monarch and such a father as he knows himself to have been. The +feeling that McCullough poured through those moments of splendid yet +pitiable frenzy was overwhelming in its intense glow and in its towering +and incessant volume. There was remarkable subtlety, also, in the manner +in which that feeling was tempered. In Lear's meeting with Goneril after +the curse you saw at once the broken condition of an aged, infirm, and +mentally disordered man, who had already forgotten his own terrible +words. "We'll no more meet, no more see one another" is a line to which +McCullough gave its full eloquence of abject mournfulness and forlorn +desolation. Other denotements of subtlety were seen in his sad +preoccupation with memories of the lost Cordelia, while talking with the +Fool. "I did her wrong" was never more tenderly spoken than by him. They +are only four little words; but they carry the crushing weight of +eternal and hopeless remorse. It was in this region of delicate, +imaginative touch that McCullough's dramatic art was especially +puissant. He was the first actor of Lear to discriminate between the +agony of a man while going mad and the careless, volatile, fantastic +condition--afflicting to witness, but no longer agonising to the lunatic +himself--of a man who has actually lapsed into madness. Edwin +Forrest--whose Lear is much extolled, often by persons who, evidently, +never saw it--much as he did with the part, never even faintly suggested +such a discrimination as that. + +To one altitude of Lear's condition it is probably impossible for +dramatic art to rise--the mood of divine philosophy, warmed with human +tenderness, in which the dazed but semi-conscious vicegerent of heaven +moralises over human life. There is a grandeur in that conception so +vast that nothing short of the rarest inspiration of genius can rise to +it. The deficiences of McCullough's Lear were found in the analysis of +that part of the performance. He had the heart of Lear, the royalty, the +breadth; but not all of either the exalted intellect, the sorrow-laden +experience, or the imagination--so gorgeous in its disorder, so +infinitely pathetic in its misery. + +His performance of Lear signally exemplified, through every phase of +passion, that temperance which should give it smoothness. The treatment +of the curse scene, in particular, was extraordinarily beautiful for the +low, sweet, and tender melody of the voice, broken only now and +then--and rightly broken--with the harsh accents of wrath. Gentleness +never accomplished more, as to taste and pathos, than in McCullough's +utterance of "I gave you all," and "I'll go with you." The rallying of +the broken spirit after that, and the terrific outburst, "I'll not +weep," had an appalling effect. The recognition of Cordelia was simply +tender, and the death scene lovely in pathos and solemn and affecting in +tragic climax. + +Throughout _Othello_ and _King Lear_ McCullough's powers were seen to be +curbed and guided, not by a cold and formal design but by a grave and +sweet gentleness of mind, always a part of his nature, but more and more +developed by the stress of experience, by the reactionary subduing +influence of noble success, and by the definite consciousness of power. +He found no difficulty in portraying the misery of Othello and of Lear, +because this is a form of misery that flows out of laceration of the +heart, and not from the more subtle wounds that are inflicted upon the +spirit through the imagination. There was no brooding over the awful +mysteries of the universe, nor any of that corroding, haunted gloom that +comes of an over-spiritualised state of suffering, longing, questioning, +doubting humanity. Above all things else Othello and Lear are human; and +the human heart, above all things else, was the domain of that actor. + +The character of Coriolanus, though high and noble, is quite as likely +to inspire resentment as to awaken sympathy. It contains many elements +and all of them are good; but chiefly it typifies the pride of +intellect. This, in itself a natural feeling and a virtuous quality, +practically becomes a vice when it is not tempered with charity for +ignorance, weakness, and the lower orders of mind. In the character of +Coriolanus it is not so tempered, and therefore it vitiates his +greatness and leads to his destruction. Much, of course, can be urged in +his defence. He is a man of spotless honour, unswerving integrity, +dauntless courage, simple mind, straightforward conduct, and magnanimous +disposition. He is always ready to brave the perils of battle for the +service of his country. He constantly does great deeds--and would +continue constantly to do them--for their own sake and in a spirit of +total indifference alike to praises and rewards. He exists in the +consciousness of being great and has no life in the opinions of other +persons. He dwells in "the cedar's top" and "dallies with the wind and +scorns the sun." He knows and he despises with active and immitigable +contempt the shallowness and fickleness of the multitude. He is of an +icy purity, physical as well as mental, and his nerves tingle with +disgust of the personal uncleanliness of the mob. "Bid them wash their +faces," he says--when urged to ask the suffrages of the people--"and +keep their teeth clean." "He rewards his deeds with doing them," says +his fellow-soldier Cominius, "and looks upon things precious as the +common muck of the world." His aristocracy does not sit in a corner, +deedless and meritless, brooding over a transmitted name and sucking the +orange of empty self-conceit: it is the aristocracy of achievement and +of nature--the solid superiority of having done the brightest and best +deeds that could be done in his time and of being the greatest man of +his generation. It is as if a Washington, having made and saved a +nation, were to spurn it from him with his foot, in lofty and by no +means groundless contempt for the ignorance, pettiness, meanness, and +filth of mankind. The story of Coriolanus, as it occurs in Plutarch, is +thought to be fabulous, but it is very far from being fabulous as it +stands transfigured in the stately, eloquent tragedy of Shakespeare. The +character and the experience are indubitably representative. It was some +modified form of the condition thus shown that resulted in the treason +and subsequent ruin of Benedict Arnold. Pride of intellect largely +dominated the career of Aaron Burr. More than one great thinker has +split on that rock, and gone to pieces in the surges of popular +resentment. "No man," said Dr. Chapin, in his discourse over the coffin +of Horace Greeley, "can lift himself above himself." He who repudiates +the humanity of which he is a part will inevitably come to sorrow and +ruin. It is perfectly true that no intellectual person should in the +least depend upon the opinions of others--which, in the nature of +things, exist in all stages of immaturity, mutability, and error--but +should aim to do the greatest deeds and should find reward in doing +them: yet always the right mood toward humanity is gentleness and not +scorn. "Thou, my father," said Matthew Arnold, in his tribute to one of +the best men of the century, "wouldst not be saved alone." To enlighten +the ignorant, to raise the weak, to pity the frail, to disregard the +meanness, ingratitude, misapprehension, dulness, and petty malice of the +lower orders of humanity--that is the wisdom of the wise; and that is +accordant with the moral law of the universe, from the operation of +which no man escapes. To study, in Shakespeare, the story of Coriolanus +is to observe the violation of that law and the consequent retribution. + + "Battles, and the breath + Of stormy war and violent death" + +fill up the first part of the tragedy as it stands in Shakespeare, and +that portion is also much diversified with abrupt changes of scene; so +that it has been found expedient to alter the piece, with a view to its +more practical adaptation to the stage. While however it is not acted in +strict accordance with Shakespeare its essential parts are retained and +represented. Many new lines, though, occur toward the close. McCullough +used the version that was used by Forrest, who followed in the footsteps +of Cooper, the elder Vandenhoff, and James R. Anderson. There is, +perhaps, an excess of foreground--a superfluity of fights and +processions--by way of preparing for the ordeal through which the +character of Coriolanus is to be displayed. Yet when Hecuba at last is +reached the interest of the situation makes itself felt with force. The +massive presence and stalwart declamation of Edwin Forrest made him +superb in this character; but the embodiment of Coriolanus by +McCullough, while equal to its predecessor in physical majesty, was +superior to it in intellectual haughtiness and in refinement. An actor's +treatment of the character must, unavoidably, follow the large, broad +style of the historical painter. There is scant opportunity afforded in +any of the scenes allotted to Coriolanus for fine touches and delicate +shading. During much of the action the spectator is aware only of an +imperial figure that moves with a mountainous grace through the fleeting +rabble of Roman plebeians and Volscians, dreadful in war, loftily calm +in peace, irradiating the conscious superiority of power, dignity, +worth, and honourable renown. McCullough filled that aspect of the part +as if he had been born for it. His movements had the splendid repose +not merely of great strength but of intellectual poise and native mental +supremacy. The "I must be found" air of Othello was again displayed, in +ripe perfection, through the Roman toga. His declamation was as fluent +and as massively graceful as his demeanour. If this actor had not the +sonorous, clarion voice of John Kemble, he yet certainly suggested the +tradition of the stately port and dominating step of that great master +of the dramatic art. He looked Coriolanus, to the life. More of poetic +freedom might have been wished, in the decorative treatment of the +person--a touch of wildness in the hair, a tinge of imaginative +exaltation in the countenance, an air of mischance in the gashes of +combat. Still the embodiment was correct in its superficial +conventionality; and it certainly possessed affecting grandeur. Whenever +there was opportunity for fine treatment, moreover, the actor seized and +filled it, with the easy grace of unerring intuition and spontaneity. +The delicacy of vocalism, the movement, the tone of sentiment, and the +manliness of condition--the royal fibre of a great mind--in the act of +withdrawal from the senate, was right and beautiful. It is difficult not +to over-emphasise the physical symbols of mental condition, in the +street scene with "the voices"; but there again the actor denoted a fine +spiritual instinct. To a situation like that of the banishment he proved +easily equal: indeed, he gave that magnificent outburst of scorn with +tremendous power: but it was in the pathetic scene with Volumnia and +Virgilia that he reached the summit of the Shakespearean conception. The +deep heart as well as the imperial intellect of Coriolanus must then +speak. It is, for the distracted son, a moment of agonised and pathetic +conflict: for McCullough it was a moment of perfect adequacy and +consummate success. The stormy utterance of revolted pride and furious +disgust, in the denial of Volumnia's request--the tempestuous outburst, +"I will not do it"--made as wild, fiery, and fine a moment in tragic +acting as could be imagined; but the climax was attained in the pathetic +cry-- + + "The gods look down, and this unnatural scene + They laugh at." + + + + +XIII. + +CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. + + +Making, one summer day, a pilgrimage to the grave of Charlotte Cushman, +I was guided to the place of her rest by one of the labourers employed +about the cemetery, who incidentally pronounced upon the deceased a +comprehensive and remarkable eulogium. "She was," he said, "considerable +of a woman, for a play-actress." Well--she was. The place of her +sepulture is on the east slope of the principal hill in Mount Auburn. +Hard by, upon the summit of the hill, stands the gray tower that +overlooks the surrounding region and constantly symbolises, to eyes both +far and near, the perpetual peace of which it is at once guardian and +image. All around the spot tall trees give shade and music, as the sun +streams on their branches and the wind murmurs in their leaves. At a +little distance, visible across green meadows and the river +Charles,--full and calm between its verdant banks,--rise the "dreaming +spires" of Cambridge. Further away, crowned with her golden dome, towers +old Boston, the storied city that Charlotte Cushman loved. Upon the spot +where her ashes now rest the great actress stood, and, looking toward +the city of her home and heart, chose that to be the place of her grave; +and there she sleeps, in peace, after many a conflict with her stormy +nature and after many sorrows and pains. What terrific ideals of the +imagination she made to be realities of life! What burning eloquence of +poesy she made to blaze! What moments of pathos she lived! What moods of +holy self-abnegation and of exalted power she brought to many a +sympathetic soul! Standing by her grave, on which the myrtle grows dense +and dark, and over which the small birds swirl and twitter in the breezy +silence, remembrance of the busy scenes of brilliant life wherein she +used to move--the pictured stage, the crowded theatre, the wild plaudits +of a delighted multitude--came strongly on the mind, and asked, in +perplexity and sadness, what was the good of it all. To her but little. +Fame and wealth were her cold rewards, after much privation and labour; +but she found neither love nor happiness, and the fullest years of her +life were blighted with the shadow of fatal disease and impending death. +To the world, however, her career was of great and enduring benefit. She +was a noble interpreter of the noble minds of the past, and thus she +helped to educate the men and women of her time--to ennoble them in +mood, to strengthen them in duty, to lift them up in hope of +immortality. She did not live in vain. It is not likely that the +American people will ever suffer her name to drift quite out of their +remembrance: it is a name that never can be erased from the rolls of +honourable renown. + +Charlotte Cushman was born on July 23, 1816, and she died on February +12, 1876. Boston was the place of her birth and of her death. She lived +till her sixtieth year and she was for forty years an actress. Her youth +was one of poverty and the early years of her professional career were +full of labour, trouble, heart-ache, and conflict. The name of Cushman +signifies "cross-bearer," and certainly Charlotte Cushman did indeed +bear the cross, long before and long after, she wore the crown. At first +she was a vocalist, but, having broken her voice by misusing it, she +was compelled to quit the lyric and adopt the dramatic stage, and when +nineteen years old she came out, at New Orleans, as Lady Macbeth. After +that she removed to New York and for the next seven years she battled +with adverse fortune in the theatres of that city and of Albany and +Philadelphia. From 1837 to 1840 she was under engagement at the old Park +as walking lady and for general utility business. "I became aware," she +wrote, "that one could never sail a ship by entering at the cabin +windows; he must serve and learn his trade before the mast. This was the +way that I would henceforth learn mine." + +Her first remarkable hits were made in Emilia, Meg Merrilies, and +Nancy--the latter in _Oliver Twist_. But it was not till she met with +Macready that the day of her deliverance from drudgery really dawned. +They acted together in New York in 1842 and 1843, and in Boston in 1844, +and in the autumn of the latter year Miss Cushman went to England, +where, after much effort, she obtained an opening in London, at the +Princess's, and in 1845 made her memorable success as Bianca. "Since the +first appearance of Edmund Kean, in 1814," said a London journal of +that time, "never has there been such a _début_ on the stage of an +English theatre." Her engagement lasted eighty-four nights (it was an +engagement to act with Edwin Forrest), and she recorded its result in a +letter to her mother, saying: "All my successes put together since I +have been upon the stage would not come near my success in London, and I +only wanted some one of you here to enjoy it with me, to make it +complete." She acted Bianca, Emilia, Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Haller, and +Rosalind. A prosperous provincial tour followed, and then, in December, +1845, she came out at the Haymarket, as Romeo, her sister Susan +appearing as Juliet. Her stay abroad lasted till the end of the summer +of 1849, and to that period belongs her great achievement as Queen +Katharine. + +From the fall of 1849 till the spring of 1852 Miss Cushman was in +America, and she was everywhere received with acclamation, gathering +with ease both laurels and riches. When she first reappeared, October 8, +1849, at the old Broadway theatre, New York--as Mrs. Haller--she +introduced Charles W. Couldock to our stage, on which he has ever since +maintained his rank as a powerful and versatile actor. He acted the +Stranger and subsequently was seen in the other leading characters +opposite to her own. Miss Cushman's repertory then included Lady +Macbeth, Queen Katharine, Meg Merrilies, Beatrice, Rosalind, Bianca, +Julia, Mariana, Katharine, the Countess, Pauline, Juliana, Lady Gay +Spanker, and Mrs. Simpson. Her principal male characters then, or later, +were Romeo, Wolsey, Hamlet, and Claude Melnotte. In 1852 she announced +her intention of retiring from the stage, and from that time till the +end of her days she wavered between retirement and professional +occupation. The explanation of this is readily divined, in her +condition. There never was a time, during all those years, when she was +not haunted by dread of the disease that ultimately destroyed her life. +From 1852 to 1857 she lived in England, and in the course of that period +she acted many times, in different cities. In December 1854, when dining +with the Duke of Devonshire, at Brighton, she read _Henry VIII._ to the +Duke and his guests, and in that way began her experience as a reader. +In the autumn of 1857 she acted at Burton's theatre, New York, and was +seen as Cardinal Wolsey, and in the early summer of 1858 she gave a +series of "farewell" performances at Niblo's Garden--after which she +again crossed the Atlantic and established her residence in Rome. In +June 1860 the great actress came home again and passed a year in +America. _Oliver Twist_ was given at the Winter Garden in the spring of +1861, when Miss Cushman acted Nancy, and J.W. Wallack, Jr., J.B. +Studley, William Davidge, and Owen Marlowe were in the company. In 1863, +having come from Rome for that purpose, Miss Cushman acted in four +cities, for the benefit of the United States Sanitary Commission, and +earned for it $8267. The seven ensuing years were passed by her in +Europe, but in October 1870 she returned home for the last time, and the +brief remainder of her life was devoted to public readings, occasional +dramatic performances, and the society of friends. She built a villa at +Newport, which still bears her name. She gave final farewell +performances, in the season of 1874-1875, in New York, Philadelphia, and +Boston. Her final public appearance was made on June 2, 1875, at Easton, +Pennsylvania, where she gave a reading. Her death occurred at the Parker +House, in Boston, February 18, 1876, and she was buried from King's +chapel. + +There is a mournful pleasure in recalling the details of Miss Cushman's +life and meditating upon her energetic, resolute, patient, creative +nature. She was faithful, throughout her career, to high principles of +art and a high standard of duty. Nature gave her great powers but +fettered her also with great impediments. She conquered by the spell of +a strange, weird genius and by hard, persistent labour. In this latter +particular she is an example to every member of the dramatic profession, +present or future. In what she was as a woman she could not be +imitated--for her colossal individuality dwelt apart, in its loneliness, +as well of suffering that no one could share as of an imaginative life +that no one could fathom. Without the stage she would still have been a +great woman, although perhaps she might have lacked an entirely suitable +vehicle for the display of her powers. With the stage she gave a body to +the soul of some of Shakespeare's greatest conceptions, and she gave +soul and body both to many works of inferior origin. There is no +likelihood that we shall ever see again such a creation as her Meg +Merrilies. Her genius could embody the sublime, the beautiful, the +terrible, and with all this the humorous; and it was saturated with +goodness. If the love of beauty was intensified by the influence of her +art, virtue was also strengthened by the force of her example and the +inherent dignity of her nature. + + + + +XIV. + +ON THE DEATH OF LAWRENCE BARRETT. + +[Obiit March 20, 1891.] + + +The death of Lawrence Barrett was the disappearance of one of the +noblest figures of the modern stage. During the whole of his career, in +a public life of thirty-five years, he was steadily and continuously +impelled by a pure and fine ambition and the objects that he sought to +accomplish were always the worthiest and the best. His devotion to the +dramatic art was a passionate devotion, and in an equal degree he was +devoted to a high ideal of personal conduct. Doctrines of expediency +never influenced him and indeed were never considered by him. He had +early fixed his eyes on the dramatic sceptre. He knew that it never +could be gained except by the greatest and brightest of artistic +achievements, and to them accordingly he consecrated his life. Whenever +and wherever he appeared the community was impressed with a sense of +intellectual character, moral worth, and individual dignity. Many other +dramatic efforts might be trivial. Those of Lawrence Barrett were always +felt to be important. Most of the plays with which his name is +identified are among the greatest plays in our language, and the spirit +in which he treated them was that of exalted scholarship, austere +reverence, and perfect refinement. He was profoundly true to all that is +noble and beautiful, and because he was true the world of art everywhere +recognised him as the image of fidelity and gave to him the high tribute +of its unwavering homage. His coming was always a signal to arouse the +mind. His mental vitality, which was very great, impressed even +unsympathetic beholders with a sense of fiery thought struggling in its +fetters of mortality and almost shattering and consuming the frail +temple of its human life. His stately head, silvered with graying hair, +his dark eyes deeply sunken and glowing with intense light, his thin +visage pallid with study and pain, his form of grace and his voice of +sonorous eloquence and solemn music (in compass, variety, and sweetness +one of the few great voices of the current dramatic generation), his +tremendous earnestness, his superb bearing, and his invariable authority +and distinction--all those attributes united to announce a ruler and +leader in the realm of the intellect. The exceeding tumult of his spirit +enhanced the effect of this mordant personality. The same sleepless +energy that inspired Loyola and Lanfranc burned in the bosom of this +modern actor; and it was entirely in keeping with the drift of his +character and the tenor of his life that the last subject that occupied +his thoughts should have been the story of Becket, the great +prelate--whom he intended to represent, and to whom in mental qualities +he was nearly allied. In losing Lawrence Barrett the American stage lost +the one man who served it with an apostle's zeal because he loved it +with an apostle's love. + +The essential attributes that Lawrence Barrett did not possess were +enchantment for the public and adequate and philosophic patience for +himself. He gained, indeed, a great amount of public favour, and,--with +reference to an indisputable lack of universal sympathy and +enthusiasm,--he was learning to regard that as a natural consequence of +his character which formerly he had resented as the injustice of the +world. Men and women of austere mind do not fascinate their +fellow-creatures. They impress by their strangeness. They awe by their +majesty. They predominate by their power. But they do not involuntarily +entice. Lawrence Barrett,--although full of kindness and gentleness, +and, to those who knew him well, one of the most affectionate and +lovable of men,--was essentially a man of austere intellect; and his +experience was according to his nature. To some persons the world gives +everything, without being asked to give at all. To others it gives only +what it must, and that with a kind of icy reluctance that often makes +the gift a bitter one. Lawrence Barrett, who rose from an obscure and +humble position,--without fortune, without friends, without favouring +circumstances, without education, without help save that of his talents +and his will,--was for a long time met with indifference, or frigid +obstruction, or impatient disparagement. He gained nothing without +battle. He had to make his way by his strength. His progress involved +continual effort and his course was attended with continual controversy +and strife. When at last it had to be conceded that he was a great +actor, the concession was, in many quarters, grudgingly made. Even then +detraction steadily followed him, and its voice--though impotent and +immeasurably trivial--has not yet died away. There came a time when his +worth was widely recognised, and from that moment onward he had much +prosperity, and his nature expanded and grew calmer, sweeter, and +brighter under its influence. But the habit of warfare had got into his +acting, and more or less it remained there to the last. The assertive +quality, indeed, had long since begun to die away. The volume of +needless emphasis was growing less and less. Few performances on the +contemporary stage are commensurate with his embodiments of Harebell and +Gringoire, in softness, simplicity, poetic charm, and the gentle +tranquillity that is the repose of a self-centred soul. But his deep and +burning desire to be understood, his anxiety lest his effects should not +be appreciated, his inveterate purpose of conquest,--that overwhelming +solicitude of ambition often led him to insist upon his points, to +over-elaborate and enforce them, and in that way his art to some extent +defeated itself by the excess of its eager zeal. The spirit of beauty +that the human race pursues is the spirit that is typified in Emerson's +poem of _Forerunners_--the elusive spirit that all men feel and no man +understands. This truth, undiscerned by him at first, had become the +conviction of his riper years; and if his life had been prolonged the +autumn of his professional career would have been gentle, serene, and +full of tranquil loveliness. + +The achievement of Lawrence Barrett as an actor was great, but his +influence upon the stage was greater than his achievement. Among the +Shakespearian parts that he played were Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, +Othello, Iago, Shylock, Leontes, Cassius, Wolsey, Richard III., Romeo, +and Benedick. Outside of Shakespeare (to mention only a few of his +impersonations) he acted Richelieu, Evelyn, Aranza, Garrick, Claude +Melnotte, Rienzi, Dan'l Druce, Lanciotto, Hernani, King Arthur, and +Ganelon. The parts in which he was superlatively fine,--and in some +respects incomparable,--are Cassius, Harebell, Yorick, Gringoire, King +Arthur, Ganelon, and James V., King of the Commons. In his time he had +played hundreds of parts, ranging over the whole field of the drama, but +as the years passed and the liberty of choice came more and more within +his reach, he concentrated his powers upon a few works and upon a +specific line of expression. The aspect of human nature and human +experience that especially aroused his sympathy was the loneliness of +beneficent intellectual grandeur, isolated by its supremacy and pathetic +in its isolation. He loved the character of Richelieu, and if he had +acted Becket, as he purposed to do, in Tennyson's tragedy, he would have +presented another and a different type of that same ideal--lonely, +austere, passionate age, defiant of profane authority and protective of +innocent weakness against wicked and cruel strength. His embodiment of +Cassius, with all its intensity of repressed spleen and caustic +malevolence, was softly touched and sweetly ennobled with the majesty of +venerable loneliness,--the bleak light of pathetic sequestration from +human ties, without the forfeiture of human love,--that is the natural +adjunct of intellectual greatness. He loved also the character of +Harebell, because in that he could express his devotion to the +beautiful, the honest impulses of his affectionate heart, and his ideal +of a friendship that is too pure and simple even to dream that such a +thing as guile can exist anywhere in the world. Toward the expression, +under dramatic conditions, of natures such as those, the development of +his acting was steadily directed; and, even if he fell short, in any +degree, of accomplishing all that he purposed, it is certain that his +spirit and his conduct dignified the theatrical profession, strengthened +the stage in the esteem of good men, and cheered the heart and fired the +energy of every sincere artist that came within the reach of his +example. For his own best personal success he required a part in which, +after long repression, the torrent of passion can break loose in a +tumult of frenzy and a wild strain of eloquent words. The terrible +exultation of Cassius, after the fall of Cæsar, the ecstasy of Lanciotto +when he first believes himself to be loved by Francesca, the delirium of +Yorick when he can no longer restrain the doubts that madden his jealous +and wounded soul, the rapture of King James over the vindication of his +friend Seyton, whom his suspicions have wronged--those were among his +distinctively great moments, and his image as he was in such moments is +worthy to live among the storied traditions and the bright memories of +the stage. + +Censure seems to be easy to most people, and few men are rated at their +full value while they are yet alive. Just as mountains seem more sublime +in the vague and hazy distance, so a noble mind looms grandly through +the dusk of death. So it will be with him. Lawrence Barrett was a man of +high principle and perfect integrity. He never spoke a false word nor +knowingly harmed a human being, in all his life. Although sometimes he +seemed to be harsh and imperious, he was at heart kind and humble. +Strife with the world, and in past times uncertainty as to his position, +caused in him the assumption of a stern and frigid manner, but beneath +that haughty reserve there was a great longing for human affection and a +sincere humility of spirit. He never nurtured hostility. He had no +memory for injuries; but a kindness he never forgot. His good deeds were +as numerous as his days--for no day rolled over his head without its act +of benevolence in one direction or another. He was as impulsive as a +child. He had much of the woman in his nature, and therefore his views +were impetuous, strong, and often strongly stated; but his sense of +humour kept pace with his sensibility and so maintained the equilibrium +of his mind. In temperament he was sad, pensive, introspective, almost +gloomy; but he opposed to that tendency an incessant mental activity and +the force of a tremendous will. In his lighter moods he was not only +appreciative of mirth but was the cause of it. His humour was elemental +and whatever aspect of life he saw in a comic light he could set in that +light before the eyes of others. He had been a studious reader for many +years and his mind was stored with ample, exact, and diversified +information. He had a scholar's knowledge of Roman history and his +familiar acquaintance with the character and career of the first +Napoleon was extraordinary. In acting he was largely influenced by his +studies of Edmund Kean and by his association with Charlotte Cushman. +For a few years after 1864 his art was especially affected by that of +Edwin Booth; but the style to which he finally gravitated was his own. +He was not so much an impersonator as he was an interpreter of +character, and the elocutionary part of acting was made more conspicuous +and important by him than by any other tragedian since the days of +Forrest and Brooke. + +It was a beautiful life prematurely ended. It was a brave, strong +spirit suddenly called out of the world. To the dramatic profession the +loss is irreparable. In the condition of the contemporary theatre there +are not many hopeful signs. No doubt there will be bright days in the +future, as there have been in the past. They go and they return. The +stage declines and the stage advances. At present its estate is low. Few +men like Lawrence Barrett remain for it to lose. Its main hope is in the +abiding influence of such examples as he has left. The old theatrical +period is fast passing away. The new age rushes on the scene, with +youthful vigour and impetuous tumult. But to some of us,--who perhaps +have not long to stay, and to whom, whatever be their fortune, this +tumult is unsympathetic and insignificant,--the way grows darker and +lonelier as we lay our garlands of eternal farewell upon the coffin of +Lawrence Barrett. + + + + +XV. + +HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN RAVENSWOOD. + + +Merivale's play of _Ravenswood_, written in four acts, was acted in six. +The first act consists of a single scene--an exterior, showing the +environment of the chapel which is the burial place of the House of +Ravenswood. A rockbound coast is visible, at some distance, together +with the ruinous tower of Wolf's Crag--which is Ravenswood's sole +remaining possession. This act presents the interrupted funeral of Alan +Ravenswood, the father of Edgar,--introducing ten of the seventeen +characters that are implicated in the piece, and skilfully laying the +basis of the action by exhibiting the essential personalities of the +story in strong contrast, and denoting their relations to each other. +Each character is clearly and boldly drawn and with a light touch. The +second act consists of three scenes--an antique library in the ancient +manor-house of Ravenswood, a room in a roadside ale-house, and a room in +the dilapidated tower of Wolf's Crag. This act rapidly develops the +well-known story, depicting the climax of antagonism between the Lord +Keeper Ashton and Edgar of Ravenswood and their subsequent +reconciliation. The third act passes in a lovely, romantic, rural scene, +which is called "the Mermaiden's Well,"--a fairy-like place in the +grounds of Ravenswood,--and in this scene Edgar and Lucy Ashton, who +have become lovers, are plighted by themselves and parted by Lucy's +mother, Lady Ashton. The fourth and last act shows a room at Ravenswood, +wherein is portrayed the betrothal of Lucy to Bucklaw, culminating in +Edgar's sudden irruption; and finally, it shows the desolate seaside +place of the quicksand in which, after he has slain Bucklaw, Edgar of +Ravenswood is engulfed. The house that Scott, when he wrote the novel, +had in his mind as that of Sir William Ashton is the house of Winston, +which still is standing, not many miles from Edinburgh. The tower of +Wolf's Crag was probably suggested to him by Fast Castle, the ruin of +which still lures the traveller's eye, upon the iron-ribbed and gloomy +coast of the North Sea, a few miles southeast of Dunbar--a place, +however, that Scott never visited, and never saw except from the ocean. +There is a beach upon that coast, just above Cockburnspath, that might +well have suggested to him the quicksand and the final catastrophe. I +saw it when the morning sun was shining upon it and upon the placid +waters just rippling on its verge; and even in the glad glow of a summer +day it was grim with silent menace and mysterious with an air of +sinister secrecy. In the preparation of this piece for the stage all the +sources and associations of the subject were considered; and the +pictorial setting, framed upon the right artistic principle--that +imagination should transfigure truth and thus produce the essential +result of poetic effect--was elaborate and magnificent. And the play is +the best one that ever has been made upon this subject. + +The basis of fact upon which Sir Walter Scott built his novel of the +_Bride of Lammermoor_ is given in the introduction that he wrote for it +in 1829. Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Lord Stair and of his +wife Margaret Ross, had privately plighted herself to Lord Rutherford. +Those lovers had broken a piece of gold together, and had bound +themselves by vows the most solemn and fervent that passion could +prompt. But Lord Rutherford was objectionable to Miss Dalrymple's +parents, who liked not either his family or his politics. Lady Stair, +furthermore, had selected a husband for her daughter, in the person of +David Dunbar, of Baldoon; and Lady Stair was a woman of formidable +character, set upon having her own way and accustomed to prevail. As +soon as she heard of Janet's private engagement to Lord Rutherford she +declared the vow to be undutiful and unlawful and she commanded that it +should be broken. Lord Rutherford, a man of energy and of spirit, +thereupon insisted that he would take his dismissal only from the lips +of Miss Dalrymple herself, and he demanded and obtained an interview +with her. Lady Stair was present, and such was her ascendency over her +daughter's mind that the young lady remained motionless and mute, +permitting her betrothal to Lord Rutherford to be broken, and, upon her +mother's command, giving back to him the piece of gold that was the +token of her promise. Lord Rutherford was deeply moved, so that he +uttered curses upon Lady Stair, and at the last reproached Janet in +these words: "For you, madam, you will be a world's wonder." After this +sad end of his hopes the unfortunate gentleman went abroad and died in +exile. Janet Dalrymple and David Dunbar meanwhile were married--the lady +"being absolutely passive in everything her mother commanded or +advised." As soon, however, as the wedded pair had retired from the +bridal feast hideous shrieks were heard to resound through the house, +proceeding from the nuptial chamber. The door was thereupon burst open +and persons entering saw the bridegroom stretched upon the floor, +wounded and bleeding, while the bride, dishevelled and stained with +blood, was grinning in a paroxysm of insanity. All she said was, "Take +up your bonny bridegroom." About two weeks later she died. The year of +those events was 1669. The wedding took place on August 24. Janet died +on September 12. Dunbar recovered, but he would never tell what occurred +in that chamber of horror, nor indeed would he permit any allusion to +the subject. He did not long survive the tragic event,--having been +fatally injured, by a fall from his horse, when riding between Leith +and Holyrood. He died on March 28, 1682. The death of Lord Rutherford +is assigned to the year 1685. Such is the melancholy story as it may be +gathered from Scott's preface. In writing his novel that great master of +the art of fiction,--never yet displaced from his throne or deprived of +his sceptre,--adopted fictitious names, invented fresh circumstances, +amplified and elevated the characters, judiciously veiled the +localities, and advanced the period of those tragical incidents to about +the beginning of the eighteenth century. The delicate taste with which +he used his materials has only been surpassed, in that beautiful +composition, by the affluent genius with which he vitalised every part +of his narrative. In no other of his many books has he shown a deeper +knowledge than is revealed in that one of the terrible passion of love +and of the dark and sinuous ways of political and personal craft. When +_The Bride of Lammermoor_ was first published no mention was made in it +of the true story upon which remotely it had been based; but by the time +Scott came to write the preface of 1829 other writers had been less +reticent, and some account of the Dalrymple tragedy had got into print, +so that no reason existed for further silence on that subject. + +Sir Robert H.D. Elphinstone, writing in 1829, gave the tradition as +follows: "When, after the noise and violent screaming in the bridal +chamber comparative stillness succeeded and the door was forced, the +window was found open, and it was supposed by many that the lover, Lord +Rutherford, had, by the connivance of some of the servants, found means, +during the bustle of the marriage feast, to secrete himself within the +apartment, and that soon after the entry of the married pair, or at +least as soon as the parents and others retreated and the door was made +fast, he had come out from his concealment, attacked and desperately +wounded the bridegroom, and then made his escape, by the window, through +the garden. As the unfortunate bride never spoke after having uttered +the words mentioned by Sir Walter, no light could be thrown on the +matter by them. But it was thought that Dunbar's obstinate silence on +the subject favoured the supposition of the chastisement having been +inflicted by his rival. It is but fair to give the unhappy victim (who +was, by all accounts, a most gentle and feminine creature) the benefit +of an explanation on a doubtful point." + +Merivale, in dealing with this story, gave a conspicuous illustration +of the essential dramatic faculty. The first act is the adroit expansion +of a few paragraphs, in the second chapter of the novel, which are +descriptive of the bleak, misty November morning when Alan Ravenswood +was borne to the grave; but by the introduction of the Lord Keeper and +of the village crones into that funeral scene he opened the whole +subject, indicated all the essential antecedents of the story, and +placed his characters in a posture of lively action. That the tone is +sombre must be conceded, and people who think that the chief end of man +is to grin might condemn the piece for that reason; but _Ravenswood_ is +a tragedy and not a farce, and persons who wish that their feelings may +not be affected should avoid tragedies. + +In the second act Ravenswood seeks Ashton at Ravenswood manor, intending +to kill him in a duel, but his hand is stayed when he catches sight of +Lucy Ashton's portrait. The incident of Edgar's rescue of Lucy is used +in this scene. In a later scene Sir William Ashton and his daughter take +refuge in Wolf's Crag, and the bewitchment of Ravenswood is +accomplished. The quarrel between Edgar and Bucklaw is then given, as a +basis for the ensuing rivalry and deadly conflict between them. In the +third act there is a beautiful love-scene between Edgar and Lucy, the +dialogue being especially felicitous in tenderness and grace and fraught +with that reverential quality, that condition of commingled ecstasy and +nobleness, which is always characteristic of the experience of this +passion in pure natures. Lady Ashton's interruption of their happiness +and the subsequent parting have a vigorous dramatic effect. The +character of Lucy has been much strengthened, so that it differs from +that of the original precisely as Desdemona differs from Ophelia; and +the change is an improvement. The fourth act opens with "a song of +choristers heard outside." The letters of Lucy and Edgar have been +intercepted. The lady has been told that her lover is false. The suit of +Bucklaw has been urged. The authority of the stern mother has prevailed +over her daughter's will. It is the old story. "The absent are always +wrong"--and Ravenswood is absent. Lucy Ashton yields to her fate. The +marriage contract between Lucy and Bucklaw has just been signed when +Ravenswood bursts into the group. From that point the action is +animated equally with celerity and passion. The misery of Ravenswood +utters itself in a swift stream of burning words. The grief of Lucy ends +tragically in a broken heart and sudden death. The fight between Bucklaw +and Ravenswood clashes for a moment but is abruptly finished on the +moonlit sands, and Edgar is seen to leap down from a rock and rush away +toward the manor, where, as his dying foe has told him, the faithful and +innocent Lucy lies dead. He disappears and comes no more; but his old +servant takes up from the beach a single black plume--the feather of a +raven--which the tide has washed ashore, and which is the last relic and +emblem of the vanished master of Ravenswood. + +The tragedy is kindred, as to its spirit, with _Romeo and Juliet_, and +like that representative poem of love and death it is intensely +passionate, sombre, and lamentable. The first and second acts of it pass +in almost unrelieved shadow. It begins with a funeral; it incorporates +the ingredients of misery, madness, and death; it culminates in a fatal +duel; and it ends in a picture of mortal desolation, qualified only by a +mute suggestion of spiritual happiness conveyed by the pictorial emblem +of the promise of immortality. It is a poetical tragedy, conceived in +the spirit and written in the manner of the old masters of the poetic +art. The treatment of Scott's novel is marked by scrupulous fidelity, +not indeed to every detail of that noble book, but to its essential +quality and tone. The structure of the play reproduces in action +substantially the structure of the original story. The scene in which +Edgar and Lucy avow their love and pledge themselves to each other is +written with exquisite grace and profound tenderness. The picture +presented upon the stage when the lovers are parted was one of +astonishing animation. The scene of the interrupted wedding and of Lucy +Ashton's agony, distraction, and death was one of intense power and +dramatic effect. The duel of Ravenswood and Bucklaw upon the desolate, +moon-lit sands was invested with the excitement of suspense and with +weird horror. And the final exposition of dramatic contrast,--when upon +the wide, bleak beach, with the waste of vacant sea beyond and the +eastern heaven lit with the first splendour of sunrise, the old man +stooped to take up the raven's feather, the last relic of +Ravenswood--was so entirely beautiful that the best of words can but +poorly indicate its loveliness. For an audience able to look seriously +at a serious subject, and not impatient of the foreground of gloom in +which, necessarily, the story is enveloped at its beginning, this was a +perfect work. The student of drama must go back many years to find a +parallel to it, in interest of subject, in balance, in symmetry, and in +sympathetic interpretation of character. + +There is a quality of Hamlet in the character of Ravenswood. He is by +nature a man of a sad mind, and under the pressure of afflicting +circumstances his sadness has become embittered. He takes life +thoughtfully and with passionate earnestness. He is a noble person, +finely sensitive and absolutely sincere, full of kindness at heart, but +touched with gloom; and his aspect and demeanour are those of pride, +trouble, self-conflict--of an individuality isolated and constrained by +dark thoughts and painful experience. That is the mood in which Henry +Irving conceived and portrayed him. You saw a picturesque figure, dark, +strange, romantic--the gravity engendered by thought and sorrow not yet +marring the bronzed face and the elastic movement of youth--and this +personality, in itself fascinating, was made all the more pictorial by +an investiture of romance, alike in the scenery and the incidents +through which it moved. Around such a figure funereal banners well might +wave, and under dark and lowering skies the chill wind of the sea might +moan through monastic ruins and crumbling battlements. Edgar of +Ravenswood, standing by his lonely hearth, beneath the groined arches of +his seaside tower, revealed by the flickering firelight, looked the +ideal of romantic manhood; the incarnation of poetic fancy and of +predestinate disaster. Above the story of _Ravenswood_ there is steadily +and continuously impending, and ever growing darker and coming nearer, +the vague menace of terrible calamity. This element of mystery and dread +was wrought into the structural fibre of Henry Irving's performance of +the part, and consistently coloured it. The face of Edgar was made to +wear that haunted look which,--as in the countenance of Charles the +First, in Vandyke's portraits,--may be supposed, and often has been +supposed, to foreshadow a violent and dreadful death. His sudden tremor, +when at the first kiss of Lucy Ashton the thunder is heard to break +above his ruined home, was a fine denotement of that subtle quality; and +even through the happiness of the betrothal scene there was a hint of +this black presentiment--just as sometimes on a day of perfect sunshine +there is a chill in the wind that tells of approaching storm. All this +is warranted by the prophetic rhymes which are several times spoken, +beginning--"When the last lord of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride." +A crone, Ailsie Gourlay by name, embodied with grim and grisly vigour by +Alice Marriott,--whose ample voice and exact elocution, together with +her formidable stature and her faculty of identification with the +character that she assumes and with the spirit of the story, made her of +great value to this play--hovered around Ravenswood, and aided to keep +this presage of evil doom fitfully present in the consciousness of its +victim. Henry Irving gave to the part its perfectly distinct +individuality, and in that respect made as fine a showing as he has ever +made of his authority as an actor. There was never the least doubt as to +what Ravenswood is and what he means. The peculiar elocution of Henry +Irving, when he is under the influence of great excitement, is not +effective upon all persons; but those who like it consider it far more +touching than a more level, more sonorous, and more accurate delivery. +He wrought a great effect in the scene of the marriage-contract. Indeed, +so powerful, sincere, and true was the acting upon all sides, at this +point, that not until the curtain began to descend was it remembered +that we were looking upon a fiction and not upon a fact. This points to +the peculiar power that Henry Irving and Ellen Terry conspicuously +possess--of creating and maintaining a perfect illusion. + +During the earlier scenes the character of Lucy Ashton is chiefly marked +by the qualities of sweetness and of glee. No one acquainted with the +acting of Ellen Terry would need to be told how well and with what +charming grace those qualities were expressed by her. In the scene of +the wooing, at the Mermaiden's Well, Lucy Ashton was not a cold woman +trying to make herself loved,--which is what most actresses habitually +proffer upon the stage,--but a loving woman, radiant with the +consciousness of the love that she feels and has inspired. Nothing could +be imagined more delicate, more delicious, more enchanting than the +high-bred distinction and soft womanlike tone of that performance. The +character, at the climax of this scene, is made to manifest decision, +firmness, and force; and the superb manner in which she set the +maternal authority at naught and stood by her lover might seem to denote +a nature that no tyranny could subdue. Subdued, however, she is, and +forced to believe ill of her absent lover, and so the fatal marriage +contract is signed and the crash follows. When Ellen Terry came on for +that scene the glee had all vanished; the face was as white as the +garments that enswathed her; and you saw a creature whom the hand of +death had visibly touched. The stage has not at any time heard from any +lips but her own such tones of pathos as those in which she said the +simple words:-- + + "May God forgive you, then, and pity me-- + If God can pity more than mothers do." + +It is not a long scene, and happily not,--for the strain upon the +emotion of the actress was intense. The momentary wild merriment, the +agony of the breaking heart, the sudden delirium and collapse, were not +for an instant exaggerated. All was nature--or rather the simplicity, +fidelity, and grace of art that make the effect of nature. + +Beautiful scenery, painted by Craven, framed the piece with appropriate +magnificence. The several seaside pictures were admirably +representative of the grandeur, the gaunt loneliness, and the glorious +colour for which Scotland is so much loved. + +The public gain in that production was a revival of interest in one of +the most famous novels in the language; the possession of a scenical +pageant that filled the eye with beauty and strongly moved the +imagination; a play that is successful in the domain of romantic poetry; +a touching exemplification of the great art of acting; and once again +the presentment of that vast subject,--the relation of heart to heart, +under the dominion of love, in human society,--that more absorbs the +attention, affects the character, and controls the destiny of the human +race than anything else that is beneath the sun. + + + + +XVI. + +THE MERRY WIVES AND FALSTAFF. + + +Shakespeare wrote _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ in 1601, and during the +Christmas holidays of that year it was presented upon the stage, before +Queen Elizabeth and her court, at Windsor Castle. In 1602 it was +published in London in quarto form, and in 1619 a reprint of that quarto +was published there. The version that appears in the two quartos is +considered by Shakespeare scholars to be spurious. The authentic text, +no doubt, is that of the comedy as it stands in the first folio (1623). +Shakespeare had written _Henry IV._--both parts of it--and also _Henry +V._, when this comedy was acted, and therefore he had completed his +portrait of Falstaff, whose life is displayed in the former piece and +whose death is described in the latter. _Henry IV._ was first printed in +1598 (we know not when it was first acted), and it passed through five +quarto editions prior to the publication of it in the folio of 1623. In +the epilogue to the second part of that play a promise is made that the +story shall be continued, "with Sir John in it," but it is gravely +doubted whether that epilogue was written by Shakespeare. The +continuation of the story occurs in _Henry V._, in which Falstaff does +not figure, although he is mentioned in it. Various efforts have been +made to show a continuity between the several plays in which Falstaff is +implicated, but the attempt always fails. The histories contain the real +Falstaff. The Falstaff of the comedy is another and less important man. +If there really were a sequence of story and of time in the portraiture +of this character plays would stand in the following order: 1, _Henry +IV., Part First_; 2, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_; 3, _Henry IV., Part +Second_; 4, _Henry V._ As no such sequence exists, or apparently was +intended, the comedy should be viewed by itself. Its texture is +radically different from that of the histories. One of the best +Shakespeare editors, Charles Knight, ventures the conjecture that _The +Merry Wives of Windsor_ was written first. Shakespeare invented the +chief part of the plot, taking, however, a few things from Tarlton's +_Newes out of Purgatorie_, which in turn was founded on a story called +The _Lovers of Pisa_. It is possible also that he may have derived +suggestions from a German play by Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick--a +contemporary, who died in 1611--to which _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ +bears some resemblance, and of which he may have received an account +from English actors who had visited Germany, as the actors of his time +occasionally did. + +Tradition declares that he wrote this comedy at the command of Queen +Elizabeth, who had expressed a wish to see Falstaff in love. This was +first stated by John Dennis, in the preface to an alteration of _The +Merry Wives of Windsor_ which was made by him, under the name of _The +Comical Gallant, or the Amours of Sir John Falstaff_, and was +successfully acted at Drury Lane theatre. That piece, which is paltry +and superfluous, appeared in 1702. No authority was given by Dennis for +his statement about Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare's play. The +tradition rests exclusively on his word. Rowe, Pope, Theobald, and other +Shakespeare editors, have transmitted it to the present day, but it +rests on nothing but supposition and it is dubious. Those scholars who +accept the story of Dennis, and believe that Shakespeare wrote the piece +"to order" and within a few days, usually fortify their belief by the +allegation that the comedy falls short of Shakespeare's poetical +standard, being written mostly in prose; that it degrades his great +creation of Falstaff; that it is, for him, a trivial production; and +that it must have been written in haste and without spontaneous impulse. +If judgment were to be given on the quarto version of _The Merry Wives_, +that reasoning would commend itself as at least plausible; but it is +foolish as applied to the version in the folio, where the piece is found +to be remarkable for nimbleness of invention, strength and variety of +natural character, affluent prodigality of animal spirits, delicious +quaintness, exhilarating merriment, a lovely pastoral tone, and many +touches of the transcendent poetry of Shakespeare. Dennis probably +repeated a piece of idle gossip that he had heard, the same sort of +chatter that in the present day constantly follows the doings of +theatrical people,--and is not accurate more than once in a thousand +times. _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ is a brilliant and delightful +comedy, quite worthy of its great author (though not in his most +exalted mood), who probably wrote it because his mind was naturally +impelled to write it, and no doubt laboured over it exactly as he did +over his other writings: for we know, upon the testimony of Ben Jonson, +who personally knew him and was acquainted with his custom as a writer, +that he was not content with the first draught of anything, but wrote it +a second time, and a third time, before he became satisfied with it. Dr. +Johnson, who had studied Shakespeare as carefully as any man ever +studied him, speaking of _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, says that "its +general power--that power by which all works of genius should finally be +tried--is such that perhaps it never yet had reader or spectator who did +not think it too soon at an end." A comedy that deserves such praise as +this--which assuredly is not misplaced--need not be dismissed as a +pot-boiler. + +Knight's conjecture that _The Merry Wives_ was written before the +histories were written is a plausible conjecture, and perhaps worthy of +some consideration. It is not easy to believe that Shakespeare, after he +had created Falstaff and thoroughly drawn him, was capable of lessening +the character and making it almost despicable with paltriness--as +certainly it becomes in _The Merry Wives_. That is not the natural way +of an artistic mind. But it is easier to credit the idea that the +Falstaff of _The Merry Wives_ was the first study of the character, +although not first shown, which subsequently expanded into the +magnificent humorous creation of the histories. Falstaff in the comedy +is a fat man with absurd amorous propensities, who is befooled, +victimised, and made a laughing-stock by a couple of frolicsome women, +who are so much amused by his preposterous folly that they scarcely +bestow the serious consideration of contempt and scorn upon his +sensuality and insolence. No creature was ever set in a more ludicrous +light or made more contemptible,--in a kindly, good-humoured way. The +hysterical note of offended virtue is never sounded, nor is anywhere +seen the averted face of shocked propriety. The two wives are bent on a +frolic, and they will merrily punish this presumptuous sensualist--this +silly, conceited, gross fellow, "old, cold, withered, and of intolerable +entrails." If we knew no more of Falstaff than the comedy tells us of +him we should by no means treasure him as we do now; but it is through +the histories that we learn to know and appreciate him, and it is of the +man portrayed there that we always unconsciously think when, in his +humiliating discomfiture, we hear him declare that "wit may be made a +Jack-a-lent when 'tis upon ill employment." For the Falstaff of the +histories is a man of intellect, wisdom, and humour, thoroughly +experienced in the ways of the world, fascinating in his drollery, +human, companionable, infinitely amusing, and capable of turning all +life to the favour of enjoyment and laughter--a man who is passionate in +the sentiment of comradeship, and who, with all his faults (and perhaps +because of some of them, for faultless persons are too good for this +world), inspires affection. "Would I were with him," cries the wretched +Bardolph, "wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell." It is not +Bardolph only whose heart has a warm corner for the memory of the poor +old jovial sinner, wounded to death by the falling off of +friendship--the implacable hardness of new-born virtue in the +regenerated royal mind. + +A comprehensive view of Falstaff--a view that includes the afflicting +circumstances of his humiliation and of his forlorn and pathetic death +not less than the roistering frolics and jocund mendacity of his life +and character--is essential to a right appreciation of the meaning of +him. Shakespeare is never a prosy moralist, but he constantly teaches +you, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, that the moral law of the +universe, working continually for goodness and not for evil, operates in +an inexorable manner. Yet it is not of any moral consideration that the +spectator of Falstaff upon the stage ever pauses to think. It is the +humour of the fat knight that is perceived, and that alone. The +thoughtful friends of Falstaff, however, see more in him than this, and +especially they like not to think of him in a deplorable predicament. +The Falstaff of _The Merry Wives_ is a man to laugh at; but he is not a +man to inspire the comrade feeling, and still less is he a man to +impress the intellect with the sense of a stalwart character and of +illimitable jocund humour. Falstaff's friends--whose hearts are full of +kindness for the old reprobate--have sat with him "in my Dolphin +chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire," and "have heard the +chimes at midnight" in his society, and they know what a jovial +companion he is--how abundant in knowledge of the world; how radiant +with animal spirits; how completely inexhaustible in cheerfulness; how +copious in comic invective; how incessantly nimble and ludicrous in wit +and in waggery; how strange a compound of mind and sensuality, +shrewdness and folly, fidelity and roguery, brazen mendacity, and comic +selfishness! They do not like to think of him as merely a fat old fool, +bamboozled by a pair of sprightly, not over-delicate women, far inferior +to him in mental calibre, and made a laughing-stock for Fenton and sweet +Anne Page, and the lads and lassies of Windsor, and the chattering Welsh +parson. "Have I lived," cried Falstaff, in the moment of his +discomfiture, "to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of +English?" He is a hard case, an inveterate sinner, as worthless as any +man well could be, in the eyes of decorum and respectability; but those +who know him well grow to be fond of him, even if they feel that they +ought to be ashamed of it, and they do not quite forgive the poet for +making him contemptible. + +You can find many other figures that will make you laugh, but you can +find no other figure that makes you laugh with such good reason. It +seems incredible that Shakespeare, with his all-embracing mind and his +perfect instinct of art, should deliberately have chosen to lessen his +own masterpiece of humour. For Shakespeare rejoiced in Falstaff, even +while he respected and recorded the inexorable justice of the moral law +that decrees and eventually accomplishes his destruction. There is no +one of his characters whose history he has traced with such minute +elaboration. The conception is singularly ample. You may see Falstaff, +as Shallow saw him, when he was a boy and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke +of Norfolk; you may see him all along the current of his mature years; +his highway robberies on Gadshill; his bragging narrative to Prince +Henry; his frolicsome, paternal, self-defensive lecture to the prince; +his serio-comic association with the ragamuffin recruits at Coventry; +his adroit escape from the sword of Hotspur; his mendacious +self-glorification over the body of Harry Percy; his mishaps as a +suitor to Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page; his wonderfully humorous interviews +with the Chief-Justice and with Prince John of Lancaster; his junketings +with Justice Shallow in Gloucestershire, and his rebuff and +consternation at his first and last meeting with King Henry V.; and +finally you may see him, as Mrs. Quickly saw him, on his death-bed, when +"'a cried out God! God! God! three or four times," and when "his nose +was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled o' green fields." + +A good and faithful study of _King Henry IV._, and especially of the +second part of that play, is essential for a right appreciation of +Falstaff. Those scenes with the Chief-Justice are unmatched in +literature. The knight stands royally forth in them, clothed with his +entire panoply of agile intellect, robust humour, and boundless comic +effrontery. But the arrogant and expeditious Falstaff of _The Merry +Wives_--so richly freighted with rubicund sensuality, so abundant in +comic loquacity, and so ludicrous in his sorry plights--is a much less +complex person, and therefore he stands more level than the real +Falstaff does with the average comprehension of mankind. The American +stage, accordingly, by which more than by the printed book he has +become known to our people, has usually given its preference to the +Falstaff of the comedy. _The Merry Wives_ was first acted in New York on +October 5, 1788 at the John Street theatre, with Harper as Falstaff. On +April 1, 1807 it was produced at the old Park, and the Falstaff then was +John E. Harwood. The same stage offered it again on January 16, 1829, +with Hilson as Falstaff. A little later, about 1832, James H. Hackett +took up the character of Falstaff, and from that time onward +performances of _The Merry Wives_ occurred more frequently in different +cities of America. Nor was the historical play neglected. On August 7, +1848 a remarkably fine production of the comedy was accomplished at the +Astor Place Operahouse, New York, with Hackett as Falstaff, who never in +his time was equalled in that character, and has not been equalled +since. Another Falstaff, however, and a remarkably good one, appeared at +Burton's theatre on August 24, 1850, in the person of Charles Bass. On +March 14, 1853 _The Merry Wives_ was again given at Burton's theatre, +and Burton himself played Falstaff, with characteristic humour; but +Burton never acted the part as it stands in _Henry IV._ Hackett, who +used both the history (Part I.) and the comedy, continued to act +Falstaff almost to the end of his life and Hackett did not die till +1871. A distinguished representative of Falstaff in the early days of +the American theatre--the days of the renowned Chestnut in +Philadelphia--was William Warren (1767-1832), who came from England in +1796. In recent years the part has been acted by Benedict De Bar and by +John Jack. The latest Falstaff in America was that embodied by Charles +Fisher, who first assumed the character on November 19, 1872, at Daly's +theatre, and whose performance was picturesque and humorous. + +On the English stage the historical play of _Henry IV._ was exceedingly +popular in Shakespeare's time. The first Falstaff, according to Malone, +whom everybody has followed as to this point, was John Heminge +(1555-1630). After him came John Lowin (1572-1654), who is thought to +have acted the part in the presence of Charles I. His successor seems to +have been Lacy, who died in 1681. Next came Cartwright, and in 1699 or +1700 the great Betterton (1635-1710) assumed the fat knight, acting him +in both parts of the history and in the comedy. Genest records +twenty-two revivals of the first part of _Henry IV._ upon the London +stage, at five different theatres, between 1667 and 1826; fifteen +revivals of the second part between 1720 and 1821; and sixteen revivals +of _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ between 1667 and 1811. Many English +actors have played Falstaff since Betterton's time, an incomplete though +sufficiently ample list of them comprising Estcourt, 1704; F. Bullock, +1713; J. Evans and J. Hall, 1715; Mills, 1716; Quin, "dignity and +declamation," 1738; Berry, 1747; Love (whose true name was James Dance), +1762; Shuter, 1774; John Henderson, one of the greatest actors that ever +lived, 1774; Mrs. Webb (once only), 1776; Ryder, 1786; Palmer, 1788; +King, 1792; Fawcett, 1795; Stephen Kemble, who was so fat that he could +play it without stuffing or bladder, 1802; Blissett, 1803; George +Frederick Cooke, 1804; Bartley, 1812; Charles Kemble, 1824; Dowton, +1824; Elliston, 1826; and Samuel Phelps, 1846. The latest representative +of Falstaff in England was H. Beerbohm-Tree, who, although a man of +slender figure, contrived to simulate corpulence, and who manifested in +his acting a fine instinct as to the meaning of the character and +considerable resources of art in its expression, although the +predominant individuality and the copious luxuriance of Falstaff's rosy +and juicy humour were not within his reach. Upon the American stage the +part is practically disused; and this is a pity, seeing that a source of +great enjoyment and one of the most suggestive and fruitful topics that +exist in association with the study of human nature are thus in a great +degree sequestered from the public mind. Still it is better to have no +Falstaff on the stage than to have it encumbered with a bad one; and +certainly for the peculiar and exacting play of _Henry IV._ there are +now no actors left: at least they are not visible in America. + + + + +XVII. + +ADA REHAN. + + +In browsing over the fragrant evergreen pages of Cibber's delightful +book about the stage, and especially in reflecting upon the beautiful +and brilliant women who, drawn by his magic pencil, dwell there, +perpetual, in life, colour, and charm, the reflective reader may perhaps +be prompted to remember that the royal line of stage beauties is not +extinct, and that stage heroines exist in the present day who are quite +as well worthy of commemoration as any that graced the period of Charles +the Second or of good Queen Anne. Our age, indeed, has no Cibber to +describe their loveliness and celebrate their achievements; but surely +if he were living at this hour that courtly, characteristic, and +sensuous writer--who saw so clearly and could portray so well the +peculiarities of the feminine nature--would not deem the period of Ellen +Terry and Marie Wilton, of Ada Rehan and Sarah Bernhardt and Genevieve +Ward, of Clara Morris and Jane Hading, unworthy of his pen. As often as +fancy ranges over those bright names and others that are kindred with +them--a glittering sisterhood of charms and talents--the regret must +arise that no literary artist with just the gallant spirit, the +chivalry, the sensuous appreciation, the fine insight, and the pictorial +touch of old Cibber is extant to perpetuate their glory. The hand that +sketched Elizabeth Barry so as to make her live forever in a few brief +lines, the hand that drew the fascinating and memorable portrait of +Susanna Mountfort ("Down goes her dainty diving body to the ground, as +if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own +attractions")--what might it not have done to preserve for the knowledge +of future generations the queens of the theatre who are crowned and +regnant to-day! Cibber could have caught and reflected the elusive charm +of such an actress as Ada Rehan. No touch less adroit and felicitous +than his can accomplish more than the suggestion of her peculiar +allurement, her originality, and her fascinating because sympathetic and +piquant mental and physical characteristics. + +Ada Rehan, born at Limerick, Ireland, on April 22, 1860, was brought to +America when five years old, and at that time she lived and went to +school in Brooklyn. No one of her progenitors was ever upon the stage, +nor does it appear that she was predisposed to that vocation by early +reading or training. Her elder sisters had adopted that pursuit, and +perhaps she was impelled toward it by the force of example and domestic +association, readily affecting her innate latent faculty for the +dramatic art. Her first appearance on the stage was made at Newark, New +Jersey, in 1873, in a play entitled _Across the Continent_, in which she +acted a small part, named Clara, for one night only, to fill the place +of a performer who had been suddenly disabled by illness. Her readiness +and her positive talent were clearly revealed in that effort, and it was +thereupon determined in a family council that she should proceed; so she +was soon regularly embarked upon the life of an actress. Her first +appearance on the New York stage was made a little later, in 1873, at +Wood's museum (it became Daly's theatre in 1879), when she played a +small part in a piece called _Thorough-bred_. During the seasons of +1873-74-75 she was associated with the Arch Street theatre, +Philadelphia,--that being her first regular professional engagement. +(John Drew, with whom, professionally, Ada Rehan has been long +associated, made his first appearance in the same season, at the same +house.) She then went to Macaulay's theatre, Louisville, where she acted +for one season. From Louisville she went to Albany, as a member of John +W. Albaugh's company, and with that manager she remained two seasons, +acting sometimes in Albany and sometimes in Baltimore. After that she +was for a few months with Fanny Davenport. The earlier part of her +career involved professional endeavours in company with the wandering +stars, and she acted in a variety of plays with Edwin Booth, Adelaide +Neilson, John McCullough, Mrs. Bowers, Lawrence Barrett, John Brougham, +Edwin Adams, Mrs. Lander, and John T. Raymond. From the first she was +devotedly fond of Shakespeare, and all the Shakespearian characters +allotted to her were studied and acted by her with eager interest and +sympathy. While thus employed in the provincial stock she enacted +Ophelia, Cordelia, Desdemona, Celia, Olivia, and Lady Anne, and in each +of those parts she was conspicuously good. The attention of Augustin +Daly was first attracted to her in December 1877, when she was acting at +Albaugh's theatre in Albany, the play being _Katharine and Petruchio_ +(Garrick's version of the _Taming of the Shrew_), and Ada Rehan +appearing as Bianca; and subsequently Daly again observed her as an +actress of auspicious distinction and marked promise at the Grand Opera +House, New York, in April 1879. Fanny Davenport was then acting in that +theatre in Daly's strong American play of _Pique_--one of the few dramas +of American origin that aptly reflect the character of American domestic +life--and Ada Rehan appeared in the part of Mary Standish. She was +immediately engaged under Daly's management, and in May 1879 she came +forth at the Olympic theatre, New York, as Big Clemence in that author's +version of _L'Assommoir_. On September 17, 1879, Daly's theatre (which +had been suspended for about two years) was opened upon its present +site, the southwest corner of Thirtieth Street and Broadway, and Ada +Rehan made her first appearance there, enacting the part of Nelly Beers +in a play called _Love's Young Dream_. The opening bill on that +occasion comprised that piece, together with a comedy by Olive Logan, +entitled _Newport_. On September 30 a revival of _Divorce_, one of +Daly's most fortunate plays, was effected, and Ada Rehan impersonated +Miss Lu Ten Eyck--a part originally acted (1873) by Fanny Davenport. +From that time to this (1892) Ada Rehan has remained the leading lady at +Daly's theatre; and there she has become one of the most admired figures +upon the contemporary stage. In five professional visits to Europe, +acting in London, Paris, Edinburgh, Dublin, Berlin, and other cities, +she pleased judicious audiences and augmented her renown. Daly took his +company of comedians to London for the first time in 1884, where they +fulfilled an engagement of six weeks at Toole's theatre, beginning July +19. The second visit to London was made two seasons later, when they +acted for nine weeks at the Strand theatre, beginning May 27, 1886. At +that time they also played in the English provinces, and they visited +Germany--acting at Hamburg and at Berlin, where they were much liked and +commended. They likewise made a trip to Paris. Their third season abroad +began at the Lyceum theatre, London, May 3, 1888, and it included +another expedition to the French capital, which was well rewarded. Ada +Rehan at that time impersonated Shakespeare's Shrew. It was in that +season also that she appeared at Stratford-upon-Avon, where Daly gave a +performance (August 3, 1888) in the Shakespeare Memorial theatre, for +the benefit of that institution. The fourth season of Daly's comedians +in London began on June 10, 1890, at the Lyceum theatre, and lasted ten +weeks; and this was signalised by Ada Rehan's impersonation of Rosalind. +The fifth London season extended from September 9 to November 13, 1891. + +This is an outline of her professional story; but how little of the real +life of an actor can be imparted in a record of the surface facts of a +public career! Most expressive, as a comment upon the inadequacy of +biographical details, is the exclamation of Dumas, about Aimée Desclée: +"Une femme comme celle-là n'a pas de biographie! Elle nous a émus, et +elle en est morte. Voilà toute son historie!" Ada Rehan, while she has +often and deeply moved the audience of her riper time, is happily very +far from having died of it. There is deep feeling beneath the luminous +and sparkling surface of her art; but it is chiefly with mirth that she +has touched the public heart and affected the public experience. Equally +of her, however, as of her pathetic sister artist of the French stage, +it may be said that such a woman has no history. In a civilisation and +at a period wherein persons are customarily accepted for what they +pretend to be, instead of being seen and understood for what they are, +she has been content to take an unpretentious course, to be original and +simple, and thus to allow her faculties to ripen and her character to +develop in their natural manner. She has not assumed the position of a +star, and perhaps the American community, although favourable and +friendly toward her, may have been somewhat slow to understand her +unique personality and her superlative worth. The moment a thoughtful +observer's attention is called to the fact, however, he perceives how +large a place Ada Rehan fills in the public mind, how conspicuous a +figure she is upon the contemporary stage, and how difficult it is to +explain and classify her whether as an artist or a woman. That blending +of complexity with transparency always imparts to individual life a +tinge of piquant interest, because it is one denotement of the +temperament of genius. + +The poets of the world pour themselves through all subjects by the use +of their own words. In what manner they are affected by the forces of +nature--its influences of gentleness and peace or its vast pageants of +beauty and terror--those words denote; and also those words indicate the +action, upon their responsive spirits, of the passions that agitate the +human heart. The actors, on the other hand, assuming to be the +interpreters of the poets, must pour themselves through all subjects by +the use of their own personality. They are to be estimated accordingly +by whatever the competent observer is able to perceive of the nature and +the faculties they reveal under the stress of emotion, whether tragic or +comic. Perhaps it is not possible--mind being limited in its +function--for any person to form a full, true, and definite summary of +another human creature. To view a dramatic performance with a +consciousness of the necessity of forming a judicial opinion of it is +often to see one's own thought about it rather than the thing itself. +Yet, when all allowance is made for difficulty of theme and for +infirmity of judgment, the observer of Ada Rehan may surely conclude +that she has a rich, tender, and sparkling nature, in which the +dream-like quality of sentiment and the discursive faculty of +imagination, intimately blended with deep, broad, and accurate +perceptions of the actual, and with a fund of keen and sagacious sense, +are reinforced with strong individuality and with affluent and +extraordinary vital force. Ada Rehan has followed no traditions. She +went to the stage not because of vanity but because of spontaneous +impulse; and for the expression of every part that she has played she +has gone to nature and not to precept and precedent. The stamp of her +personality is upon everything that she has done; yet the thinker who +looks back upon her numerous and various impersonations is astonished at +their diversity. The romance, the misery, and the fortitude of Kate +Verity, the impetuous passion of Katharine, the brilliant raillery of +Hippolyta, the enchanting womanhood of Rosalind--how clear-cut, how +distinct, how absolutely dramatic was each one of those +personifications! and yet how completely characteristic each one was of +this individual actress! Our works of art may be subject to the +application of our knowledge and skill, but we ourselves are under the +dominance of laws which operate out of the inaccessible and indefinable +depths of the spirit. Alongside of most players of this period Ada Rehan +is a prodigy of original force. Her influence, accordingly, has been +felt more than it has been understood, and, being elusive and strange, +has prompted wide differences of opinion. The sense that she diffuses of +a simple, unselfish, patient nature, and of impulsive tenderness of +heart, however, cannot have been missed by anybody with eyes to see. And +she crowns all by speaking the English language with a beauty that has +seldom been equalled. + + + + +XVIII. + +TENNYSON'S COMEDY OF THE FORESTERS. + + +"Besides, the King's name is a tower of strength." Thousands of people +all over the world honour, and ought to honour, every word that falls +from the pen of Alfred Tennyson. He is a very great man. No poet since +the best time of Byron has written the English language so well--that is +to say, with such affluent splendour of imagination; such passionate +vigour; such nobility of thought; such tenderness of pathos; such +pervasive grace, and so much of that distinctive variety, flexibility, +and copious and felicitous amplitude which are the characteristics of an +original style. No poet of the last fifty years has done so much to +stimulate endurance in the human soul and to clarify spiritual vision in +the human mind. It does not signify that now, at more than fourscore, +his hand sometimes trembles a little on the harp-strings, and his touch +falters, and his music dies away. It is still the same harp and the +same hand. This fanciful, kindly, visionary, drifting, and altogether +romantic comedy of _Robin Hood_ is not to be tried by the standard that +is author reared when he wrote _Ulysses_ and _Tithonus_ and _The Passing +of Arthur_--that imperial, unapproachable standard that no other poet +has satisfied. + + "Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day." + +But though the passion be subdued and the splendour faded, the deep +current of feeling flows on and the strong and tender voice can still +touch the heart and charm the ear. That tide of emotion and that tone of +melody blend in this play and make it beautiful. The passion is no +longer that of _Enone_ and _Lucretius_ and _Guinevere_ and _Locksley +Hall_ and _Maud_ and _The Vision of Sin_. The thought is no longer that +of _In Memoriam_, with its solemn majesty and infinite pathos. The music +is no longer that of _The May Queen_ and the _Talking Oak_ and _Idle +Tears_. But why should these be expected? He who struck those notes +strikes now another; and as we listen our wonder grows, and cannot help +but grow, that a bard of fourscore and upward should write in such +absolute sympathy with youth, love, hope, happiness, and all that is +free and wandering and martial and active in the vicissitudes of +adventure, the exploits of chivalry, and the vagabondish spirit of gypsy +frolic. The fact that he does write in that mood points to the one +illuminative truth now essential to be remembered. The voice to which we +are privileged to listen, perhaps for the last time, is the voice of a +great poet--by which is meant a poet who is able, not through the medium +of intellect but through the medium of emotion, to make the total +experience of mankind his own experience, and to express it not only in +the form of art but with the fire of nature. The element of power, in +all the expressions of such a mind, will fluctuate; but every one of its +expressions will be sincere and in a greater or less degree will be +vital with a universal and permanent significance. That virtue is in +Alfred Tennyson's comedy of _Robin Hood_, and that virtue will insure +for it an abiding endurance in affectionate public esteem. + +The realm into which this play allures its auditor is the realm of +_Ivanhoe_--the far-off, romantic region of Sherwood forest, in the +ancient days of stout king Richard the First. The poet has gone to the +old legends of Robin Hood and to the ballads that have been made upon +them, and out of those materials--using them freely, according to his +fancy--he has chosen his scene and his characters and has made his +story. It is not the England of the mine and the workshop that he +represents, and neither is it the England of the trim villa and the +formal landscape; it is the England of the feudal times--of gray castle +towers, and armoured knights, and fat priests, and wandering minstrels, +and crusades and tournaments; England in rush-strewn bowers and under +green boughs; the England in which Wamba jested and Blondel sung. To +enter into that realm is to leave the barren world of prose; to feel +again the cool, sweet winds of summer upon the brow of youth; to catch, +in fitful glimpses, the shimmer of the Lincoln green in the sunlit, +golden glades of the forest, and to hear the merry note of the huntsman +commingled, far away, with "horns of Elfland faintly blowing." The +appeal is made to the primitive, elemental, poetical instinct of +mankind; and no detail of realism is obtruded, no question of +probability considered, no agony of the sin-tortured spirit subjected to +analysis, no controversy promoted and no moral lesson enforced. For once +the public is favoured with a serious poetical play, which aims simply +to diffuse happiness by arousing sympathy with pleasurable scenes and +picturesque persons, with virtue that is piquant and humour that is +refined, with the cheerful fortitude that takes adversity with a smile, +and with that final fortunate triumph of good over evil which is neither +ensanguined with gore nor saddened with tears, nor made acrid with +bitterness. The play is pastoral comedy, written partly in blank verse +and partly in prose, and cast almost wholly out of doors--in the open +air and under the greenwood tree--and, in order to stamp its character +beyond doubt or question, one scene of it is frankly devoted to a +convocation of fairies around Titania, their queen. + +The impulse that underlies this piece is the old, incessant, undying +aspiration, that men and women of the best order feel, for some avenue +of escape, some relief, some refuge, from the sickening tyranny of +convention and the commonplace, and from the overwhelming mystery with +which all human life is haunted and oppressed. A man who walks about in +a forest is not necessarily free. He may be as great a slave as anybody. +But the exalted imagination dwells upon his way of life as emancipated, +breezy, natural, and right. That way, to the tired thinker, lie peace +and joy. There, if anywhere--as he fancies--he might escape from all the +wrongs of the world, all the problems of society, all the dull business +of recording, and analysing, and ticketing mankind, all the clash of +selfish systems that people call history, and all the babble that they +call literature. In that retreat he would feel the rain upon his face, +and smell the grass and the flowers, and hear the sighing and whispering +of the wind in the green boughs; and there would be no need to trouble +himself any more, whether about the past or the future. Every great +intellect of the world has felt that wild longing, and has recorded +it--the impulse to revert to the vast heart of Nature, that knows no +doubt, and harbours no fear, and keeps no regret, and feels no sorrow, +and troubles itself not at all. Matthew Arnold dreamily and perhaps +austerely expressed it in _The Scholar Gypsy_. Byron more humanly +uttered it in four well-remembered lines, of _Childe Harold_: + + "Oh, that the desert were my dwelling-place, + With one fair spirit for my minister, + That I might all forget the human race, + And, hating nothing, love but only her." + +_Robin Hood_, as technical drama, is frail. Its movement, indeed, is not +more indolent than that of its lovely prototypes in Shakespeare, _As You +Like It_ and _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. With all the pastorals Time +ambles. But, on the other hand, Tennyson's piece is not a match for +either of those Shakespearean works, in massiveness of dramatic +signification or in the element of opportunity for the art of acting. +Character, poetry, philosophy, humour, and suggestion it contains; but +it contains no single scene in which its persons can amply put forth +their full histrionic powers with essentially positive dramatic effect. +Its charm resides more in being than in doing, and therefore it is more +a poem than a play, and perhaps more a picture than a poem. It is not +one of those works that arouse, agitate, and impel. It aims only to +create and sustain a pleased condition; and that aim it has +accomplished. No spectator will be deeply moved by it, but no spectator +will look at it without delight. While, however, _Robin Hood_ as a drama +is frail, it is not destitute of the dramatic element. It depicts a +central character in action, and it tells a representative love story--a +story in which the oppressive persecutor of impoverished age is foiled +and discomfited, in which faithful affection survives the test of trial, +and in which days of danger end at last in days of blissful peace. +Traces of the influence of Shakespeare--exerted by his pastoral comedies +and by the _Merry Wives of Windsor_--are obvious in it. There is no +imitation; there is only kinship. The sources that Scott explored for +some of the material used in _Ivanhoe_ also announce themselves. Many +stories could be derived from the old Robin Hood ballads. The poet has +only chosen and rearranged such of their incidents as would suit his +purpose--using those old ballads with perfect freedom, but also using +them with faultless taste. + +Robin Hood was born at Locksley, in the county of Nottingham, about +1160, when Henry the Second was king. His true name was Robert +Fitzooth--a name that popular mispronunciation converted into Robin +Hood--and he was of noble lineage. Old records declare him to have been +the Earl of Huntingdon. He was extravagant and adventurous, and for +reasons that are unknown he preferred to live in the woods. His haunts +were chiefly Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire, and Barnsdale, in +Yorkshire. Among his associates were William Scadlock, commonly called +Scarlet; Much, a miller's son; Friar Tuck, a vagabond monk; and Little +John, whose name was Nailor. Robin Hood and his band were kind to the +poor; but they robbed the rich and they were specially hard on the +clergy. There is a tradition that a woman named Maid Marian went with +Robin into the forest, but nothing is known about her. Robin lived till +the age of eighty-seven, and he might have lived longer but that a +treacherous relative, the prioress of Kirkley--to whose care he had +entrusted himself in order that he might be bled--allowed him to bleed +to death. At the time indicated in Tennyson's comedy--the year 1194, +which was the year of King Richard's return from captivity in +Germany--he was thirty-four years old. It is the year of _Ivanhoe_, and +in the play as in the novel, the evil agent is the usurper Prince John. + +Fifteen characters take part in this comedy. Act first is called "The +Bond and the Outlawry." The action begins in a garden before Sir Richard +Lea's castle--or rather the dialogue begins there, by which the basis of +the action is revealed. Maid Marian is Marian Lea, the daughter of Sir +Richard. Walter Lea, the son of Sir Richard, has been captured by the +Moors, and in order to pay the boy's ransom Sir Richard has borrowed a +large sum of money from the Abbot of York. That debt must presently be +paid; but Sir Richard does not see his way clear to its payment, and if +he does not pay it he must forfeit his land. The Sheriff of Nottingham, +a wealthy suitor for the hand of Marian, is willing to pay that debt, in +case the girl will favour his suit. But Marian loves the Earl of +Huntingdon and is by him beloved; and all would go well with those +lovers, and with Sir Richard, but that the Earl of Huntingdon is poor. +Poor though he be, however, he makes a feast, to celebrate his birthday, +and to that festival Sir Richard and his daughter are bidden. Act first +displays the joyous proceedings of that good meeting and the posture of +those characters toward each other. The Sheriff of Nottingham intrudes +himself upon the scene, accompanied by Prince John, who is disguised as +a friar. The Prince has cast a covetous eye upon Marian, and, although +he outwardly favours the wish of the Sheriff, he is secretly determined +to seize her for himself. The revellers at Huntingdon's feast, unaware +of the Prince's presence, execrate his name, and at length he retires, +in a silent fury. Robin gives to Marian a remarkable ring that he has +inherited from his mother. Later a herald enters and reads a +proclamation from Prince John, declaring the Earl of Huntingdon to be a +felon, and commanding his banishment. Robin cannot forcibly oppose that +mandate, and he therefore determines to cast in his lot with Scarlet and +Friar Tuck and other "minions of the moon," and thenceforward to live a +free and merry life under the green boughs of Sherwood Forest. A year is +supposed to pass. Act second, called "The Flight of Marian," begins with +a song of the Foresters, in the deep wood--"There is no land like +England." That is a scene of much gentle beauty, enhanced by Robin +Hood's delivery of some of the finest poetry in the play, and also by +the delicious music of Sir Arthur Sullivan. Robin descants upon +freedom, and upon the advantage of dwelling beneath the sky rather than +beneath a groined roof that shuts out all the meaning of heaven. There +is a colloquy between Little John, who is one of Robin's men, and Kate, +who is Marian's maid. Those two are lovers who quarrel and make it up +again, as lovers will. Kate has come to the forest, bringing word of the +flight of her mistress. Prince John has tried to seize Marian, and that +brave girl has repulsed and struck him; and she and her father have +fled--intending to make for France, in which land the old knight expects +to find a friend who will pay his debt and save his estate. While Robin +is considering these things he perceives the approach of Prince John and +the Sheriff of Nottingham, and, thereupon, he takes refuge in the hut of +an old witch and disguises himself in some of her garments. Prince John +and the Sheriff, who are in pursuit of Sir Richard and Marian, find +Robin in this disguise, and for a time they are deceived by him; but +soon they penetrate his masquerade and assail him--whereupon some of his +people come to his assistance, and he is reinforced by Sir Richard Lea. +Prince John and his party are beaten and driven away. Sir Richard is +exhausted, and Robin commits him to the care of the Foresters. Marian, +arrayed as a boy, and pretending to be her brother Walter, has been +present at this combat, as a spectator, and a sparkling scene of +equivoke, mischief, and sentiment ensues between Marian and Robin. That +scene Tennyson wrote and inserted for Ada Rehan, to whose vivacious +temperament it is fitted, and whose action in it expressed with equal +felicity the teasing temper of the coquette and the propitious fondness +of the lover. Robin discovers Marian's identity by means of the ring +that he gave her, and, after due explanation, it is agreed that she and +her father will remain under his protection. Act third is called "The +Crowning of Marian," and is devoted to pictures, colloquies, and +incidents, now serious and now comical, showing the life of the +Foresters and the humorous yet discriminative justice of their gypsy +chief. Sir Richard Lea is ill and he cannot be moved. The outlaws crown +Marian, with an oaken chaplet, and declare her to be their queen. Robin +Hood vindicates his vocation, and in a noble speech on +freedom--deriving his similes from the giant oak tree, as Tennyson has +ever loved to do--declares himself the friend of the poor and the +servant of the king; the absent Richard of the Lion Heart, for whose +return all good men are eager. Various beggars, friars, and other +travellers are halted on the road, in practical illustration of Robin's +doctrine; comic incidents from the old ballads are reproduced; and so +the episode ends merrily of these frolics in the wood. At that point a +delicious fairy pageant is introduced, presenting Queen Titania and her +elves and illustrating at once the grievance of the fairies against the +men whose heavy feet have crushed their toads and bats and flowers and +mystic rings, and Marian's dream of love. Sir Arthur Sullivan's music is +here again used, and again it is felt to be characteristic, melodious, +and uncommonly sweet and tender. Act fourth begins in a forest bower at +sunrise. Marian and Robin meet there and talk of Sir Richard and of his +bond to the Abbot of York--soon to fall due and seemingly to remain +unpaid. Robin has summoned the Abbot and his justiciary to come into the +forest and to bring the bond. King Richard, unrecognised, now arrives, +and in submission to certain laws of the woodland he engages in an +encounter of buffets, and prevails over all his adversaries. At the +approach of the Abbot, however, fearing premature recognition, the +monarch will flit away; but his gypsy friends compel him to accept a +bugle, upon which he is to blow a blast when in danger. The Abbot and +his followers arrive, and Robin Hood offers the money to redeem Sir +Richard's bond; but, upon a legal quibble, the Abbot declines to receive +it--preferring to seize the forfeited land. Prince John and the Sheriff +of Nottingham appear, and Robin and his Foresters form an ambuscade. Sir +Richard Lea has been brought in, upon his litter, and Marian stays +beside him. Prince John attempts to seize her, but this time he is +frustrated by the sudden advent of King Richard--from whose presence he +slinks away. The myrmidons of John, however, attack the King, who would +oppose them single-handed; but Friar Tuck snatches the King's bugle and +blows a blast of summons--whereupon the Foresters swarm into the field +and possess it. John's faction is dispersed, Marian is saved, the absent +Walter Lea reappears, Sir Richard is assured of his estate, the Abbot +and the Sheriff are punished, and Robin Hood and Maid Marian may +wed--for now the good King Richard has come again to his own. + +The lyrics in the piece possess the charm of fluent and unaffected +sweetness, and of original, inventive, and felicitous fancy, and some of +them are tenderly freighted with that indescribable but deeply affecting +undertone of pathetic sentiment which is a characteristic attribute of +Tennyson's poetry. + +The characters in the comedy were creatures of flesh and blood to the +author, and they come out boldly, therefore, on the stage. Marian Lea is +a woman of the Rosalind order--handsome, noble, magnanimous, +unconventional, passionate in nature, but sufficient unto herself, +humorous, playful, and radiant with animal spirits. Ada Rehan embodied +her according to that ideal. The chief exaction of the part is +simplicity--which yet must not be allowed to degenerate into tameness. +The sweet affection of a daughter for her father, the coyness yet the +allurement of a girl for her lover, the refinement of high birth, the +blithe bearing and free demeanour of a child of the woods, and the +predominant dignity of purity and honour--those are the salient +attributes of the part. Ada Rehan struck the true note at the +outset--the note of buoyant health, rosy frolic, and sprightly +adventure--and she sustained it evenly and firmly to the last. Every eye +was pleased with the frank, careless, cheerful beauty of her presence, +and every ear was soothed and charmed with her fluent and expressive +delivery of the verse. In this, as in all of the important +representations that Ada Rehan has given, the delightful woman-quality +was conspicuously present. She can readily impersonate a boy. No actress +since Adelaide Neilson has done that so well. But the crowning +excellence of her art was its expression of essential womanhood. Her +acting was never trivial and it never obtruded the tedious element of +dry intellect. It refreshed--and the spectator was happier for having +seen her. Many pleasant thoughts were scattered in many minds by her +performance of Maid Marian, and no one who saw it will ever part with +the remembrance of it. + + + + +XIX. + +ELLEN TERRY: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. + + +It was perhaps an auspicious portent, it certainly is an interesting +fact, that the first play that was ever acted in America at a regular +theatre and by a regular theatrical company was Shakespeare's comedy of +_The Merchant of Venice_. Such at least is the record made by William +Dunlap, the first historian of the American theatre, who names +Williamsburg, Virginia, as the place and September 5, 1752 as the date +of that production. It ought to be noted, however (so difficult is it to +settle upon any fact in this uncertain world), that the learned +antiquarian Judge C.P. Daly, fortified likewise by the scrupulously +accurate Ireland, dissents from Dunlap's statement and declares that +Cibber's alteration of Shakespeare's _Richard the Third_ was acted by a +regular company in a large room in Nassau Street, New York, at an +earlier date, namely, on March 5, 1750. All the same, it appears to +have been Shakespeare's mind that started the dramatic movement in +America. The American stage has undergone great changes since that time, +but both _The Merchant of Venice_ and _Richard the Third_ are still +acted, and in the _Merchant_, if not in _Richard_, the public interest +is still vital. In New York, under Edwin Booth's management, at the +Winter Garden theatre, January 28, 1867, and subsequently at Booth's +theatre, and in London, under Henry Irving's management, at the Lyceum +theatre, November 1, 1879, sumptuous productions of the _Merchant_ have +brilliantly marked the dramatic chronicle of our times. Discussion of +the great character of Shylock steadily proceeds and seems never to +weary either the disputants or the audience. The sentiment, the fancy, +and the ingenuity of artists are often expended not only upon the +austere, picturesque, and terrible figure of the vindictive Jew, but +upon the chief related characters in the comedy--upon Bassanio and +Portia, Gratiano and Nerissa, Lorenzo and Jessica, the princely and +pensive Antonio, the august Duke and his stately senators, and the +shrewd and humorous Gobbo. More than one painting has depicted the +ardent Lorenzo and his fugitive infidel as they might have looked on +that delicious summer night at Belmont when they saw "how the floor of +heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," and when the +blissful lover, radiant with happiness and exalted by the sublime, +illimitable, unfathomable spectacle of the star-strewn firmament, +murmured, in such heaven-like cadence, of the authentic music of heaven. + +It is not to be denied that lovely words are spoken to Jessica, and that +almost equally lovely words are spoken by her. Essayists upon the +_Merchant_ have generally accepted her without a protest--so much do +youth and beauty in a woman count in the scale when weighed against duty +and integrity. There is no indication that Shylock was ever unjust or +unkind to Jessica. Whatever he may have been to others he seems always +to have been good to her; and she was the child of that lost Leah of his +youthful devotion whom he passionately loved and whom he mourned to the +last. Yet Jessica not only abandoned her father and his religion, but +robbed him of money and jewels (including the betrothal ring, the +turquoise, that her mother had given to him), when she fled with the +young Christian who had won her heart. It was a basely cruel act; but +probably some of the vilest and cruelest actions that are done in this +world are done by persons who are infatuated by the passion of love. +Mrs. Jameson, who in her beautiful essay on Portia extenuates the +conduct of Jessica, would have us believe that Shylock valued his +daughter far beneath his wealth, and therefore deserved to be deserted +and plundered by her; and she is so illogical as to derive his +sentiments on this subject from his delirious outcries of lamentation +after he learned of her predatory and ignominious flight. The argument +is not a good one. Fine phrases do not make wrong deeds right. It were +wiser to take Jessica for the handsome and voluptuous girl that +certainly she is, and to leave her rectitude out of the question. +Shakespeare in his drawing of her was true to nature, as he always is; +but the student who wants to know where Shakespeare's heart was placed +when he drew women must look upon creatures very different from Jessica. +The women that Shakespeare seems peculiarly to have loved are Imogen, +Cordelia, Isabella, Rosalind, and Portia--Rosalind, perhaps, most of +all; for although Portia is finer than Rosalind, it is extremely +probable that Shakespeare resembled his fellow-men sufficiently to have +felt the preference that Tom Moore long afterward expressed: + + "Be an angel, my love, in the morning, + But, oh! be a woman to-night." + +When Ellen Terry embodied Portia--in Henry Irving's magnificent revival +of _The Merchant of Venice_--the essential womanhood of that character +was for the first time in the modern theatre adequately interpreted and +conveyed. Upon many play-going observers indeed the wonderful wealth of +beauty that is in the part--its winsome grace, its incessant sparkle, +its alluring because piquant as well as luscious sweetness, its +impetuous ardour, its enchantment of physical equally with emotional +condition, its august morality, its perfect candour, and its noble +passion--came like a surprise. Did the great actress find those +attributes in the part (they asked themselves), or did she infuse them +into it? Previous representatives of Portia had placed the emphasis +chiefly, if not exclusively, upon morals and mind. The stage Portia of +the past has usually been a didactic lady, self-contained, formal, +conventional, and oratorical. Ellen Terry came, and Portia was figured +exactly as she lives in the pages of Shakespeare--an imperial and yet an +enchanting woman, dazzling in her beauty, royal in her dignity, as +ardent in temperament as she is fine in brain and various and splendid +in personal peculiarities and feminine charm. After seeing that +matchless impersonation it seemed strange that Portia should ever have +been represented in any other light, and it was furthermore felt that +the inferior, mechanical, utilitarian semblance of her could not again +be endured. Ellen Terry's achievement was a complete vindication of the +high view that Shakespearean study has almost always taken of that +character, and it finally discredited the old stage notion that Portia +is a type of decorum and declamation. + +Aside from Hazlitt, who thought that Portia is affected and pedantic, +and who did not like her because he did not happen to appreciate her, +the best analytical thinkers about Shakespeare's works have taken the +high view of that character. Shakespeare himself certainly took it; for +aside from her own charming behaviour and delightful words it is to be +observed that everybody in the play who speaks of her at all speaks her +praise. It is only upon the stage that she has been made artificial, +prim, and preachy. That misrepresentation of her has, perhaps, been +caused, in part, by the practice long prevalent in our theatre of +cutting and compressing the play so as to make Shylock the chief figure +in it. In that way Portia is shorn of much of her splendour and her +meaning. The old theatrical records dwell almost exclusively upon +Shylock, and say little if anything about Portia. In Shakespeare's time, +no doubt, _The Merchant of Venice_ was acted as it is written, the +female persons in it being played by boys, or by men who could "speak +small." Alexander Cooke (1588-1614) played the light heroines of +Shakespeare while the poet was alive. All students of the subject are +aware that Burbage was the first Shylock, and that when he played the +part he wore a red wig, a red beard, and a long false nose. No record +exists as to the first Portia. The men who were acting female characters +upon the London stage when that institution was revived immediately +after the Restoration were Kynaston, James Nokes, Angel, William +Betterton, Mosely, and Floid. Kynaston, it is said, could act a woman so +well that when at length women themselves began to appear as actors it +was for some time doubted whether any one of them could equal him. The +account of his life, however, does not mention Portia as one of his +characters. + +Indeed the play of _The Merchant of Venice_, after it languished out of +sight in that decadence of the stage which ensued upon the growth of the +Puritan movement in England, did not again come into use until it was +revived in Lord Landsdowne's alteration of it produced at the theatre in +Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1701, and even then it was grossly perverted. +Forty years later, however, on St. Valentine's Day 1741, at Drury Lane, +when Macklin regenerated the character of Shylock, the original piece +was restored to the theatre. Women in the meantime had come upon the +stage. The garrulous and delightful Pepys, who had seen Kynaston play a +female part, records in his marvellous Diary that he first saw women as +actors on January 3, 1661. Those were members of Killigrew's company, +which preceded that of Davenant by several months, if not by a year; and +therefore the common statement in theatrical books that the first woman +that ever appeared on the English stage was Mrs. Sanderson, of +Davenant's company, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, is erroneous: and indeed +the name of the first English actress is as much unknown as the name of +the first Portia. When Macklin restored Shakespeare's _Merchant of +Venice_ to the stage it is not likely that the character of Portia was +dwarfed, for its representative then was Kitty Clive, and that actress +was a person of strong will. With Clive the long list begins of the +Portias of the stage. She was thirty years old when she played the part +with Macklin, and it is probable that she played it with dignity and +certain that she played it with sparkling animation and piquant grace. +The German Ulrici, whose descriptive epithets for Portia are "roguish +and intellectual," would doubtless have found his ideal of the part +fulfilled in Clive. The Nerissa that night was Mrs. Pritchard, then also +thirty years old, but not so famous as she afterward became. + +The greatest actress on the British stage in the eighteenth century +undoubtedly was Margaret Woffington (1719-1760). Sarah Siddons, to whom +the sceptre passed, was only five years old when Woffington died. Both +those brilliant names are associated with Portia. Augustin Daly's _Life +of Woffington_--the best life of her that has been written, and one of +the most sumptuous books that have been made--contains this reference to +her performance of that part: "All her critics agree that her +declamation was accurate and her gesture grace and nature combined; but +in tragic or even dramatic speeches her voice probably had its limits, +and in such scenes, being overtaxed, told against her. As Portia she +appeared to great advantage; but when Lorenzo says, 'This is the voice, +or I am much deceived, of Portia,' and Portia replies, 'He knows me, as +the blind man knows the cuckoo, by the bad voice,' the audience laughed +outright, and Woffington, conscious of her deficiency, with great +good-humour joined with them in their merriment." The incident is +mentioned in the _Table Talk_ (1825) of Richard Ryan, to which book Daly +refers. Mrs. Siddons made her first appearance on the London stage as +Portia December 29, 1775, and conspicuously failed in the part on that +occasion, but she became distinguished in it afterward; yet it is +probable that Mrs. Siddons expressed its nobility more than its +tenderness, and much more than its buoyant and glittering glee, which +was so entirely and beautifully given by Ellen Terry. After Peg +Woffington and before Mrs. Siddons the most conspicuous Portia was Mrs. +Dancer, whom Hugh Kelley, in his satirical composition of _Thespis_, +calls a "moon-eyed idiot,"--from which barbarous bludgeon phrase the +reader derives a hint as to her aspect. Some of the tones of Mrs. +Dancer's voice were so tender that no one could resist them. Spranger +Barry could not, for he married her, and after his death she became Mrs. +Crawford. Miss Maria Macklin, daughter of the first true Shylock of the +stage, acted Portia, April 13, 1776, with her father. She is recorded as +an accomplished woman but destitute of genius--in which predicament she +probably was not lonesome. On June 11, 1777 Portia was acted at the +Haymarket by Miss Barsanti, afterward Mrs. Lister, an actress who, since +she excelled in such parts as were customarily taken by Fanny Abington +(the distinct opposite of Portia-like characters), must have been +unsuited for it. The names of Miss Younge, Miss Farren, Miss E. Kemble, +Miss Ryder, Mrs. Pope, Miss De Camp, and Miss Murray are in the record +of the stage Portias that comes down to 1800. Probably the best of all +those Portias was Mrs. Pope. + +The beautiful Mrs. Glover played Portia in 1809 at the Haymarket +theatre. Mrs. Ogilvie played it, with Macready as Shylock (his first +appearance in that part), on May 13, 1823. Those figures passed and left +no shadow. Two English actresses of great fame are especially associated +with Portia--Ellen Tree, afterward Mrs. Charles Kean, and Helen Faucit, +now Lady Martin; and no doubt their assumptions of the part should be +marked as exceptions from the hard, didactic, declamatory, perfunctory +method that has customarily characterised the Portia of the stage. Lady +Martin's written analysis of Portia is noble in thought and subtle and +tender in penetration and sympathy. Charlotte Cushman read the text +superbly, but she was much too formidable ever to venture on assuming +the character. Portia is a woman who deeply loves and deeply rejoices +and exults in her love, and she is never ashamed of her passion or of +her exultation in it; and she says the finest things about love that are +said by any of Shakespeare's women; the finest because, while supremely +passionate, the feeling in them is perfectly sane. It is as a lover that +Ellen Terry embodied her, and while she made her a perfect woman, in all +the attributes that fascinate, she failed not, in the wonderful trial +scene, to invest her with that fine light of celestial anger--that +momentary thrill of moral austerity--which properly appertains to the +character at the climax of a solemn and almost tragical situation. + +On the American stage there have been many notable representatives of +the chief characters in _The Merchant of Venice_. In New York, when the +comedy was done at the old John Street theatre in 1773, Hallam was +Shylock and Mrs. Morris Portia. Twenty years afterward, at the same +house, Shylock was played by John Henry, and Portia by Mrs. Henry, while +the brilliant Hodgkinson appeared as Gratiano. Cooper, whose life has +been so well written by that ripe theatrical scholar Joseph N. Ireland, +in one of the books of the Dunlap Society, assumed Shylock in 1797 at +the theatre just then opened in Greenwich Street. The famous Miss +Brunton (then Mrs. Merry), was the Portia, and the cast included Moreton +as Bassanio, Warren as Antonio, Bernard as Gratiano, and Blissett as +Tubal. How far away and how completely lost and forgotten those once +distinguished and admired persons are! Yet Cooper in his day was +idolised: he had a fame as high, if not as widely spread, as that of +Henry Irving or Edwin Booth at present. William Creswick--lately dead at +an advanced age in London--was seen upon the New York stage as Shylock +in 1840; Macready in 1841; Charles Kean in 1845. With the latter, Ellen +Tree played Portia. Charles W. Couldock enacted Shylock on September 6, +1852, at the Castle Garden theatre, in a performance given to +commemorate the alleged centenary of the introduction of the drama into +America. The elder Wallack, the elder Booth, Edwin Forrest, G.V. Brooke, +George Vandenhoff, Wyzeman Marshall, and E.L. Davenport are among the +old local representatives of the Jew. Madam Ponisi used to play Portia, +and so did Mrs. Hoey. + +In December 1858, when _The Merchant of Venice_ was finely revived at +Wallack's theatre, with the elder Wallack as Shylock, the cast included +Lester Wallack as Bassanio, John Brougham as Gratiano, A. W. Young--a +quaintly comic actor, too soon cut off--as Launcelot Gobbo, Mary +Gannon--the fascinating, the irresistible--as Nerissa, and handsome Mrs. +Sloan as Jessica. The eminent German actor Davison played Shylock, in +New York, in his own language; and many German actors, no one of them +comparable with him, have been seen in it since. Lawrence Barrett often +played it, and with remarkable force and feeling. The triumphs won in it +by Edwin Booth are within the remembrance of many playgoers of this +generation. When he last acted the Jew Helena Modjeska was associated +with him as Portia. Booth customarily ended the piece with the trial +scene, omitting the last act; and indeed that was long the stage custom; +but with the true Portia of Ellen Terry and a good cast in general the +last act went blithely and with superb effect. The comedy was not +written for Shylock alone. He is a tremendous identity, but he is not +the chief subject. The central theme is Portia and her love. That theme +takes up a large part of the play,--which is like a broad summer +landscape strewn with many-coloured flowers that flash and glitter in +the sun, while slowly a muttering thunder-storm gathers and lowers, and +presently sweeps overhead, casting one black shadow as it passes, and +leaving the fragrant and glistening plain all the brighter and sweeter +for the contrast with its defeated menace and vanishing gloom. + + + + +XX. + +RICHARD MANSFIELD AS RICHARD THE THIRD. + + +The ideal of Richard that was expressed by this actor did not materially +differ from that which has been manifested by great tragic actors from +Garrick to Booth. He embodied a demoniac scoffer who, nevertheless, is a +human being. The infernal wickedness of Richard was shown to be impelled +by tremendous intellect but slowly enervated and ultimately thwarted and +ruined by the cumulative operation of remorse--corroding at the heart +and finally blasting the man with desolation and frenzy. That, +undoubtedly, was Shakespeare's design. But Richard Mansfield's +expression of that ideal differed from the expression to which the stage +has generally been accustomed, and in this respect his impersonation was +distinctive and original. + +The old custom of playing Richard was to take the exaggerated statements +of the opening soliloquy in a literal sense, to provide him with a big +hump, a lame leg, and a fell of straight black hair, and to make him +walk in, scowling, with his lower lip protruded, and declare with +snarling vehemence and guttural vociferation his amiable purpose of +specious duplicity and miscellaneous slaughter. The opening speech, +which is in Shakespeare's juvenile manner--an orotund, verbose manner, +which perhaps he had caught from Marlowe, and which he outgrew and +abandoned--was thus utilised for displaying the character in a massed +aspect, as that of a loathsome hypocrite and sanguinary villain; and, +that being done, he was made to advance through about two-thirds of the +tragedy, airily yet ferociously slaying everybody who came in his way, +until at some convenient point, definable at the option of the actor, he +was suddenly smitten with a sufficient remorse to account for his +trepidation before and during the tent-scene; and thereafter he was +launched into combat like a meteoric butcher, all frenzy and all gore, +and killed, amid general acclamation, when he had fenced himself out of +breath. + +That treatment of the character was, doubtless, in part a necessary +consequence of Shakespeare's perfunctory adoption of the Tudor doctrine +that Richard was a blood-boltered monster; but in a larger degree it was +the result of Cibber's vulgar distortion of the original piece. The +actual character of the king,--who seems to have been one of the ablest +and wisest monarchs that ever reigned in England--has never recovered, +and it never will recover, from the odium that was heaped upon it by the +Tudor historians and accepted and ratified by the great genius of +Shakespeare. The stage character of the king has been almost as +effectually damned by the ingenious theatrical claptrap with which +Cibber misrepresented and vulgarised Shakespeare's conception, assisted +by the efforts of a long line of blood-and-thunder tragedians, only too +well pleased to depict a gory, blathering, mugging miscreant, such as +their limited intelligence enabled them to comprehend. The stage +Richard, however, may possibly be redeemed. In Cibber he is everything +that Queen Margaret calls him, and worse than a brute. In Shakespeare, +although a miscreant, he is a man. The return to Shakespeare, +accordingly, is a step in the right direction. That step was taken some +time ago, although not maintained, first by Macready, then by Samuel +Phelps, then by Edwin Booth, and then by Henry Irving. Their good +example was followed by Richard Mansfield. He used a version of the +tragedy, made by himself,--a piece indicative of thoughtful study of the +subject as well as a keen intuitive grasp of it. He did not stop short +at being a commentator. Aiming to impersonate a character he treated +Shakespeare's prolix play in such a manner as to make it a practicable +living picture of a past age. The version was in five acts, preserving +the text of the original, much condensed, and introducing a few lines +from Cibber. It began with a bright processional scene before the Tower +of London, in which Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV., was conspicuous, and +against that background of "glorious summer" it placed the dangerous +figure of the Duke of Gloster. It comprised the murder of Henry VI., the +wooing of Lady Anne,--not in a London street, but in a rural place, on +the road to Chertsey; the lamentation for King Edward IV.; the episode +of the boy princes; the condemnation of Hastings,--a scene that +brilliantly denotes the mingled artifice and savagery of Shakespeare's +Gloster; the Buckingham plot; the priest and mayor scene; the +temptation of Tyrrel; the fall of Buckingham; the march to battle; the +episode of the spectres; and the fatal catastrophe on Bosworth Field. +Enough of the story was thus related to satisfy the Shakespeare scholar. + +The notable peculiarity was the assumption that there are considerable +lapses of time at intervals during the continuance of the story. The +effort to reconcile poetry with history produced little if any +appreciable practical result upon the stage,--seeing that an audience +would not think of lapses of time unless those lapses were mentioned in +the play-bill. An incessant continuity of action, a ceaseless rush and +whirl of events, is the essential life of the play. No auditor can feel +that Richard has waited twelve years before making any movement or +striking any blow, after his aspiration that heaven will take King +Edward and leave the world for him "to bustle in." That word "bustle" is +a favourite word with Richard. And furthermore there is no development +of his character in Shakespeare's play: there is simply the presentation +of it, complete and rounded at the outset, and remaining invariably and +inflexibly the same to the close. + +Mansfield, however, deduced this effect from his consideration of the +flight of time: a contrast between Richard at nineteen and Richard at +thirty-three, a contrast strongly expressive of the reactionary +influence that an experience of evil deeds has produced upon a man who +at first was only a man of evil thoughts and evil will. This imported +into the performance a diversity of delineation without, however, +affecting the formidable weight of the figure of Richard, or its +brilliancy, or its final significance. The embodiment was splendid with +it, and would be just as splendid without it. The presence of heart and +conscience in that demoniac human creature is denoted by Shakespeare and +must be shown by the actor. Precisely at what point his heaven-defying +will should begin to waver is not defined. Mansfield chose to indicate +the operation of remorse and terror in Richard's soul as early as the +throne scene and before yet the king has heard that the royal boys have +been murdered. The effect of his action, equally with the method of it, +was magnificent. You presently saw him possessed of the throne for which +he had so terribly toiled and sinned, and alone upon it, bathed in +blood-red light, the pitiable personification of gorgeous but haunted +evil, marked off from among mankind and henceforth desolate. Throughout +that fine scene Mansfield's portrayal of the fearful struggle between +wicked will and human weakness was in a noble vein of imagination, +profound in its sincerity, affecting in its pathos, and pictorial in its +treatment. In the earlier scenes his mood and his demeanour had been +suffused with a cool, gay, mockery of elegant cynicism. He killed King +Henry with a smile, in a scene of gloomy mystery that might have come +from the pencil of Gustave Dore. He looked upon the mourning Lady Anne +with cheerful irony and he wooed her with all the fervour that passion +and pathos can engender in the behaviour of a hypocrite. His +dissimulation with the princes and with the mayor and the nobles was to +the last degree specious. One of his finest points was the temptation of +Buckingham to murder the princes. There, and indeed at all points, was +observed the absence of even the faintest reminiscence of the ranting, +mouthing, flannel-jawed king of clubs who has so generally strutted and +bellowed as Shakespeare's Gloster. All was bold and telling in the +manner, and yet the manner was reticent with nature and fine with +well-bred continence. + +With the throne scene began the spiritual conflict. At least it then +began to be disclosed; and from that moment onward the state of Richard +was seen to be that of Orestes pursued by the furies. But Mansfield was +right, and was consistent, in making the monarch faithful in his +devotion to evil. Richard's presentiments, pangs, and tremors are +intermittent. In the great, empty, darkening throne-room, with its +shadowy nooks and dim corners, shapeless and nameless spectres may +momentarily come upon him and shake his strong spirit with the sinister +menace of hell. Along the dark plains, on the fateful night before the +battle, the sad ghosts may drift and wander, moaning and wailing in the +ghastly gloom; and in that hour of haunted desolation the doomed king +may feel that, after all, he is but mortal man, and that his pre-ordered +destruction is close at hand and not to be averted; but Richard never +deceives himself; never palters with the goodness that he has scorned. +He dies as he has lived, defiant and terrible. + +Mansfield's treatment of the ghost scenes at Bosworth was novel, +original, and poetic, and his death scene was not only a display of +personal prowess but a reproduction of historical fact. With a detail +like this the truth of history becomes useful, but in general the actor +cannot safely go back of the Shakespearean scheme. To present Richard as +he probably was would be to present a man of some virtue as well as +great ability. Mansfield's acting revealed an amiable desire to infuse +as much goodness as possible into the Shakespearean conception, but he +obtained his chief success by acting the part substantially according to +Shakespeare and by setting and dressing the play with exceptional if not +altogether exact fidelity to the time, the places, and the persons that +are implicated in the story. + +Shakespeare's Richard is a type of colossal will and of restless, +inordinate, terrific activity. The objects of his desire and his effort +are those objects which are incident to supreme power; but his chief +object is that assertion of himself which is irresistibly incited and +steadfastly compelled by the overwhelming, seething, acrid energy of his +feverish soul, burning and raging in his fiery body. He can no more help +projecting himself upon the affairs of the world than the malignant +cobra can help darting upon its prey. He is a vital, elemental force, +grisly, hectic, terrible, impelled by volcanic heat and electrified and +made lurid and deadly by the infernal purpose of restless wickedness. No +actor can impersonate Richard in an adequate manner who does not possess +transcendent force of will, combined with ambitious, incessant, and +restless mental activity. Mansfield in those respects is qualified for +the character, and out of his professional resources he was able to +supply the other elements that are requisite to its constitution and +fulfilment. He presented as Richard a sardonic, scoffing demon, who +nevertheless, somewhere in his complex nature, retains an element of +humanity. He embodied a character that is tragic in its ultimate effect, +but his method was that of the comedian. His portrayal of Richard, +except at those moments when it is veiled with craft and dissimulation, +or at those other and grander moments, infrequent but awful and +agonising, when it is convulsed with terror or with the anguish of +remorse, stood forth boldly in the sunshine, a crystallised and deadly +sarcasm, equally trenchant upon itself and all the world, equally +scornful of things human and things divine. That deadly assumption of +keen and mordant mockery, that cool, glittering, malignant lightness of +manner, was consistently sustained throughout the performance, while the +texture of it was made continuously entertaining by diversity of colour +and inflection, sequent on changing moods; so that Richard was shown as +a creature of the possible world of mankind and not as a fiction of the +stage. + +The part was acted by him: it was not declaimed. He made, indeed, a +skilful use of his uncommon voice--keeping its tones light, sweet, and +superficial during the earlier scenes (while yet, in accordance with his +theory of development, Gloster is the personification of evil purpose +only beginning to ripen into evil deed), and then permitting them to +become deeper and more significant and thrilling as the man grows old in +crime and haggard and convulsed in self-conflict and misery. But it was +less with vocal excellence that the auditor was impressed than with the +actor's identification with the part and his revelation of the soul of +it. When first presented Gloster was a mocking devil. The murder of +King Henry was done with malice, but the malice was enwrapped with glee. +In the wooing of Lady Anne there was both heart and passion, but the +mood was that of lightsome duplicity. It is not until years of scheming +and of evil acts, engendering, promoting, and sustaining a condition of +mental horror and torture, have ravaged his person and set their seal +upon him, in sunken cheek and hollow eye, in shattered nerves and deep +and thrilling voice, surcharged at once with inveterate purpose and with +incessant agony, that this light manner vanishes, and the demeanour and +action of the wicked monarch becomes ruthless, direct, and terrible. +Whether, upon the basis of a play so discursive, so episodical, so +irresolutely defined as Shakespeare's _Richard the Third_, that theory +of the development of its central character is logically tenable is a +dubious question. In Shakespeare the character is presented full-grown +at the start, and then, through a confused tangle of historical events, +is launched into action. Nevertheless in his practical application of it +Mansfield made his theory effective by a novel, powerful, interesting +performance. You could not help perceiving in Mansfield's embodiment +that Gloster was passing through phases of experience--that the man +changed, as men do change in life, the integral character remaining the +same in its original fibre, but the condition varying, in accordance +with the reaction of conduct upon temperament and conscience. + +Mansfield deeply moved his audience in the repulse of Buckingham, in the +moody menace of the absent Stanley, in the denunciation of Hastings, and +in the awakening from the dream on the night before the battle. +Playgoers have seldom seen a dramatic climax so thrilling as his +hysterical recognition of Catesby, after the moment of doubt whether +this be not also a phantom of his terrific dream. It was not so much by +startling theatrical effects, however, as by subtle denotements, now of +the tempest and now of the brooding horror in the king's heart, that the +actor gained his victory. The embodiment lacked incessant fiery +expedition--the explosive, meteoric quality that astounds and dazzles. +Chief among the beauties was imagination. The attitude of the monarch +toward his throne--the infernal triumph, and yet the remorseful agony +and withering fear--in the moment of ghastly loneliness when he knows +that the innocent princes have been murdered and that his imperial +pathway is clear, made up one of the finest spectacles of dramatic +illumination that the stage has afforded. You saw the murderer's hideous +exultation, and then, in an instant, as the single ray of red light from +the setting sun streamed through the Gothic window and fell upon his +evil head, you saw him shrink in abject fear, cowering in the shadow of +his throne; and the dusky room was seemingly peopled with gliding +spectres. That treatment was theatrical, but in no derogatory sense +theatrical--for it comports with the great speech on conscience; not the +fustian of Cibber, about mutton and short-lived pleasure, but the speech +that Shakespeare has put into Richard's mouth; the speech that inspired +Mansfield's impersonation--the brilliant embodiment of an intellectual +man, predisposed to evil, who yields to that inherent impulse, and +thereafter, although intermittently convulsed with remorse, fights with +tremendous energy against the goodness that he scorns and defies, till +at last he dashes himself to pieces against the adamant of eternal law. + + + + +XXI. + +GENEVIEVE WARD: FORGET ME NOT. + + +In the season of 1880-81 Genevieve Ward made a remarkably brilliant hit +with her embodiment of Stephanie De Mohrivart, in the play of _Forget Me +Not_, by Herman Merivale, and since then she has acted that part +literally all round the world. It was an extraordinary +performance--potent with intellectual character, beautiful with +refinement, nervous and steel-like with indomitable purpose and icy +glitter, intense with passion, painfully true to an afflicting ideal of +reality, and at last splendidly tragic: and it was a shining example of +ductile and various art. Such a work ought surely to be recorded as one +of the great achievements of the stage. Genevieve Ward showed herself to +possess in copious abundance peculiar qualities of power and beauty upon +which mainly the part of Stephanie is reared. The points of assimilation +between the actress and the part were seen to consist in an imperial +force of character, intellectual brilliancy, audacity of mind, iron +will, perfect elegance of manners, a profound self-knowledge, and +unerring intuitions as to the relation of motive and conduct in that +vast network of circumstance which is the social fabric. Stephanie +possesses all those attributes; and all those attributes Genevieve Ward +supplied, with the luxuriant adequacy and grace of nature. But Stephanie +superadds to those attributes a bitter, mocking cynicism, thinly veiled +by artificial suavity and logically irradiant from natural hardness of +heart, coupled with an insensibility that has been engendered by cruel +experience of human selfishness. This, together with a certain mystical +touch of the animal freedom, whether in joy or wrath, that goes with a +being having neither soul nor conscience, the actress had to supply--and +did supply--by her art. As interpreted by Genevieve Ward the character +was reared, not upon a basis of unchastity but upon a basis of +intellectual perversion. Stephanie has followed--at first with +self-contempt, afterward with sullen indifference, finally with the bold +and brilliant hardihood of reckless defiance--a life of crime. She is +audacious, unscrupulous, cruel; a consummate tactician; almost sexless, +yet a siren in knowledge and capacity to use the arts of her sex; +capable of any wickedness to accomplish an end, yet trivial enough to +have no higher end in view than the reinvestiture of herself with social +recognition; cold as snow; implacable as the grave; remorseless; wicked; +but, beneath all this depravity, capable of self-pity, capable of +momentary regret, capable of a little human tenderness, aware of the +glory of the innocence she has lost, and thus not altogether beyond the +pale of compassion. And she is, in externals,--in everything visible and +audible,--the ideal of grace and melody. + +In the presence of an admirable work of art the observer wishes that it +were entirely worthy of being performed and that it were entirely clear +and sound as to its applicability--in a moral sense, or even in an +intellectual sense--to human life. Art does not go far when it stops +short at the revelation of the felicitous powers of the artist; and it +is not altogether right when it tends to beguile sympathy with an +unworthy object and perplex a spectator's perceptions as to good and +evil. Genevieve Ward's performance of Stephanie, brilliant though it +was, did not redeem the character from its bleak exile from human +sympathy. The actress managed, by a scheme of treatment exclusively her +own, to make Stephanie, for two or three moments, piteous and forlorn; +and her expression of that evanescent anguish--occurring in the appeal +to Sir Horace Welby, her friendly foe, in the strong scene of the second +act--was wonderfully subtle. That appeal, as Genevieve Ward made it, +began in artifice, became profoundly sincere, and then was stunned and +startled into a recoil of resentment by a harsh rebuff, whereupon it +subsided through hysterical levity into frigid and brittle sarcasm and +gay defiance. For a while, accordingly, the feelings of the observer +were deeply moved. Yet this did not make the character of Stephanie less +detestable. The blight remains upon it--and always must remain--that it +repels the interest of the heart. The added blight likewise rests upon +it (though this is of less consequence to a spectator), that it is +burdened with moral sophistry. Vicious conduct in a woman, according to +Stephanie's logic, is not more culpable or disastrous than vicious +conduct in a man: the woman, equally with the man, should have a social +license to sow the juvenile wild oats and effect the middle-aged +reformation; and it is only because there are gay young men who indulge +in profligacy that women sometimes become adventurers and moral +monsters. All this is launched forth in speeches of singular terseness, +eloquence, and vigour; but all this is specious and mischievous +perversion of the truth--however admirably in character from Stephanie's +lips. Every observer who has looked carefully upon the world is aware +that the consequences of wrongdoing by a woman are vastly more +pernicious than those of wrongdoing by a man; that society could not +exist in decency, if to its already inconvenient coterie of reformed +rakes it were to add a legion of reformed wantons; and that it is innate +wickedness and evil propensity that makes such women as Stephanie, and +not the mere existence of the wild young men who are willing to become +their comrades--and who generally end by being their dupes and victims. +It is natural, however, that this adventurer--who has kept a +gambling-hell and ruined many a man, soul and body, and who now wishes +to reinstate herself in a virtuous social position--should thus strive +to palliate her past proceedings. Self-justification is one of the +first laws of life. Even Iago, who never deceives himself, yet announces +one adequate motive for his fearful crimes. Even Bulwer's Margrave--that +prodigy of evil, that cardinal type of infernal, joyous, animal +depravity--can yet paint himself in the light of harmless loveliness and +innocent gayety. + +_Forget Me Not_ tells a thin story, but its story has been made to yield +excellent dramatic pictures, splendid moments of intellectual combat, +and affecting contrasts of character. The dialogue, particularly in the +second act, is as strong and as brilliant as polished steel. In that +combat of words Genevieve Ward's acting was delicious with trenchant +skill and fascinating variety. The easy, good-natured, bantering air +with which the strife began, the liquid purity of the tones, the +delicate glow of the arch satire, the icy glitter of the thought and +purpose beneath the words, the transition into pathos and back again +into gay indifference and deadly hostility, the sudden and terrible mood +of menace, when at length the crisis had passed and the evil genius had +won its temporary victory--all those were in perfect taste and +consummate harmony. Seeing that brilliant, supple, relentless, +formidable figure, and hearing that incisive, bell-like voice, the +spectator was repelled and attracted at the same instant, and thoroughly +bewildered with the sense of a power and beauty as hateful as they were +puissant. Not since Ristori acted Lucretia Borgia has the stage +exhibited such an image of imperial will, made radiant with beauty and +electric with flashes of passion. The leopard and the serpent are fatal, +terrible, and loathsome; yet they scarcely have a peer among nature's +supreme symbols of power and grace. Into the last scene of _Forget Me +Not_,--when at length Stephanie is crushed by physical fear, through +beholding, unseen by him, the man who would kill her as a malignant and +dangerous reptile,--Genevieve Ward introduced such illustrative +"business," not provided by the piece, as greatly enhanced the final +effect. The backward rush from the door, on seeing the Corsican avenger +on the staircase, and therewithal the incidental, involuntary cry of +terror, was the invention of the actress: and from that moment to the +final exit she was the incarnation of abject fear. The situation is one +of the strongest that dramatic ingenuity has invented: the actress +invested it with a colouring of pathetic and awful truth. + + + + +XXII. + +EDWARD S. WILLARD IN THE MIDDLEMAN AND JUDAH. + + +E.S. Willard accomplished his first appearance upon the American stage +(at Palmer's theatre, November 10, 1890), in the powerful play of _The +Middleman_, by Henry Arthur Jones. A representative audience welcomed +the modest and gentle stranger and the greeting that hailed him was that +of earnest respect. Willard had long been known and esteemed in New York +by the dramatic profession and by those persons who habitually observe +the changeful aspects of the contemporary stage on both sides of the +ocean; but to the American public his name had been comparatively +strange. The sentiment of kindness with which he was received deepened +into admiration as the night wore on, and before the last curtain fell +upon his performance of Cyrus Blenkarn he had gained an unequivocal and +auspicious victory. In no case has the first appearance of a new actor +been accompanied with a more brilliant exemplification of simple worth; +and in no case has its conquest of the public enthusiasm been more +decisive. Not the least impressive feature of the night was the steadily +increasing surprise of the audience as the performance proceeded. It was +the actor's way to build slowly, and at the opening of the piece the +poor inventor's blind ignorance of the calamity that is impending is +chiefly trusted to create essential sympathy. Through those moments of +approaching sorrow the sweet unconsciousness of the loving father was +expressed by Willard with touching truth. In this he astonished even as +much as he pleased his auditors; for they were not expecting it. + +One of the most exquisite enjoyments provided by the stage is the advent +of a new actor who is not only new but good. It is the pleasure of +discovery. It is the pleasure of contact with a rich mind hitherto +unexplored. The personal appearance, the power of the eye, the variety +of the facial expression, the tones of the voice, the carriage of the +person, the salient attributes of the individual character, the altitude +of the intellectual development, the quality of the spirit, the extent +and the nature of those artistic faculties and resources that constitute +the professional equipment,--all those things become the subject first +of interested inquiry and next of pleased recognition. Willard is +neither of the stately, the weird, the mysterious, nor the ferocious +order of actor. There is nothing in him of either Werner, Manfred, or +Sir Giles Overreach. He belongs not to either the tradition of John +Kemble or of Edmund Kean. His personality, nevertheless, is of a +distinctive and interesting kind. He has the self-poise and the exalted +calm of immense reserve power and of tender and tremulous sensibility +perfectly controlled. His acting is conspicuously marked by two of the +loveliest attributes of art--simplicity and sincerity. He conceals +neither the face nor the heart. His figure is fine and his demeanour is +that of vigorous mental authority informed by moral purity and by the +self-respect of a manly spirit. Goodness, although a quality seldom +taken into the critical estimate, nevertheless has its part in spiritual +constitution and in consequent effect. It was, for instance, an element +of artistic potentiality in the late John McCullough. It operated +spontaneously; and just so it does in the acting of Willard, who, first +of all, gives the satisfying impression of being genuine. A direct and +thorough method of expression naturally accompanies that order of mind +and that quality of temperament. Every movement that Willard makes upon +the stage is clear, free, open, firm, and of an obvious significance. +Every tone of his rich and resonant voice is distinctly intended and is +distinctly heard. There are no "flaws and starts." He has formed a +precise ideal. He knows exactly how to embody and to utter it, and he +makes the manifestation of it sharp, defined, positive, and cogent. His +meaning cannot be missed. He has an unerring sense of proportion and +symmetry. The character that he represents is shown, indeed, all at +once, as a unique identity; but it is not all at once developed, the +manifestation of it being made gradually to proceed under the stress of +experience and of emotion. He rises with the occasion. His feelings are +deep, and he is possessed of extraordinary power for the utterance of +them--not simply vocal power, although that, in his case, is +exceptional, but the rare faculty of becoming convulsed, inspired, +transfigured, by passion, and of being swept along by it, and of +sweeping along his hearers. His manner covers, without concealing, great +intensity. This is such a combination of traits as must have existed--if +the old records are read aright--in that fine and famous actor, John +Henderson, and which certainly existed in the late Benjamin Webster. It +has, however, always been rare upon the stage, and, like all rare +jewels, it is precious. The actor who, from an habitual mood of sweet +gravity and patient gentleness, can rise to the height of delirious +passion, and there sustain himself at a poise of tempestuous +concentration which is the fulfilment of nature, and never once seem +either ludicrous or extravagant, is an actor of splendid power and +extraordinary self-discipline. Such an actor is Willard. The blue eyes, +the slightly olive complexion, the compact person, the picturesque +appearance, the melodious voice, the flexibility of natural action, and +the gradual and easy ascent from the calm level of domestic peace to the +stormy summit of passionate ecstasy recall personal peculiarities and +artistic methods long passed away. The best days of Edwin L. Davenport +and the younger James Wallack are brought to mind by them. + +In the drama of _The Middleman_ Willard had to impersonate an inventor, +of the absorbed, enthusiastic, self-regardless, fanatical kind. Cyrus +Blenkarn is a potter. His genius and his toil have enriched two persons +named Chandler, father and son, who own and conduct a porcelain factory +in an English town of the present day. Blenkarn has two daughters, and +one of them is taken from him by the younger Chandler. The circumstances +of that deprivation point at disgrace, and the inventor conceives +himself to have suffered an odious ignominy and irreparable wrong. Young +Chandler has departed and so has Mary Blenkarn, and they are eventually +to return as husband and wife; but Cyrus Blenkarn has been aroused from +his reveries over the crucible and furnace,--wherein he is striving to +discover a lost secret in the potter's art that will make him both rich +and famous,--and he utters a prayer for vengeance upon these Chandlers, +and he parts from them. A time of destitution and of pitiful struggle +with dire necessity, sleepless grief, and the maddening impulse of +vengeance now comes upon him, so that he is wasted almost to death. He +will not, however, abandon his quest for the secret of his art. He may +die of hunger and wretchedness; he will not yield. At the last moment +of his trial and his misery--alone--at night--in the alternate lurid +blaze and murky gloom of his firing-house--success is conquered: the +secret is found. This climax, to which the preliminaries gradually and +artfully lead, affords a great opportunity to an actor; and Willard +greatly filled it. The old inventor has been bowed down almost to +despair. Grief and destitution, the sight of his remaining daughter's +poverty, and the conflict of many feelings have made him a wreck. But +his will remains firm. It is not, however, until his last hope has been +abandoned that his success suddenly comes--and the result of this is a +delirium. That situation, one of the best in modern drama, has been +treated by the author in such a manner as to sustain for a long time the +feeling of suspense and to put an enormous strain upon the emotion and +the resources of an actor. Willard's presentment of the gaunt, +attenuated figure of Cyrus Blenkarn--hollow-eyed, half-frantic, +hysterical with grief and joy--was the complete incarnation of a +dramatic frensy; and this, being sympathetic, and moving to goodness and +not to evil, captured the heart. It was a magnificent exhibition, not +alone of the physical force that sometimes is so essential in acting but +of that fervour of the soul without which acting is a mockery. + +The skill with which Willard reserved his power, so that the +impersonation might gradually increase in strength, was one of the best +merits of his art. Blenkarn's prayer might readily be converted into the +climax of the piece, and it might readily be spoken in such a way that +no effect would be left for the culmination in the furnace-room. Those +errors were avoided, and during three out of the four acts the movement +of the piece was fluent, continuous, and cumulative. In this respect +both the drama and the performance were instructive. Henry Arthur Jones +has diversified his serious scenes with passages of sportive humour and +he has freighted the piece with conventional didacticism as to the +well-worn question of capital and labour. The humour is good: the +political economy need not detain attention. The value of the play does +not reside in its teaching but in its dramatic presentation of strong +character, individual experience, and significant story. The effect +produced by _The Middleman_ is that of moral elevation. Its auditor is +touched and ennobled by a spectacle of stern trial, pitiable suffering, +and stoical endurance. In the purpose that presides over human +destiny--if one may accept the testimony equally of history and of +fiction--it appears to be necessary first to create strong characters +and then to break them; and the manner in which they are broken usually +involves the elements alike of dramatic effect and of pathos. That +singular fact in mortal experience may have been noticed by this author. +His drama is a forcible exposition of it. _The Middleman_ was set upon +Palmer's stage in such a way as to strengthen the dramatic illusion by +the fidelity of scenery. The firing-house, with its furnaces in +operation, was a copy of what may be seen at Worcester. The picture of +English life was excellent. + +When Willard played the part of Judah Llewellyn for the first time in +America (December 29, 1890), he gained from a sympathetic and judicious +audience a verdict of emphatic admiration. Judah Llewellyn is a good +part in one of the most striking plays of the period--a play that tells +an interesting and significant story by expressive, felicitous, and +incessant action; affects the feelings by situations that are vital +with dramatic power; inspires useful thought upon a theme of +psychological importance; cheers the mind with a fresh breeze of +satirical humour; and delights the instinct of taste by its crisp and +pungent style. Alike by his choice of a comparatively original subject +and his deft method in the treatment of it Henry Arthur Jones has shown +a fine dramatic instinct; and equally in the evolution of character and +the expression of experience and emotion he has wrought with feeling and +vigour. Most of the plays that are written, in any given period, pass +away with the period to which they appertain. _Judah_ is one of the +exceptions; for its brilliantly treated theme is one of perennial +interest, and there seems reason to believe, of a work so vital, that +long after the present generation has vanished it still will keep its +place in the theatre, and sometimes be acted, not as a quaint relic but +as a living lesson. + +That theme is the psychic force in human organism. The author does not +obtrude it; does not play the pedant with it; does not lecture upon it; +and above all does not bore with it. He only uses it; and he has been so +true to his province as a dramatist and not an advocate that he never +once assumes to decide upon any question of doctrine that may be +involved in the assertion of it. His heroine is a young woman who thinks +herself to be possessed of a certain inherent restorative power of +curing the sick. This power is of psychic origin and it operates through +the medium of personal influence. This girl, Vashti Dethick, has exerted +her power with some success. Other persons, having felt its good effect, +have admitted its existence. The father of Vashti, an enterprising +scamp, has thereupon compelled the girl to trade upon her peculiar +faculty; little by little to assume miraculous powers; and finally to +pretend that her celestial talent is refreshed and strengthened by +abstinence from food, and that her cures are wrought only after she has +fasted for many days. He has thus converted her into an impostor; yet, +as her heart is pure and her moral principle naturally sound, she is ill +at ease in this false position, and her mental distress has suddenly +become aggravated, almost to the pitch of desperation, by the arrival of +love. She has lost her heart to a young clergyman, Judah Llewellyn, the +purity of whose spirit and the beauty of whose life are a bitter and +burning rebuke to her enforced deceitfulness of conduct. Here is a woman +innocently guilty, suddenly aroused by love, made sensitive and noble +(as that passion commonly makes those persons who really feel it), and +projected into a condition of aggrieved excitement. In this posture of +romantic and pathetic circumstances the crisis of two lives is suddenly +precipitated in action. + +Judah Llewellyn also is possessed of spiritual sensibility and psychic +force. In boyhood a shepherd, he has dwelt among the mountains of his +native Wales, and his imagination has heard the voices that are in rocks +and trees, in the silence of lonely places, in the desolation of the +bleak hills, and in the cold light of distant stars. He is now a +preacher, infatuated with his mission, inspired in his eloquence, +invincible in his tremendous sincerity. He sees Vashti and he loves her. +It is the first thrill of mortal passion that ever has mingled with his +devotion to his Master's work. The attraction between these creatures is +human; and yet it is more of heaven than of earth. It is a tie of +spiritual kindred that binds them. They are beings of a different order +from the common order--and, as happens in such cases, they will be +tried by exceptional troubles and passed through a fire of mortal +anguish. For what reason experience should take the direction of misery +with fine natures in human life no philosopher has yet been able to +ascertain; but that it does take that direction all competent +observation proves. To Vashti and Judah the time speedily comes when +their love is acknowledged, upon both sides--the preacher speaking +plainly; the girl, conscious of turpitude, shrinking from a spoken +avowal which yet her whole personality proclaims. Yielding to her +father's malign will she has consented to make one more manifestation of +curative power, to go through once more,--and for the last time,--the +mockery of a pretended fast. The scene is Lord Asgarby's house; the +patient is Lord Asgarby's daughter--an only child, cursed with +constitutional debility, the foredoomed victim of premature decline. +This frail creature has heard of Vashti and believes in her, and desires +and obtains her society. To Professor Dethick this is, in every sense, a +golden opportunity, and he insists that the starvation test shall be +thoroughly made. Lord Asgarby, willing to do anything for his idolised +daughter, assents to the plan, and his scientific friend, cynical +Professor Jopp, agrees, with the assistance of his erudite daughter, to +supervise the experiment. Vashti will fast for several days, and the +heir of Asgarby will then be healed by her purified and exalted +influence. + +The principal scene of the play shows the exterior of an ancient, unused +tower of Asgarby House, in which Vashti is detained during the fast. The +girl is supposed to be starving. Her scampish father will endeavour to +relieve her. Miss Jopp is vigilant to prevent fraud. The patient is +confident. Judah, wishful to be near to the object of his adoration, has +climbed the outer wall and is watching, beneath the window, unseen, in +the warder's seat. The time is summer, the hour midnight, and the +irrevocable vow of love has been spoken. At that supreme instant, and +under conditions so natural that the picture seems one of actual life, +the sin of Vashti is revealed and the man who had adored her as an angel +knows her for a cheat. With a difference of circumstances that +situation--in the fibre of it--is not new. Many a lover, male and +female, has learned that every idol has its flaw. But the situation is +new in its dramatic structure. For Judah the discovery is a terrible +one, and the resultant agony is convulsive and lamentable. He takes, +however, the only course he could be expected to take: he must vindicate +the integrity of the woman whom he loves, and he commits the crime of +perjury in order to shield her reputation from disgrace. + +What will a man do for the woman whom he loves? The attributes of +individual character are always to be considered as forces likely to +modify passion and to affect conduct. But in general the answer to that +question may be given in three words--anything and everything! The +history of nations, as of individuals, is never rightly read until it is +read in the light of knowledge of the influence that has been exerted +over them by women. Cleopatra, in ancient Egypt, changed the history of +Rome by the ruin of Marc Antony. Another heroine recently toppled +Ireland down the fire-escape into the back-yard. So goes the world. In +Judah, however, the crime that is done for love is pursued to its +consequence of ever-accumulative suffering, until at length, when it has +been expiated by remorse and repentance, it is rectified by confession +and obliterated by pardon. No play ever taught a lesson of truth with +more cogent dramatic force. The cynical, humorous scenes are +delightful. + +Willard's representation of Cyrus Blenkarn stamped him as one of the +best actors of the age. His representation of Judah Llewellyn deepened +that impression and reinforced it with a conviction of marked +versatility. In his utterance of passion Willard showed that he has +advanced far beyond the Romeo stage. The love that he expressed was that +of a man--intellectual, spiritual, noble, a moral being and one +essentially true. Man's love, when it is real, adores its object; +hallows it; invests it with celestial attributes; and beholds it as a +part of heaven. That quality of reverence was distinctly conveyed by the +actor, and therefore to observers who conceive passion to be delirious +abandonment (of which any animal is capable), his ardour may have seemed +dry and cold. It was nevertheless true. He made the tempestuous torrent +of Judah's avowal the more overwhelming by his preliminary +self-repression and his thoughtful gentleness of reserve; for thus the +hunger of desire was beautiful with devotion and tenderness; and while +the actor's feelings seemed borne away upon a whirling tide of +irresistible impulse his exquisite art kept a perfect control of face, +voice, person, demeanour, and delivery, and not once permitted a lapse +into extravagance. The character thus embodied will long be remembered +as an image of dignity, sweetness, moral enthusiasm, passionate fervour, +and intellectual power; but, also, viewed as an effort in the art of +acting, it will be remembered as a type of consummate grace in the +embodiment of a beautiful ideal clearly conceived. The effect of +spiritual suffering, as conveyed in the pallid countenance and ravaged +figure, in the last act, was that of noble pathos. The delivery of all +the speeches of the broken, humiliated, haunted minister was deeply +touching, not alone in music of voice but in denotement of knowledge of +human nature and human suffering and endurance. The actor who can play +such a part in such a manner is not an experimental artist. Rather let +him be called--in the expressive words of one of his country's poets-- + + "Sacred historian of the heart + And moral nature's lord." + + + + +XXIII. + +SALVINI AS KING SAUL AND KING LEAR. + + +Salvini was grander and finer in King Saul than in any other embodiment +that he presented. He seized the idea wholly, and he executed it with +affluent power. He brought to the part every attribute necessary to its +grandeur of form and its afflicting sympathy of spirit. His towering +physique presented, with impressive accuracy, the Hebrew monarch, chosen +of God, who was "lifted a head and shoulders above the people." His +tremulous sensibility, his knowledge of suffering, his skill in +depicting it, his great resources of voice, his vigour and fineness of +action, his exceptional commingling of largeness and gentleness--all +these attributes combined in that performance, to give magnificent +reality to one of the most sublime conceptions in literature. By his +personation of Saul Salvini added a new and an immortal figure to the +stage pantheon of kings and heroes. + +Alfieri's tragedy of _Saul_ was written in 1782-83, when the haughty, +impetuous, and passionate poet was thirty-four years old, and at the +suggestion of the Countess of Albany, whom he loved. He had suffered a +bereavement at the time, and he was in deep grief. The Countess tried to +console him by reading the Bible, and when they came upon the narrative +of Saul the idea of the tragedy was struck out between them. The work +was written with vigorous impulse and the author has left, in his +autobiography, the remark that none of his tragedies cost him so little +labour. _Saul_ is in five acts and it contains 1567 lines--of that +Italian _versi sciolti_ which inadequately corresponds to the blank +verse of the English language. The scene is laid in the camp of Saul's +army. Six persons are introduced, namely, Saul, Jonathan, David, Michel, +Abner, and Achimelech. The time supposed to be occupied by the +action--or rather, by the suffering--of the piece is a single day, the +last in the king's life. Act first is devoted to explanation, conveyed +in warnings to David, by Jonathan, his friend, and Michel, his wife. Act +second presents the distracted monarch, who knows that God has forsaken +him and that death is at hand. In a speech of terrible intensity he +relates to Abner the story of the apparition of Samuel and the doom that +the ghost has spoken. His children humour and soothe the broken old man, +and finally succeed in softening his mind toward David--whom he at once +loves, dreads, and hates, as the appointed instrument of his destruction +and the successor to his crown. Act third shows David playing upon the +harp before Saul, and chanting Saul's deeds in the service and defence +of Israel--so that he calms the agonised delirium of the haunted king +and wins his blessing; but at last a boastful word makes discord in the +music's charm, and Saul is suddenly roused into a ghastly fury. Acts +fourth and fifth deal with the wild caprices and maddening agonies of +the frenzied father; the ever-varying phenomena of his mental disease; +the onslaught of the Philistines; the killing of his sons; the frequent +recurrence, before his mind's eye, of the shade of the dead prophet; and +finally his suicidal death. It is, in form, a classical tragedy, +massive, grand, and majestically simple; and it blazes from end to end +with the fire of a sublime imagination. + +Ardent lovers of Italian literature are fond of ranking _Saul_ with +_Lear_. The claim is natural but it is not valid. In _Lear_--not to +speak of its profound revelations of universal human nature and its vast +philosophy of human life--there is a tremendous scope of action, through +which mental condition and experience are dramatically revealed; and +there is the deepest deep of pathos, because the highest height of +afflicted goodness. In _Saul_ there is simply--upon a limited canvas, +without adjuncts, without the suggestion of resources, without the +relief of even mournful humour, and with a narrative rather than a +dramatic background--the portraiture of a condition; and, because the +man displayed is neither so noble nor so human, the pathos surcharging +the work is neither so harrowing nor so tender. Yet the two works are +akin in majesty of ideal, in the terrible topic of mental disease that +shatters a king, and in the atmosphere of desolation that trails after +them like a funeral pall; and it is not a wonder that Alfieri's Saul +should be deemed the greatest tragedy ever originated in the Italian +language. It attains a superb height, for it keeps an equal pace with +the severe simplicity of the Bible narrative on which it is founded. It +depicts the condition of an imaginative mind, a stately and robust +character, an arrogant, fiery spirit, a kind heart, and a royal and +regally poised nature, that have first been undermined by sin and the +consciousness of sin, and then crazed by contact with the spirit world +and by a nameless dread of the impending anger of an offended God. It +would be difficult to conceive of a more distracting and piteous state. +Awe and terror surround that august sufferer, and make him both holy and +dreadful. In his person and his condition, as those are visible to the +imaginative mind, he combined elements that irresistibly impress and +thrill. He is of vast physical stature, that time has not bent, and of +great beauty of face, that griefs have ravaged but not destroyed. He is +a valiant and sanguinary warrior, and danger seems to radiate from his +presence. He is a magnanimous king and a loving father, and he softens +by generosity and wins by gentleness. He is a maniac, haunted by +spectres and scourged with a whip of scorpions, and his red-eyed fury +makes all space a hell and shatters silence with the shrieks of the +damned. He is a human soul, burdened with the frightful consciousness +of Divine wrath and poised in torment on the precipice that overhangs +the dark, storm-beaten ocean of eternity. His human weakness is frighted +by ghastly visions and indefinite horrors, against which his vain +struggle only makes his forlorn feebleness more piteous and drear. The +gleams of calm that fall upon his tortured heart only light up an abyss +of misery--a vault of darkness peopled by demons. He is already cut off +from among the living, by the doom of inevitable fate, and while we pity +him we fear him. His coming seems attended with monstrous shapes; he +diffuses dissonance; his voice is a cry of anguish or a wail of +desolation; his existence is a tempest; there can be no relief for him +save death, and the death that ends him comes like the blessing of tears +to the scorched eyelids of consuming misery. That is the Saul of the +Bible and of Alfieri's tragedy; and that is the Saul whom Salvini +embodied. It was a colossal monument of human suffering that the actor +presented, and no one could look upon it without being awed and +chastened. + +Salvini's embodiment of King Lear was a remarkable manifestation of +physical resources and of professional skill. The lofty stature, the +ample and resonant voice, the copious animal excitement, the fluent +elocution and the vigorous, picturesque, and often melodramatic +movements, gestures, and poses of Salvini united to animate and +embellish a personality such as would naturally absorb attention and +diffuse excitement. Every artist, however, moves within certain specific +and positive limitations--spiritual, mental, and physical. No actor has +proved equal to every kind of character. Salvini, when he acted Hamlet, +was unspiritual--giving no effect to the haunted tone of that part or to +its weird surroundings; and when he acted Macbeth he was unimaginative, +obscure, common, and therefore inadequate. The only Shakespearean +character that he excelled in is Othello, and even in that his ideal +displayed neither the magnanimity nor the tenderness that are in +Shakespeare's conception. The chief attributes of the Moor that he +interpreted were physical; the loftiest heights that he reached were +terror and distracted grief; but he worked with a pictorial method and a +magnetic vigour that enthralled the feelings even when they did not +command the judgment. + +His performance of King Lear gave new evidence of his limitations. +During the first two acts he made the king a merely restless, choleric, +disagreeable old man, deficient in dignity, destitute of grandeur, and +especially destitute of inherent personal fascination--of the +suggestiveness of ever having been a great man. Lear is a ruin--but he +has been a Titan; the delight of all hearts no less than the monarch of +all minds. The actor who does not invest him with that inherent, +overwhelming personal fascination does not attain to his altitude. The +cruel afflictions that occur in the tragedy do not of themselves +signify: the pity is only that they should occur to him. That is the +spring of all the pathos. In Salvini's Lear there were beautiful moments +and magnificent bits of action. "I gave you all" and "I'm cold myself" +were exquisite points. He missed altogether, however, the more subtle +significance of the reminiscent reference to Cordelia--as in "No more of +that, I have noted it well"--and he gave, at the beginning, no +intimation of impending madness. In fact he introduced no element of +lunacy till he reached the lines about "red-hot spits" in Edgar's first +mad scene. + +Much of Salvini's mechanism in Lear was crude. He put the king behind a +table, in the first scene--which had the effect of preparation for a +lecture; and it pleased him to speak the storm speech away back at the +upper entrance, with his body almost wholly concealed behind painted +crags. With all its moments of power and of tenderness the embodiment +was neither royal, lovable, nor great. It might be a good Italian Lear: +it was not the Lear of Shakespeare. Salvini was particularly out of the +character in the curse scene and in the frantic parting from the two +daughters, because there the quality of the man, behind the action, +seemed especially common. The action, though, was theatrical and had its +due effect. + + + + +XXIV. + +HENRY IRVING AS EUGENE ARAM. + + +Henry Irving's impersonation of Eugene Aram--given in a vein that is +distinctly unique--was one of strange and melancholy grace and also of +weird poetical and pathetic power. + +More than fifty years ago, just after Bulwer's novel on the subject of +Eugene Aram was published, that character first came upon the stage, and +its first introduction to the American theatre occurred at the Bowery, +where it was represented by John R. Scott. Aram languished, however, as +a dramatic person, and soon disappeared. He did not thrive in England, +neither, till, in 1873, Henry Irving, who had achieved great success in +_The Bells_, prompted W.G. Wills to effect his resuscitation in a new +play, and acted him in a new manner. The part then found an actor who +could play it,--investing psychological subtlety with tender human +feeling and romantic grace, and making an imaginary experience of +suffering vital and heartrending in its awful reality. The performance +ranks with the best that Henry Irving has given--with _Mathias_, +_Lesurques_, _Dubosc_, _Louis XI._, and _Hamlet_; those studies of the +night-side of human nature in which his imagination and intellect and +his sombre feeling have been revealed and best exemplified. + +Eugene Aram was born at Ramsgill, in Nidderdale, Yorkshire, in 1704. His +father, Peter Aram, was a man of good family but becoming reduced in +circumstances he took service as a gardener on the estate of Sir Edward +Blackett, of Newby Hall. In 1710 Peter Aram and his family were living +at Bondgate, near Ripon, and there Eugene went to school and learned to +read the New Testament. At a considerably later period he was +instructed, during one month, by the Rev. Mr. Alcock, of Burndall. This +was the extent of the tuition that he ever received from others. For the +rest he was self-taught. He had a natural passion for knowledge and he +displayed wonderful industry in its acquisition. When sixteen years old +he knew something of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and later he made himself +acquainted with Chaldaic and Arabic. His occupation, up to this time, +was that of assistant to his father, the gardener; but about 1720 he was +employed in London as a clerk to a merchant, Mr. Christopher Blackett, a +relative to his father's patron, Sir Edward. He did not remain there +long. A serious illness prostrated him, and on recovering he returned to +Nidderdale, with which romantic region his fate was to be forever +associated. He now became a tutor, and not long after he was employed as +such at a manor-house, near Ramsgill, called Gowthwaite Hall, a +residence built early in the seventeenth century by Sir John Yorke, and +long inhabited by his descendants. While living there he met and courted +Anna Spance, the daughter of a farmer, at the lonely village of +Lofthouse, and in 1731 he married her. The Middlesmoor registry contains +the record of this marriage, and of the baptism and death of their first +child. In 1734 Eugene Aram removed to Knaresborough, where he kept a +school. He had, all this while, sedulously pursued his studies, and he +now was a scholar of extraordinary acquirements, not only in the +languages but in botany, heraldry, and many other branches of learning. +His life seemed fair and his future bright: but a change was at hand. +He had not resided long at Knaresborough before he became acquainted +with three persons most unlike himself in every way. These men were +Henry Terry, Richard Houseman, and Daniel Clarke. Houseman was a +flax-dresser. Clarke was a travelling jeweller. All of them were +intemperate; and it is supposed that the beginning of Eugene Aram's +downfall was the appetite for drink. The confederacy that he formed with +these men is not easily explicable, and probably it never has been +rightly explained. The accepted statement is that it was a confederacy +for fraud and theft. Clarke was reported to be the heir presumptive to a +large fortune. He purchased goods, was punctual in his payments, and +established his credit. He was supposed to be making purchases for a +merchant in London. He dealt largely in gold and silver plate and in +watches, and soon he made a liberal use of his credit to accumulate +valuable objects. In 1744 he disappeared, and he never was seen or heard +of again. His frauds became known, and the houses of Aram and Houseman, +suspected as his associates, were searched, but nothing was found to +implicate either of them. + +Soon after this event Aram left Knaresborough--deserting his wife--and +proceeded to London, where for two years he had employment as a teacher +of Latin. He was subsequently an usher at the boarding school of the +Rev. Anthony Hinton, at Hayes, in Middlesex, and there it was observed +that he displayed an extraordinary and scrupulous tenderness and +solicitude as to the life and safety of even worms and insects--which he +would remove from the garden walks and put into places of security. At a +later period he found employment as a transcriber of acts of Parliament, +for registration in chancery. Still later he became an usher at the Free +School of Lynn, in Norfolk, where, among other labours, he undertook to +make a comparative lexicon, and with this purpose collated over 3000 +words in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Celtic. He had ample +opportunity to leave England but he never did so. At length, in 1759, a +labourer who was digging for limestone, at a place known as St. Robert's +Cave, Thistle Hill, near Knaresborough, came upon a human skeleton, bent +double and buried in the earth. Suspicion was aroused. These bones, it +was surmised, might be those of Daniel Clarke. His mysterious +disappearance and his associates were remembered. The authorities sent +forth and arrested Terry, Houseman, and Eugene Aram, and those persons +were brought to their trial at York. A bold front would have saved them, +for the evidence against them was weak. Aram stood firm, but Houseman +quailed, and presently he turned "state's evidence" and denounced Aram +as the murderer of Clarke. The accused scholar spoke in his own defence, +and with astonishing skill, but he failed to defeat the direct and +decisive evidence of his accomplice. Houseman declared that on the day +of the murder Clarke, Aram, and himself were in company, and were +occupied in disposing of the property which they had obtained; that Aram +proposed to walk in the fields, and that they proceeded, thereupon, at +nightfall, to the vicinity of St. Robert's Cave. Clarke and Aram, he +said, went over the hedge and advanced toward the cave, and Aram struck +Clarke several times upon the breast and head, and so killed him. It was +a dark night, and in the middle of winter, but the moon was shining +through drifting clouds, and Houseman said he could see the movement of +Aram's hand but not the weapon that it held. He was about twelve yards +from the spot of the murder. He testified that the body of Clarke was +buried in the cave. The presiding justice charged against the prisoner +and Eugene Aram was convicted and condemned. He subsequently, it is +said, confessed the crime, alleging to the clergyman by whom he was +attended that his wife had been led into an intrigue by Clarke, and that +this was the cause of the murder. Here, doubtless, is the indication of +the true nature of this tragedy. Aram, prior to his execution, was +confined in York Castle, where he wrote a poem of considerable length +and some merit, and also several shorter pieces of verse. On the morning +of his execution it was found that he had opened a vein in his arm, with +the intent to bleed to death, but the wound was staunched, and he was +taken to Knaresborough and there hanged, and afterward his body was hung +in chains in Knaresborough Forest. His death occurred on August 13, +1759, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. On the night before his +execution he wrote a rhythmical apostrophe to death:-- + + "Come, pleasing rest! eternal slumber fall! + Seal mine, that once must seal the eyes of all! + Calm and composed my soul her journey takes; + No guilt that troubles and no heart that aches." + +Such is the story of Eugene Aram--a story that has furnished the basis +of various fictions, notably of Bulwer's famous novel, and which +inspired one of the best of the beautiful poems of Thomas Hood. Wills +gathered hints from it, here and there, in the making of his play; but +he boldly departed from its more hideous and repulsive incidents and +from the theory of the main character that might perhaps be justified by +its drift. In the construction of the piece Henry Irving made many +material suggestions. The treatment of the character of Aram was devised +by him, and the management of the close of the second act denotes his +felicity of invention. + +The play opens in the rose-garden of a rural rectory in the sweet, green +valley of the shining Nidd. The time is twilight; the season summer; and +here, in a haven of peace and love, the repentant murderer has found a +refuge. Many years have passed since the commission of his crime, and +all those years he has lived a good life, devoted to study, instruction, +and works of benevolence. He has been a teacher of the young, a helper +of the poor, and he has gained respect, affection, and honourable +repute. He is safe in the security of silence and in the calm self-poise +of his adamantine will. His awful secret sleeps in his bosom and is at +rest forever. He has suffered much and he still suffers; yet, lulled +into a false security by the uneventful lapse of years and by that +drifting, desolate, apathetic recklessness which is sequent on the +subsiding storm of passionate sorrow, he has allowed himself to accept a +woman's love and to love her in return, and half to believe that his +long misery has expiated his sin and that even for him there may be a +little happiness yet possible on earth. Eugene Aram, the village +school-master, and Ruth Meadows, the vicar's daughter, are betrothed +lovers; and now, on the eve of their wedding morning, they stand +together among the roses, while the sun is going down and the sweet +summer wind plays softly in the leaves, and from the little gray church +close by a solemn strain of music--the vesper hymn--floats out upon the +stillness of the darkening day. The woman is all happiness, confidence, +and hope; the man, seared and blighted by conscious sin and subdued by +long years of patient submission to the sense of his own unworthiness, +is all gentleness, solicitude, reverence, and sorrow. At this supreme +moment, when now it seems that everything is surely well, the one man in +the world who knows Eugene Aram's secret has become, by seeming chance, +a guest in the vicarage; and even while Ruth places her hand upon her +lover's heart and softly whispers, "If guilt were there, it still should +be my pillow," the shadow of the gathering night that darkens around +them is deepened by the blacker shadow of impending doom. The first act +of the play is simply a picture. It involves no action. It only +introduces the several persons who are implicated in the experience to +be displayed, denotes their relationship to one another, and reveals a +condition of feeling and circumstance which is alike romantic, pathetic, +and perilous, and which is soon to be shattered by the disclosure of a +fatal secret. The act is a preparation for a catastrophe. + +In the second act the opposed characters clash: the movement begins, +and the catastrophe is precipitated. The story opens at nightfall, +proceeds the same evening, and ends at the dawn of the ensuing day. The +scene of act second is a room in the vicarage. Aram and Parson Meadows +are playing chess, and Ruth is hovering about them and roguishly +impeding their play. The purpose accomplished here is the exhibition of +domestic comfort and content, and this is further emphasised by Ruth's +recital of a written tribute that Aram's pupils have sent to him, on the +eve of his marriage. Wounded by this praise the conscience-stricken +wretch breaks off abruptly from his pastime and rushes from the room--an +act of desperate grief which is attributed to his modesty. The parson +soon follows, and Ruth is left alone. Houseman, their casual guest, +having accepted the vicar's hospitable offer of a shelter for the night, +has now a talk with Ruth, and he is startled to hear the name of Eugene +Aram, and thus to know that he has found the man whose fatal secret he +possesses, and upon whose assumed dread of exposure his cupidity now +purposes to feed. In a coarsely jocular way this brutish creature +provokes the indignant resentment of Ruth, by insinuations as to her +betrothed lover's past life; and when, a little later, Ruth and Aram +again meet, she wooingly begs him to tell her of any secret trouble that +may be weighing upon his mind. At this moment Houseman comes upon them, +and utters Aram's name. From that point to the end of the act there is a +sustained and sinewy exposition, strong in spirit and thrilling in +suspense,--of keen intellect and resolute will standing at bay and +making their last battle for life, against the overwhelming odds of +heaven's appointed doom. Aram defies Houseman and is denounced by him; +but the ready adroitness and iron composure of the suffering wretch +still give him supremacy over his foe--till, suddenly, the discovery is +announced of the bones of Daniel Clarke in St. Robert's Cave, and the +vicar commands Aram and Houseman to join him in their inspection. Here +the murderer suffers a collapse. There has been a greater strain than +even he can bear; and, left alone upon the scene, he stands petrified +with horror, seeming, in an ecstasy of nameless fear, to look upon the +spectre of his victim. Henry Irving's management of the apparition +effect was such as is possible only to a man of genius, and such as +words may record but never can describe. + +The third act passes in the churchyard. Aram has fled from the sight of +the skeleton, and has fallen among the graves. It is almost morning. The +ghastly place is silent and dark. The spirit of the murderer is broken, +and his enfeebled body, long since undermined by the grief of remorse +and now chilled by the night dews, is in the throes of death. The +incidents of the closing scene are simple, but they are heart-breaking +in their pathos and awful in their desolation. The fugitive Houseman +finds Aram here, and spurns him as a whimpering lunatic. Then, in this +midnight hour and this appalling place, alone in the presence of God, +the murderer lifts his hands toward heaven, confesses his crime, and +falls at the foot of the cross. Here Ruth finds him, and to her, with +dying lips, he tells the story of the murder and of all that he has +since endured. And just as his voice falters into silence and his heart +ceases to beat, the diamond light of morning gleams in the eastern sky +and the glad music of an anthem floats softly from the neighbouring +church. Upon that beautifully significant picture the final curtain +fell. + +Wills's literary framework for the display of character and experience +is scarcely to be considered a perfect play. It begins by assuming on +the part of its auditor a knowledge of the mystery upon which it is +based. Such a knowledge the auditor ought certainly to have, but in +presence of an exact drama he derives it from what he sees and not from +remembrance of what he has read. The piece is, perhaps, somewhat +irrational in making Aram a resident, under his own name, of the actual +neighbourhood of his crime. It lowers the assumed nobility of his +character, furthermore, by making this remorseful and constantly +apprehensive murderer willing to yoke a sweet, innocent, and idolised +woman to misery and shame by making her his wife. And it mars its most +pathetic scene--the awful scene of the midnight confession in the +churchyard--by making Eugene Aram declare, to the woman of his love, the +one human being who comforts and sustains him on the brink of eternity, +that he has loved another woman for whose sake he did the murder. Since +the whole story was to be treated in a fanciful manner, a still wider +license in the play of fancy would, perhaps, have had a more entirely +gracious and satisfying effect. The language is partly blank verse and +partly prose; and, while its tissue is rightly and skilfully diversified +by judicious allowance for the effect of each character upon the garment +of individual diction, and while its strain, here and there, rises to +eloquence of feeling and beauty of imagery, there is a certain lack of +firmness in its verbal fibre. The confession speech that has to be +spoken by Aram comprises upward of ninety lines--and that is a severe +and perilous strain upon an actor's power of holding the public +interest. The beauties of the play, however, are many and strong. Its +crowning excellence is that it gives dramatic permanence to a strangely +interesting character. + +The knowledge of human nature that Henry Irving revealed in this part +and the manner in which he revealed it were nothing less than wonderful. +The moment he walked upon the scene you saw the blighted figure of a man +who has endured, and is enduring, spiritual torment. The whole +personality was suffused with a mournful strangeness. The man was +isolated and alone. It was a purely ideal view of the character that +the actor denoted; for he made Eugene Aram a noble, tender, gentle +person, whom ungovernable passion, under circumstances of overwhelming +provocation, had once impelled to an act of half-justifiable homicide, +and who had for years been slowly dying with remorse. He touched no +chord of terror, but only the chord of pity. Like his portrayal of +Mathias, the picture showed the reactionary effect of hidden sin in the +human soul; but the personality of the sufferer was entirely different. +Each of those men has had experience of crime and of resultant misery, +but no two embodiments could possibly be more dissimilar, alike in +spiritual quality and in circumstances. Mathias is dominated by paternal +love and characterised by a half-defiant, ever-vigilant, and often +self-approbative pride of intellect, in being able to guard and keep a +terrible and dangerous secret. Eugene Aram is dominated by a saint-like +tenderness toward a sweet woman who loves him, and characterised by a +profound, fitful melancholy, now humble and submissive, now actively +apprehensive and almost frenzied. Only once does he stand at bay and +front his destiny with a defiance of desperate will; and even then it is +for the woman's sake rather than for his own. Henry Irving's acting +made clear and beautiful that condition of temperament. A noble and +affectionate nature, shipwrecked, going to pieces, doomed, but making +one last tremendous though futile effort to avert the final and +inevitable ruin--this ideal was made actual in his performance. The +intellectual or spiritual value of such a presentment must depend upon +the auditor's capacity to absorb from a tragedy its lessons of insight +into the relations of the human soul to the moral government of the +world. Many spectators would find it merely morbid and gloomy; others +would find it superlatively illuminative and eloquent. Its artistic +value the actor himself made evident to every comprehension. There is a +moment of the performance when the originally massive and passionate +character of Eugene Aram is suddenly asserted above his meekness, +contrition, and sorrow; when, at the sound of his enemy's voice, he +first becomes petrified with the sense of peril, and then calmly gathers +all his powers to meet and conquer the danger. The splendid +concentration, the perfect poise, the sustained intensity, the copious +and amazing variety and force of emotion, and the positive, unerring, +and brilliant art with which Henry Irving met that emergency and +displayed that frightful and piteous aspect of assailed humanity, +desperate and fighting for life, made up such an image of genius as +seldom is seen and never will be forgotten. Rapid transition has ever +been one of the commonest and most effective expedients used in +histrionic art. This, on the contrary, was an example of sustained, +prolonged, cumulative, artistic expression of the most harrowing and +awful emotions with which the human soul can be convulsed; and it was a +wonder of consummate acting. The same thoroughness of identification and +the same astonishing adequacy of feeling pervaded the scene in the +churchyard. At first, in the dusky starlight, only a shapeless figure, +covered with a black cloak, was seen among the gravestones, crouched +upon a tomb; but the man that rose, as if out of the grave, pallid, +emaciated, ghastly, the spectre of himself, was the authentic image of +majestic despair, not less sublime than pitiable, and fraught with a +power that happiness could never attain. Not in our time upon the stage +has such a lesson been taught, with such overwhelming pathos, of the +utter helplessness of even the strongest human will, when once the soul +has been vitiated by sin and the eternal law of right defied by mortal +passion. In the supplication to his astonished accomplice the actor +seemed like one transfigured, and there the haunted effect was extremely +awful. + + + + +XXV. + +CHARLES FISHER. + + +In old times Charles Fisher often figured in the old comedies, and he +was one of the last of the thin and rapidly lessening group of actors +capable of presenting those pieces--wherein, although the substance be +human nature, the manner is that of elaborate and diversified artifice. +When he played Lieutenant Worthington, in _The Poor Gentleman_, he was a +gentleman indeed--refined, delicate, sensitive, simply courageous, +sustained by native integrity, and impressive with a dignity of manner +that reflected the essential nobility of his mind; so that when he +mistook Sir Robert Bramble for a bailiff, and roused that benevolent +baronet's astonishment and rage, he brought forth all the comic humour +of a delightful situation with the greatest ease and nature. He played +Littleton Coke, Sir Harcourt Courtly, old Laroque--in which he gave a +wonderful picture of the working of remorse in the frail and failing +brain of age--and Nicholas Rue, in _Secrets worth Knowing_, a sinister +and thrilling embodiment of avarice and dotage. He played Dr. Bland, the +elegant medical cynic of _Nos Intimes_; De la Tour, the formidable, +jealous husband of Henriette, in _Le Patte de Mouche_; Horace, in _The +Country Squire_; Goldfinch, in which he was airy, sagacious, dashing, +and superb, in _The Road to Ruin_; and Captain Cozzens, the nonchalant +rascal of _The Knights of the Round Table_, which he embodied in a style +of easy magnificence, gay, gallant, courageous, alert, imperturbable, +and immensely comic. He was the original Matthew Leigh in Lester +Wallack's romantic play of _Rosedale_ (1863). He acted Joseph Surface in +the days when Lester Wallack used to play Charles, and he always held +his own in that superior part. He was equally fine in Sir Peter and Sir +Oliver. When the good old play of _The Wife's Secret_ was revived in New +York, in 1864, he gave a dignified and impetuous performance of Sir +Walter Amyott. I remember him in those parts, with equal wonder at his +comprehensive variety of talent and admiration for his always adequate +skill. I saw him as the volatile Ferment, in _The School of Reform_, +and nothing could be more comic than his unwitting abuse of General +Tarragon, in that blustering officer's presence, or his equally +ludicrous scene of cross purposes with Bob Tyke. He was a perfect type, +as Don Manuel Velasco, in _The Compact_, of the gallant, stately Spanish +aristocrat. He excelled competition when, in a company that included +George Holland, W. Holston, A.W. Young, Mark Smith, Frederick C.P. +Robinson, and John Gilbert, he enacted the convict in _Never Too Late to +Mend_. He was equally at home whether as the King in _Don Cæsar de +Bazan_ or as Tom Stylus the literary hack, in _Society_. He passed +easily from the correct and sentimental Sir Thomas Clifford, of _The +Hunchback_, to the frivolous Mr. Willowear, of _To Marry or Not to +Marry_. No one could better express than he did, when playing Wellborn, +both pride of birth and pride of character. One of his most +characteristic works was Hyssop, in _The Rent Day_. His scope and the +rich resources of his experience are denoted in those citations. It is +no common artist who can create and sustain a perfect illusion, and +please an audience equally well, whether in such a part as Gilbert +Featherstone, the villain, in _Lost in London_, or old Baptista, in _The +Taming of the Shrew_. The playgoer who never saw Charles Fisher as +Triplet can scarcely claim that he ever saw the part at all. The quaint +figure, the well-saved but threadbare dress, the forlorn air of poverty +and suffering commingled with a certain jauntiness and pluck, the +profound feeling, the unconscious sweetness and humour, the spirit of +mind, gentility, and refinement struggling through the confirmed +wretchedness of the almost heart-broken hack--who that ever laughed and +wept at sight of him in the garret scene, sitting down, "all joy and +hilarity," to write his comedy, can ever forget those details of a true +and touching embodiment? His fine skill in playing the violin was +touchingly displayed in that part, and gave it an additional tone of +reality. I once saw him acting Mercutio, and very admirable he was in +the guise of that noble, brave, frolicsome, impetuous young gentleman. +The intense vitality, the glancing glee, the intrepid spirit--all were +preserved; and the brilliant text was spoken with faultless fluency. It +is difficult to realise that the same actor who set before us that +perfect image of comic perplexity, the bland and benevolent Dean, in +_Dandy Dick_, could ever have been the bantering companion of Romeo and +truculent adversary of fiery Tybalt. Yet this contrast but faintly +indicates the versatile character of his mind. Fisher was upon the +American stage for thirty-eight years, from August 30, 1852, when he +came forth at Burton's theatre as Ferment. Later he went to Wallack's, +and in 1872 he joined Daly's company, in which he remained till 1890. It +may be conjectured that in some respects he resembled that fine comedian +Thomas Dogget, to whom Sir Godfrey Kneller, the painter, said, "I can +only copy Nature from the originals before me, while you vary them at +pleasure and yet preserve the likeness." Like Dogget he played, in a +vein of rich, hearty, jocose humour, and with great breadth of effect +and excellent colour, the sailor Ben, in _Love for Love_. The +resemblance was in mental characteristics, not physique--for Dogget was +a slight and sprightly man, whereas Fisher could represent majesty as +well as frolic. After he went to Daly's theatre he manifested a +surprising range of faculty. He first appeared there on October 28, +1872, as Mr. Dornton, in _The Road to Ruin_, and on November 19, +following, he acted Falstaff for the first time. He presented there the +other Shakespearean parts of Leonatus, Armado, and Malvolio--the last of +these being a model of fidelity to the poet, and now a classic in +reputation. He also assumed Adam and Jaques. He presented the living +image of Shakespeare himself, in _Yorick_, and his large, broad, stately +style gave weight to Don Manuel, in _She Would and She Wouldn't_; to +that apt type of the refined British aristocrat, Sir Geoffrey Champneys, +in _Our Boys_; and to many a noble father or benevolent uncle of the +adapted French society drama. Just as Dogget was supreme in such parts +as Fondlewife, so was Fisher superb in the uxorious husband whom the +demure child-wife bamboozles, in the comedies of Molière. No man has +ever better depicted than he did a sweet nature shocked by calamity and +bowed down with grief, or, as in Joe Chirrup, in _Elfie_, manliness +chastened by affliction and ennobled by true love: yet his impersonation +of Fagin was only second to that of J.W. Wallack, Jr.; his Moody, in +_The Country Girl_, was almost tragic in its grim and grizzled +wretchedness and snarling wrath; and I have seen him assume to +perfection the gaunt figure and crazy mood of Noah Learoyd, in _The Long +Strike_, and make that personality a terrible embodiment of menace. From +the time he first acted the comic Major Vavasour, in _Henry Dunbar_, no +actor of equal quaintness has trod our stage. He died on June 11, 1891, +and was buried at Woodlawn. + + + + +XXVI. + +MRS. G.H. GILBERT. + + +Students of the English stage find in books on that subject abundant +information about the tragedy queens of the early drama, and much +likewise, though naturally somewhat less (because comedy is more +difficult to discuss than tragedy), about the comedy queens. Mrs. Cibber +still discomfits the melting Mrs. Porter by a tenderness even greater +than the best of Belvideras could dispense. Mrs. Bracegirdle and Mrs. +Oldfield still stand confronted on the historic page, and still their +battle continues year after year. All readers know the sleepy voice and +horrid sigh of Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth's awful scene of haunted +somnambulism; the unexampled and unexcelled grandeur of Mrs. Yates in +Medea; the infinite pathos of Mrs. Dancer (she that became in succession +Mrs. Spranger Barry and Mrs. Crawford) and her memorable scream, as Lady +Randolph, at "Was he alive?"; the comparative discomfiture of both +those ladies by Mrs. Siddons, with her wonderful, wailing cry, as +Isabella, "O, my Biron, my Biron," her overwhelming Lady Macbeth and her +imperial Queen Katharine. The brilliant story of Peg Woffington and the +sad fate of Mrs. Robinson, the triumphant career of Mrs. Abington and +the melancholy collapse of Mrs. Jordan--all those things, and many more, +are duly set down in the chronicles. But the books are comparatively +silent about the Old Women of the stage--an artistic line no less +delightful than useful, of which Mrs. G.H. Gilbert is a sterling and +brilliant representative. Mrs. Jefferson, the great-grandmother of the +comedian Joseph Jefferson, who died of laughter, on the stage (1766-68), +might fitly be mentioned as the dramatic ancestor of such actresses as +Mrs. Gilbert. She was a woman of great loveliness of character and of +great talent for the portrayal of "old women," and likewise of certain +"old men" in comedy. "She had," says Tate Wilkinson, "one of the best +dispositions that ever harboured in a human breast"; and he adds that +"she was one of the most elegant women ever beheld." Mrs. Gilbert has +always suggested that image of grace, goodness, and piquant ability. +Mrs. Vernon was the best in this line until Mrs. Gilbert came; and the +period which has seen Mrs. Judah, Mrs. Vincent, Mrs. Germon, Mary Carr, +Mrs. Chippendale, Mrs. Stirling, Mrs. Billington, Mrs. Drew, Mrs. +Phillips, and Madam Ponisi, has seen no superior to Mrs. Gilbert in her +special walk. She was in youth a beautiful dancer, and all her motions +have spontaneous ease and grace. She can assume the fine lady, without +for an instant suggesting the parvenu. She is equally good, whether as +the formal and severe matron of starched domestic life, or the genial +dame of the pantry. She could play Temperance in _The Country Squire_, +and equally she could play Mrs. Jellaby. All varieties of the +eccentricity of elderly women, whether serious or comic, are easily +within her grasp. Betsy Trotwood, embodied by her, becomes a living +reality; while on the other hand she suffused with a sinister horror her +stealthy, gliding, uncanny personation of the dumb, half-insane Hester +Dethridge. That was the first great success that Mrs. Gilbert gained, +under Augustin Daly's management. She has been associated with Daly's +company since his opening night as a manager, August 16, 1869, when, at +the Fifth Avenue theatre, then in Twenty-fourth Street, she took part in +Robertson's comedy of _Play_. The first time I ever saw her she was +acting the Marquise de St. Maur, in _Caste_, on the night of its first +production in America, August 5, 1867, at the Broadway theatre, the +house near the southwest corner of Broadway and Broome Street, that had +been Wallack's but now was managed by Barney Williams. The assumption of +that character, perfect in every particular, was instinct with pure +aristocracy; but while brilliant with serious ability it gave not the +least hint of those rich resources of humour that since have diffused so +much innocent pleasure. Most of her successes have been gained as the +formidable lady who typifies in comedy the domestic proprieties and the +Nemesis of respectability. It was her refined and severely correct +demeanour that gave soul and wings to the wild fun of _A Night Off_. +From Miss Garth to Mrs. Laburnum is a far stretch of imitative talent +for the interpretation of the woman nature that everybody, from +Shakespeare down, has found it so difficult to treat. This actress has +never failed to impress the spectator by her clear-cut, brilliant +identification with every type of character that she has assumed; and, +back of this, she has denoted a kind heart and a sweet and gentle yet +never insipid temperament--the condition of goodness, sympathy, +graciousness, and cheer that is the flower of a fine nature and a good +life. Scenes in which Mrs. Gilbert and Charles Fisher or James Lewis +have participated, as old married people, on Daly's stage, will long be +remembered for their intrinsic beauty--suggestive of the touching lines: + + "And when with envy Time, transported, + Shall think to rob us of our joys, + You'll in your girls again be courted, + And I'll go wooing with my boys." + + + + +XXVII. + +JAMES LEWIS. + + +A prominent representative type of character is "the humorous man," and +that is Shakespeare's phrase to describe him. Wit is a faculty; humour +an attribute. Joseph Addison, Laurence Sterne, Washington +Irving--whatever else they might have been they were humourists. Sir +Roger de Coverley, Tristram Shandy, Uncle Toby, Diedrich Knickerbocker, +Ichabod Crane--these and other creations of their genius stand forth +upon their pages to exemplify that aspect of their minds. But the +humourist of the pen may, personally, be no humourist at all. Addison's +character was austere. Irving, though sometimes gently playful, was +essentially grave and decorous. + +Comical quality in the humorous man whom nature destines for the stage +must be personal. His coming brings with it a sense of comfort. His +presence warms the heart and cheers the mind. The sound of his voice, +"speaking oft," before he emerges upon the scene, will set the theatre +in a roar. This was notably true of Burton and of William Warren. The +glance, motion, carriage, manner, and the pause and stillness of such a +man, instil merriment. Cibber says that Robert Nokes had a palpable +simplicity of nature which was often as unaccountably diverting in his +common speech as on the stage, John E. Owens, describing the conduct of +a big bee in an empty molasses barrel, once threw a circle of his +hearers, of whom I was one, almost into convulsions of laughter. Artemas +Ward made people laugh the moment they beheld him, by his wooden +composure and indescribable sapience of demeanour. The lamented Daniel +E. Setchell, a comedian who would have been as famous as he was funny +had he but lived longer, presented a delightful example of spontaneous +humour. It is ludicrous to recall the simple gravity, not demure but +perfectly solemn, with which, on the deck of a Hudson River steamboat, +as we were passing West Point, he indicated to me the Kosciuszko +monument, saying briefly, "That's the place where Freedom shrieked." It +was the quality of his temperament that made his playfulness delicious. +Setchell was the mental descendant of Burton, as Burton was of Reeve and +as Reeve was of Liston. Actors illustrate a kind of heredity. Each +species is distinct and discernible. Lester Wallack maintained the +lineage of Charles Kemble, William Lewis, Elliston, and Mountfort--a +line in which John Drew has gained auspicious distinction. John +Gilbert's artistic ancestry could be traced back through Farren and +Munden to King and Quin, and perhaps still further, to Lowin and Kempe. + +The comedian intrinsically comical, while in his characteristic quality +eccentric and dry, has been exemplified by Fawcett, Blisset, Finn, and +Barnes, and is conspicuously presented by James Lewis. No one ever saw +him without laughter--and it is kindly laughter, with a warm heart +behind it. The moment he comes upon the stage an eager gladness diffuses +itself throughout the house. His refined quaintness and unconscious +drollery capture all hearts. His whimsical individuality never varies; +yet every character of the many that he has portrayed stands clearly +forth among its companions, a distinct, unique embodiment. The graceful +urbanity, the elaborate yet natural manner, the brisk vitality, the +humorous sapience of Sir Patrick Lundy--how completely and admirably he +expressed them! How distinct that fine old figure is in the remembrance +of all who saw it! But he has never played a part that he did not make +equally distinct. A painter might fill a gallery with odd, +characteristic creations by merely copying his compositions of +"make-up." The amiable professor in _A Night Off_, the senile Gunnion in +_The Squire_, Lissardo in _The Wonder_, Grumio in _The Shrew_--those and +many more he has made his own; while in the actor's province of making +comic characters really comical to others there is no artist who better +fulfils the sagacious, comprehensive injunction of Munden (imparted to a +youthful actor who spoke of being "natural" in order to amuse), "Nature +be d----d! Make the people laugh!" That, aside from all subtleties, is +not a bad test of the comic faculty, and that test has been met and +borne by the acting of James Lewis. + + + + +XXVIII. + +A LEAF FROM MY JOURNAL. + + +[November 23, 1867.] + +Thirty years hereafter many who are now active and honoured in dramatic +life will be at rest--their work concluded, their achievements a fading +tradition. But they will not be wholly forgotten. The same talisman of +memory that has preserved to our time the names and the deeds of the +actors of old will preserve to future times the names and the deeds that +are distinguished now in the mimic world of the stage. Legend, speaking +in the voice of the veteran devotee of the drama, will say, for example, +that of all the actors of this period there was no light comedian +comparable with Lester Wallack; that he could thoroughly identify +himself with character,--though it did not always please him to do so; +that his acting was so imaginative and so earnest as to make reality of +the most gossamer fiction; and that his vivacity--the essential element +and the crown of comedy-acting--was like the dew on the opening rose. +And therewithal the veteran may quaff his glass to the memory of another +member of the Wallack family, and speak of James Wallack as Cassius, and +Fagin, and the Man-in-the-Iron-Mask, and the King of the Commons, and +may say, with truth, that a more winning embodiment of bluff manliness +and humour was never known to our stage than the versatile actor who +made himself foremost in those characters. It will be impossible to +remember him without recalling his intimate professional associate, +Edwin L. Davenport. He was the only Brutus of his time, our old friend +will say, and in his prime the best Macbeth on the American stage; and +he could play almost any part in the drama, from the loftiest tragedy to +mere trash; and he was an admirable artist in all that he did. There +will be plenty of evidence to fortify that statement; and if the veteran +shall also say that Wallack's company contained, at the same time, the +best "old men" in the profession, no dissentient voice, surely, will +challenge the names of George Holland, John Gilbert, James H. Stoddart, +and Mark Smith. Cibber could play Lord Foppington at seventy-three; but +George Holland played Tony Lumpkin at seventy-seven. A young part,--but +the old man was as joyous as a boy and filled it with a boisterous, +mischievous humour at once delightful and indescribable. You saw him to +the best advantage, though, in Mr. Sulky, Humphrey Dobbin, and kindred +parts, wherein the fineness of his temperament was veiled under a +crabbed exterior and some scope was allowed for his superb skill in +painting character. So the discourse will run; and, when it touches upon +John Gilbert, what else than this will be its burden?--that he was +perfection as the old fop; that his Lord Ogleby had no peer; that he was +the oddest conceivable compound of dry humour, quaint manners, +frolicsome love of mischief, honest, hearty mirth, manly dignity, and +tender pathos. To Mark Smith it will render a kindred tribute. Squire +Broadlands, Old Rapid, Sir Oliver Surface--they cannot be forgotten. +Extraordinary truthfulness to nature, extraordinary precision of method, +large humanity, strong intellect, and refined and delicate humour that +always charmed and never offended--those were the qualities that +enrolled him among the best actors of his time. And it will not be +strange if Old Mortality passes then into the warmest mood of eulogium, +as he strives to recall the admirable, the incomparable "old woman" Mrs. +Vernon. She was a worthy mate of those worthies, he will exclaim. She +could be the sweet and loving mother, gentle and affectionate; the +stately lady, representative of rank and proud of it and true to it; and +the most eccentric of ludicrous old fools. She was the ideal Mrs. +Malaprop, and she surpassed all competitors in the character of Mrs. +Hardcastle. Mary Gannon was her stage-companion and her foil, he will +add--the merriest, most mischievous, most bewitching player of her time, +in her peculiar line of art. As Hester, in _To Marry or Not to Marry_, +and as Sophia, in _The Road to Ruin_, she was the incarnation of girlish +grace and delicious ingenuousness, and also of crisp, well-flavoured +mirth. No taint of tameness marred her acting in those kindred +characters, and no air of effort made it artificial. Nor was Fanny +Morant less remarkable for the glitter of comedy and for an almost +matchless precision of method. So will our friend of the future prose +on, in a vein that will be tedious enough to matter-of-fact people; but +not tedious to gentle spirits who love the stage, and sympathise with +its votaries, and keep alive its traditions--knowing that this mimic +world is as real and earnest as the strife that roars and surges around +it; that there as everywhere else humanity plays out its drama, whereof +the moral is always the same--that whether on the stage or in the mart, +on the monarch's throne or in the peasant's cot, + + "We are such stuff + As dreams are made on, and our little life + Is rounded with a sleep." + + +THE END. + + + + +THE WORKS OF + +WILLIAM WINTER. + + +SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND. 18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +GRAY DAYS AND GOLD. 18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +SHADOWS OF THE STAGE. 18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +SHADOWS OF THE STAGE. Second Series. 18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +OLD SHRINES AND IVY. 18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +Also a Small Limited LARGE PAPER EDITION. 4 Vols. Uniform. $8.00. + +WANDERERS: A Collection of Poems. NEW EDITION. WITH A PORTRAIT. 18MO, +CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +"The supreme need of this age in America is a practical conviction that +progress does not consist in material prosperity, but in spiritual +advancement. Utility has long been exclusively worshipped. The welfare +of the future lies in the worship of beauty. To that worship these pages +are devoted, with all that implies of sympathy with the higher +instincts, and faith in the divine destiny of the human race."--_From +the Preface to Gray Days and Gold_. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK + + + + +WANDERERS; + +BEING + +A Collection of the Poems of William Winter. + +New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. With a Portrait of the Author. + +18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +Also a Limited LARGE PAPER EDITION, printed on English Hand-made Paper. +Price $2.50. + + +"But it has seemed to the author of these poems--which of course are +offered as absolutely impersonal--that they are the expression of +various representative moods of human feeling and various representative +aspects of human experience, and that therefore they may possibly +possess the inherent right to exist."--_From the Preface_. + +"The verse of Mr. Winter is dedicated mainly to love and wine, to +flowers and birds and dreams, to the hackneyed and never-to-be-exhausted +repertory of the old singers. His instincts are strongly conservative; +his confessed aim is to belong to 'that old school of English Lyrical +Poetry, of which gentleness is the soul, and simplicity the +garment.'"--_Saturday Review_. + +"The poems have a singular charm in their graceful spontaneity."--_Scots +Observer_. + +"Free from cant and rant--clear cut as a cameo, pellucid as a mountain +brook. It may be derided as trite, _borné_, unimpassioned; but in its +own modest sphere it is, to our thinking, extraordinarily successful, +and satisfies us far more than the pretentious mouthing which receives +the seal of over-hasty approbation."--_Athenæum_. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. + + + + +SHADOWS OF THE STAGE. + +18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + + +"The fame of the actor more than that of any other artist is an +evanescent one--a 'bubble reputation'--indeed, and necessarily so from +the conditions under which his genius is exercised. While the impression +it makes is often more vivid and inspiring for the moment than that of +the poet and the painter, it vanishes almost with the occasion which +gave it birth, and lives only as a tradition in the memory of those to +whom it had immediately appealed. 'Shadows they are, and shadows they +pursue.' + +"The writer, therefore, who, gifted with insight and a poetic enthusiasm +which enables him to discern on the one hand the beauties in a dramatic +work not perceived by the many, and on the other the qualities in the +actor which have made him a true interpreter of the poet's thought, at +the same time possessing the faculty of revealing to us felicitously the +one, and the other is certainly entitled to our grateful recognition. + +"Such a writer is Mr. William Winter, easily the first,--for we know of +none other living in this country, or in the England he loves so much, +in whose nature the critic's vision is united with that of the poet so +harmoniously.... + +"Over and above all this, there is in these writings the same charm of +style, poetic glamour and flavor of personality which distinguish +whatever comes to us from Mr. Winter's pen, and which make them unique +in our literature."--_Home Journal_, New York + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. + + + + +OLD SHRINES AND IVY. + +18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + + +CONTENTS. + + _SHRINES OF HISTORY._ + + I. Storied Southampton. + + II. Pageantry and Relics. + + III. The Shakespeare Church. + + IV. A Stratford Chronicle. + + V. From London to Dover. + + VI. Beauties of France. + + VII. Ely and its Cathedral. + + VIII. From Edinburgh to Inverness. + + IX. The Field of Culloden. + + X. Stormbound Iona. + + _SHRINES OF LITERATURE._ + + XI. The Forest of Arden: As You Like It. + + XII. Fairy Land: A Midsummer Night's Dream. + + XIII. Will o' the Wisp: Love's Labour Lost. + + XIV. Shakespeare's Shrew. + + XV. A Mad World: Anthony and Cleopatra. + + XVI. Sheridan, and the School for Scandal. + + XVII. Farquhar, and the Inconstant. + +XVIII. Longfellow. + + XIX. A Thought on Cooper's Novels. + + XX. A Man of Letters: John R.G. Hassard. + +"Whatever William Winter writes is marked by felicity of diction and by +refinement of style, as well as by the evidence of culture and wide +reading. 'Old Shrines and Ivy' is an excellent example of the charm of +his work."--_Boston Courier_. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND. + +18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + + +"... It was the author's wish, in dwelling thus upon the rural +loveliness, and the literary and historical associations of that +delightful realm, to afford sympathetic guidance and useful suggestion +to other American travellers who, like himself, might be attracted to +roam among the shrines of the mother-land. Temperament is the +explanation of style; and he has written thus of England because she has +filled his mind with beauty and his heart with mingled joy and sadness; +and surely some memory of her venerable ruins, her ancient shrines, her +rustic glens, her gleaming rivers, and her flower-spangled meadows will +mingle with the last thoughts that glimmer through his brain when the +shadows of the eternal night are falling and the ramble of life is +done."--_From the Preface_. + +"He offers something more than guidance to the American traveller. He is +a convincing and eloquent interpreter of the august memories and +venerable sanctities of the old country."--_Saturday Review_. + +"The book is delightful reading."--_Scribner's Monthly_. + +"Enthusiastic and yet keenly critical notes and comments on English life +and scenery."--_Scotsman_. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. + + + + +GRAY DAYS AND GOLD. + +18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + + +CONTENTS. + +Classic Shrines. + Haunted Glens and Houses. + Old York. +The Haunts of Moore. + Beautiful Bath. + The Lakes and Fells of Wordsworth. +Shakespeare Relics at Worcester. + Byron and Hucknall Torkard. + Historic Nooks and Corners. + Shakespeare's Town. +Up and Down the Avon. + Rambles in Arden. + The Stratford Fountain. + Bosworth Field. + The Home of Dr. Johnson. +From London to Edinburgh. + Into the Highlands. + Highland Beauties. + The Heart of Scotland. + Sir Walter Scott. +Elegiac Memorials. + Scottish Pictures. + Imperial Ruins. + The Land of Marmion. + At Vesper Time. + +This book, which is intended as a companion to _Shakespeare's England_, +relates to the gray days of an American wanderer in the British Isles, +and to the gold of thought and fancy that can be found there. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. + + + + +GRAY DAYS AND GOLD. + +18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + + +PRESS NOTICES. + +"Mr. Winter's graceful and meditative style in his English sketches has +recommended his earlier volume upon (Shakespeare's) England to many +readers, who will not need urging to make the acquaintance of this +companion book, in which the traveller guides us through the quiet and +romantic scenery of the mother-country with a mingled affection and +sentiment of which we have had no example since Irving's day."--_The +Nation_. + +"As friendly and good-humoured a book on English scenes as any American +has written since Washington Irving."--_Daily News_, _London_. + +"Much that is bright and best in our literature is brought once more to +our dulled memories. Indeed, we know of but few volumes containing so +much of observation, kindly comment, philosophy, and artistic weight as +this unpretentious little book."--_Chicago Herald_. + +"They who have never visited the scenes which Mr. Winter so charmingly +describes will be eager to do so in order to realize his fine +descriptions of them, and they who have already visited them will be +incited by his eloquent recital of their attractions to repeat their +former pleasant experiences."--_Public Ledger_, _Philadelphia_. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. + + + + +THE NOVEL: WHAT IT IS. + + +By F. MARION CRAWFORD, + +AUTHOR OF "CHILDREN OF THE KING," "A ROMAN SINGER," "SARACINESCA," ETC. + +With Photogravure Portrait of the Author. + +_18mo. Cloth. 75 cents._ + + +THE CHOICE OF BOOKS, AND OTHER LITERARY PIECES. + +By FREDERIC HARRISON, + +AUTHOR OF "OLIVER CROMWELL," ETC. + +_18mo. Cloth. 75 cents._ + + +"Mr. Harrison is an able and conscientious critic, a good logician, and +a clever man; his faults are superficial, and his book will not fail to +be valuable."--_N.Y. Times_. + +Mr. JOHN MORLEY, in his speech on the study of literature at the Mansion +House, 26th February, 1887, said: + +"Those who are curious as to what they should read in the region of pure +literature will do well to peruse my friend Frederic Harrison's volume +called _The Choice of Books_. You will find there as much wise thought, +eloquently and brilliantly put, as in any volume of its size." + +"Mr. Harrison furnishes a valuable contribution to the subject. It is +full of suggestiveness and shrewd analytical criticism. It contains the +fruits of wide reading and rich research."--_London Times_. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., Publishers, + +NEW YORK. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Shadows of the Stage, by William Winter + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHADOWS OF THE STAGE *** + +***** This file should be named 18860-8.txt or 18860-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/8/6/18860/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Shadows of the Stage + +Author: William Winter + +Release Date: July 18, 2006 [EBook #18860] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHADOWS OF THE STAGE *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h1>SHADOWS OF THE<br /> +STAGE</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>WILLIAM WINTER</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i16"><i>"The best in this kind are but shadows"</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span></p> + +<h4> +NEW YORK<br /> +MACMILLAN AND COMPANY<br /> +<span class="smcap">and London</span><br /> +1893<br /> +</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p class="center"> +<span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1892,<br /> +<span class="smcap">By</span> MACMILLAN & CO.<br /> +</p> + +<p>Set up and electrotyped May, 1892. Large Paper Edition printed May. +Ordinary Edition reprinted June, August, November, 1892; January, June, +October, November, 1893.</p> + +<p class="center"> +Norwood Press:<br /> +J.S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith.<br /> +Boston, Mass., U.S.A.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>TO</h2> + +<h1>Henry Irving</h1> + +<h3> +IN MEMORY AND IN HONOUR<br /> +OF ALL THAT HE HAS DONE<br /> +TO DIGNIFY AND ADORN THE STAGE<br /> +AND TO ENNOBLE SOCIETY<br /> +THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED<br /> +</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i16"><i>"Cui laurus æternos honores</i><br /></span> +<span class="i16"><i>Delmatico peperit triumpho"</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE.</h2> + + +<p><i>The papers contained in this volume, chosen out of hundreds that the +author has written on dramatic subjects, are assembled with the hope +that they may be accepted, in their present form, as a part of the +permanent record of our theatrical times. For at least thirty years it +has been a considerable part of the constant occupation of the author to +observe and to record the life of the contemporary stage. Since 1860 he +has written intermittently in various periodicals, and since the summer +of 1865 he has written continuously in the New York Tribune, upon actors +and their art; and in that way he has accumulated a great mass of +historical commentary upon the drama. In preparing this book he has been +permitted to draw from his contributions to the Tribune, and also from +his writings in Harper's Magazine and Weekly, in the London Theatre, and +in Augustin</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> <i>Daly's Portfolio of Players. The choice of these papers has +been determined partly by consideration of space and partly with the +design of supplementing the author's earlier dramatic books, namely: +Edwin Booth in Twelve Dramatic Characters; The Jeffersons; Henry Irving; +The Stage Life of Mary Anderson; Brief Chronicles, containing eighty-six +dramatic biographies; In Memory of McCullough; The Life of John Gilbert; +The Life and Works of John Brougham; The Press and the Stage; The Actor +and Other Speeches; and A Daughter of Comedy, being the life of Ada +Rehan. The impulse of all those writings, and of the present volume, is +commemorative. Let us save what we can.</i></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>"Sed omnes una manet nox,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Et calcanda semel via leti."</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="right">W.W.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 6em;"><span class="smcap">April</span> 18, 1892.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr> + <td align='right'>CHAP.</td> + <td align='left'></td> + <td align='right'>PAGE</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>I.</td> + <td align='left'>THE GOOD OLD TIMES</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_13'>13</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>II.</td> + <td align='left'>IRVING IN FAUST</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_30'>30</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>III.</td> + <td align='left'>ADELAIDE NEILSON</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_47'>47</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>IV.</td> + <td align='left'>EDWIN BOOTH</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_63'>63</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>V.</td> + <td align='left'>MARY ANDERSON</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_90'>90</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>VI.</td> + <td align='left'>OLIVIA</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_119'>119</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>VII.</td> + <td align='left'>ON JEFFERSON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_130'>130</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>VIII.</td> + <td align='left'>ON JEFFERSON'S ACTING</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_151'>151</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>IX.</td> + <td align='left'>JEFFERSON AND FLORENCE</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_159'>159</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>X.</td> + <td align='left'>ON THE DEATH OF FLORENCE</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_169'>169</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XI.</td> + <td align='left'>SHYLOCK AND PORTIA</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_178'>178</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XII.</td> + <td align='left'>JOHN McCULLOUGH</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_185'>185</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XIII.</td> + <td align='left'>CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_206'>206</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XIV.</td> + <td align='left'>LAWRENCE BARRETT</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_215'>215</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>XV.</td> + <td align='left'>IRVING IN RAVENSWOOD</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_226'>226</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XVI.</td> + <td align='left'>MERRY WIVES AND FALSTAFF</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_243'>243</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XVII.</td> + <td align='left'>ADA REHAN</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_258'>258</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XVIII.</td> + <td align='left'>TENNYSON'S FORESTERS</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_269'>269</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XIX.</td> + <td align='left'>ELLEN TERRY: MERCHANT OF VENICE</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_286'>286</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XX.</td> + <td align='left'>RICHARD MANSFIELD</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_301'>301</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XXI.</td> + <td align='left'>GENEVIEVE WARD</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_315'>315</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XXII.</td> + <td align='left'>EDWARD S. WILLARD</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_322'>322</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XXIII.</td> + <td align='left'>SALVINI</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_339'>339</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XXIV.</td> + <td align='left'>IRVING AS EUGENE ARAM</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_348'>348</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XXV.</td> + <td align='left'>CHARLES FISHER</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_367'>367</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XXVI.</td> + <td align='left'>MRS. GILBERT</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_374'>374</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XXVII.</td> + <td align='left'>JAMES LEWIS</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_379'>379</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XXVIII.</td> + <td align='left'>A LEAF FROM MY JOURNAL</td> + <td align='right'><a href='#Page_383'>383</a></td> +</tr> +</table></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i16"><i>"—It so fell out that certain players</i><br /></span> +<span class="i16"><i>We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i16"><i>And there did seem in him a kind of joy</i><br /></span> +<span class="i16"><i>To hear of it."</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>"Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though +the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is +the most tormenting. I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not +a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man who will give +up the reins of his imagination into his author's hands,—be +pleased he knows not why and cares not wherefore."</i></p></div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Tristram Shandy.</span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p> +<h1>SHADOWS OF THE STAGE.</h1> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I.</h2> + +<h3>THE GOOD OLD TIMES.</h3> + + +<p>It is recorded of John Lowin, an actor contemporary with Shakespeare and +associated with several of Shakespeare's greater characters (his range +was so wide, indeed, that it included Falstaff, Henry the Eighth, and +Hamlet), that, having survived the halcyon days of "Eliza and our James" +and lingered into the drab and russet period of the Puritans, when all +the theatres in the British islands were suppressed, he became poor and +presently kept a tavern, at Brentford, called The Three Pigeons. Lowin +was born in 1576 and he died in 1654—his grave being in London, in the +churchyard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields—so that, obviously, he was one +of the veterans of the stage. He was in his seventy-eighth year when he +passed away—wherefore in his last days he must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> have been "a mine of +memories." He could talk of the stirring times of Leicester, Drake, +Essex, and Raleigh. He could remember, as an event of his boyhood, the +execution of Queen Mary Stuart, and possibly he could describe, as an +eye-witness, the splendid funeral procession of Sir Philip Sidney. He +could recall the death of Queen Elizabeth; the advent of Scottish James; +the ruffling, brilliant, dissolute, audacious Duke of Buckingham; the +impeachment and disgrace of Francis Bacon; the production of the great +plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; the meetings of the wits and poets +at the Apollo and the Mermaid. He might have personally known Robert +Herrick—that loveliest of the wild song-birds of that golden age. He +might have been present at the burial of Edmund Spenser, in Westminster +Abbey—when the poet brothers of the author of <i>The Faerie Queene</i> cast +into his grave their manuscript elegies and the pens with which those +laments had been written. He had acted Hamlet,—perhaps in the author's +presence. He had seen the burning of the old Globe Theatre. He had been, +in the early days of Charles the First, the chief and distinguished +Falstaff of the time. He had lived under the rule of three<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> successive +princes; had deplored the sanguinary fate of the martyr-king (for the +actors were almost always royalists); had seen the rise of the +Parliament and the downfall of the theatre; and now, under the +Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, he had become the keeper of an humble +wayside inn. It is easy to fancy the old actor sitting in his chair of +state, the monarch of his tap-room, with a flagon of beer, and a +church-warden pipe of tobacco, and holding forth, to a select circle of +cronies, upon the vanished glories of the Elizabethan stage—upon the +days when there were persons in existence really worthy to be called +actors. He could talk of Richard Burbage, the first Romeo; of Armin, +famous in Shakespeare's clowns and fools; of Heminge and Condell, who +edited the First Folio of Shakespeare, which possibly he himself +purchased, fresh from the press; of Joseph Taylor, whom it is said +Shakespeare personally instructed how to play Hamlet, and the +recollection of whose performance enabled Sir William Davenant to impart +to Betterton the example and tradition established by the author—a +model that has lasted to the present day; of Kempe, the original +Dogberry, and of the exuberant, merry Richard Tarleton,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> after whom that +comic genius had fashioned his artistic method; of Alleyne, who kept the +bear-garden, and who founded the College and Home at Dulwich—where they +still flourish; of Gabriel Spencer, and his duel with Ben Jonson, +wherein he lost his life at the hands of that burly antagonist; of +Marlowe "of the mighty line," and his awful and lamentable +death—stabbed at Deptford by a drunken drawer in a tavern brawl. Very +rich and fine, there can be no doubt, were that veteran actor's +remembrances of "the good old times," and most explicit and downright, +it may surely be believed, was his opinion, freely communicated to the +gossips of The Three Pigeons, that—in the felicitous satirical phrase +of Joseph Jefferson—all the good actors are dead.</p> + +<p>It was ever thus. Each successive epoch of theatrical history presents +the same picturesque image of storied regret—memory incarnated in the +veteran, ruefully vaunting the vanished glories of the past. There has +always been a time when the stage was finer than it is now. Cibber and +Macklin, surviving in the best days of Garrick, Peg Woffington, and +Kitty Clive, were always praising the better days of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> Wilks, Betterton, +and Elizabeth Barry. Aged play-goers of the period of Edmund Kean and +John Philip Kemble were firmly persuaded that the drama had been buried, +never to rise again, with the dust of Garrick and Henderson, beneath the +pavement of Westminster Abbey. Less than fifty years ago an American +historian of the stage (James Rees, 1845) described it as a wreck, +overwhelmed with "gloom and eternal night," above which the genius of +the drama was mournfully presiding, in the likeness of an owl. The New +York veteran of to-day, although his sad gaze may not penetrate backward +quite to the effulgent splendours of the old Park, will sigh for +Burton's and the Olympic, and the luminous period of Mrs. Richardson, +Mary Taylor, and Tom Hamblin. The Philadelphia veteran gazes back to the +golden era of the old Chestnut Street theatre, the epoch of tie-wigs and +shoe-buckles, the illustrious times of Wood and Warren, when Fennell, +Cooke, Cooper, Wallack, and J.B. Booth were shining names in tragedy, +and Jefferson and William Twaits were great comedians, and the beautiful +Anne Brunton was the queen of the stage. The Boston veteran speaks +proudly of the old Federal and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> old Tremont, of Mary Duff, Julia +Pelby, Charles Eaton, and Clara Fisher, and is even beginning to gild +with reminiscent splendour the first days of the Boston Theatre, when +Thomas Barry was manager and Julia Bennett Barrow and Mrs. John Wood +contended for the public favour. In a word, the age that has seen +Rachel, Seebach, Ristori, Charlotte Cushman, and Adelaide Neilson, the +age that sees Ellen Terry, Mary Anderson, Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, +Henry Irving, Salvini, Coquelin, Lawrence Barrett, John Gilbert, John S. +Clarke, Ada Rehan, James Lewis, Clara Morris, and Richard Mansfield, is +a comparatively sterile period—"Too long shut in strait and few, thinly +dieted on dew"—which ought to have felt the spell of Cooper and Mary +Buff, and known what acting was when Cooke's long forefinger pointed the +way, and Dunlap bore the banner, and pretty Mrs. Marshall bewitched the +father of his country, and Dowton raised the laugh, and lovely Mrs. +Barrett melted the heart, and the roses were "bright by the calm +Bendemeer." The present writer, who began theatre-going in earnest over +thirty years ago, finds himself full often musing over a dramatic time +that still seems brighter than this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>—when he could exult in the fairy +splendour and comic humour of <i>Aladdin</i> and weep over the sorrows of +<i>The Drunkard</i>, when he was thrilled and frightened by J.B. Booth in +<i>The Apostate</i>, and could find an ecstasy of pleasure in the loves of +Alonzo and Cora and the sublime self-sacrifice of Rolla. Thoughts of +such actors as Henry Wallack, George Jordan, John Brougham, John E. +Owens, Mary Carr, Mrs. Barrow, and Charlotte Thompson, together in the +same theatre, are thoughts of brilliant people and of more than commonly +happy displays of talent and beauty. The figures that used to be seen on +Wallack's stage, at the house he established upon the wreck of John +Brougham's Lyceum, often rise in memory, crowned with a peculiar light. +Lester Wallack, in his peerless elegance; Laura Keene, in her spiritual +beauty; the quaint, eccentric Walcot; the richly humorous Blake, so +noble in his dignity, so firm and fine and easy in his method, so +copious in his natural humour; Mary Gannon, sweet, playful, bewitching, +irresistible; Mrs. Vernon, as full of character as the tulip is of +colour or the hyacinth of grace, and as delicate and refined as an +exquisite bit of old china—those actors made a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> group, the like of +which it would be hard to find now. Shall we ever see again such an +Othello as Edwin Forrest, or such a Lord Duberly and Cap'n Cuttle as +Burton, or such a Dazzle as John Brougham, or such an Affable Hawk as +Charles Mathews? Certainly there was a superiority of manner, a tinge of +intellectual character, a tone of grace and romance about the old +actors, such as is not common in the present; and, making all needful +allowance for the illusive glamour that memory casts over the distant +and the dim, it yet remains true that the veterans of our day have a +certain measure of right upon their side of the question.</p> + +<p>In the earlier periods of our theatrical history the strength of the +stage was concentrated in a few theatres. The old Park, for example, was +called simply The Theatre, and when the New York playgoer spoke of going +to the play he meant that he was going there. One theatre, or perhaps +two, might flourish, in a considerable town, during a part of the year, +but the field was limited, and therefore the actors were brought +together in two or three groups. The star system, at least till the time +of Cooper, seems to have been innocu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>ous. Garrick's prodigious success +in London, more than a hundred years ago, had enabled him to engross the +control of the stage in that centre, where he was but little opposed, +and practically to exile many players of the first ability, whose lustre +he dimmed or whose services he did not require; and those players +dispersed themselves to distant places—to York, Dublin, Edinburgh, +etc.—or crossed the sea to America. With that beginning the way was +opened for the growth of superb stock-companies, in the early days of +the American theatre. The English, next to the Italians, were the first +among modern peoples to create a dramatic literature and to establish +the acted drama, and they have always led in this field—antedating, +historically, and surpassing in essential things the French stage which +nowadays it is fashionable to extol. English influence, at all times +stern and exacting, stamped the character of our early theatre. The tone +of society, alike in the mother country, in the colonies, and in the +first years of our Republic, was, as to these matters, formal and +severe. Success upon the stage was exceedingly difficult to obtain, and +it could not be obtained without substantial merit. The youths who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> +sought it were often persons of liberal education. In Philadelphia, New +York, and Boston the stock-companies were composed of select and +thoroughly trained actors, many of whom were well-grounded classical +scholars. Furthermore, the epoch was one of far greater leisure and +repose than are possible now—- when the civilised world is at the +summit of sixty years of scientific development such as it had not +experienced in all its recorded centuries of previous progress. +Naturally enough the dramatic art of our ancestors was marked by +scholar-like and thorough elaboration, mellow richness of colour, +absolute simplicity of character, and great solidity of merit. Such +actors as Wignell, Hodgkinson, Jefferson, Francis, and Blissett offered +no work that was not perfect of its kind. The tradition had been +established and accepted, and it was transmitted and preserved. +Everything was concentrated, and the public grew to be entirely familiar +with it. Men, accordingly, who obtained their ideas of acting at a time +when they were under influences surviving from those ancient days are +confused, bewildered, and distressed by much that is offered in the +theatres now. I have listened to the talk of an aged American +acquain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>tance (Thurlow Weed), who had seen and known Edmund Kean, and +who said that all modern tragedians were insignificant in comparison +with him. I have listened to the talk of an aged English acquaintance +(Fladgate), who had seen and known John Philip Kemble, and who said that +his equal has never since been revealed. The present day knows what the +old school was,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> when it sees William Warren, Joseph Jefferson, +Charles Fisher, Mrs. John Drew, John Gilbert, J.H. Stoddart, Mrs. G.H. +Gilbert, William Davidge, and Lester Wallack—the results and the +remains of it. The old touch survives in them and is under their +control, and no one, seeing their ripe and finished art, can feel +surprise that the veteran moralist should be wedded to his idols of the +past, and should often be heard sadly to declare that all the good +actors—except these—are dead. He forgets that scores of theatres now +exist where once there were but two or three; that the population of the +United States has been increased by about fifty millions within ninety +years; that the field has been enormously broad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>ened; that the character +of, the audience has become one of illimitable diversity; that the +prodigious growth of the star-system, together with all sorts of +experimental catch-penny theatrical management, is one of the inevitable +necessities of the changed condition of civilisation; that the feverish +tone of this great struggling and seething mass of humanity is +necessarily reflected in the state of the theatre; and that the forces +of the stage have become very widely diffused. Such a moralist would +necessarily be shocked by the changes that have come upon our theatre +within even the last twenty-five years—by the advent of "the sensation +drama," invented and named by Dion Boucicault; by the resuscitation of +the spectacle play, with its lavish tinsel and calcium glare and its +multitudinous nymphs; by the opera bouffe, with its frequent licentious +ribaldry; by the music-hall comedian, with his vulgar realism; and by +the idiotic burlesque; with its futile babble and its big-limbed, +half-naked girls. Nevertheless there are just as good actors now living +as have ever lived, and there is just as fine a sense of dramatic art in +the community as ever existed in any of "the palmy days"; only, what was +formerly concentrated is now scattered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p> + +<p>The stage is keeping step with the progress of human thought in every +direction, and it will continue to advance. Evil influences impressed +upon it there certainly are, in liberal abundance—not the least of +these being that of the speculative shop-keeper, whose nature it is to +seize any means of turning a penny, and who deals in dramatic art +precisely as he would deal in groceries: but when we speak of "our +stage" we do not mean an aggregation of shows or of the schemes of +showmen. The stage is an institution that has grown out of a necessity +in human nature. It was as inevitable that man should evolve the theatre +as it was that he should evolve the church, the judiciary tribunal, the +parliament, or any other essential component of the State. Almost all +human beings possess the dramatic perception; a few possess the dramatic +faculty. These few are born for the stage, and each and every generation +contributes its number to the service of this art. The problem is one of +selection and embarkation. Of the true actor it may be said, as Ben +Jonson says of the true poet, that he is made as well as born. The +finest natural faculties have never yet been known to avail without +training and culture. But this is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> problem which, in a great measure, +takes care of itself and in time works out and submits its own solution. +The anomaly, every day presented, of the young person who, knowing +nothing, feeling nothing, and having nothing to communicate except the +desire of communication, nevertheless rushes upon the stage, is felt to +be absurd. Where the faculty as well as the instinct exists, however, +impulse soon recognises the curb of common sense, and the aspirant finds +his level. In this way the dramatic profession is recruited. In this way +the several types of dramatic artist—each type being distinct and each +being expressive of a sequence from mental and spiritual ancestry—are +maintained. It is not too much to say that a natural law operates +silently and surely behind each seemingly capricious chance, in this +field of the conduct of life. A thoroughly adequate dramatic +stock-company may almost be said to be a thing of natural accretion. It +is made up, like every other group, of the old, the middle-aged, and the +young; but, unlike every other group, it must contain the capacity to +present, in a concrete image, each elemental type of human nature, and +to reproduce, with the delicate exaggeration essential to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> dramatic art, +every species of person; in order that all human life—whether of the +street, the dwelling, the court, the camp, man in his common joys and +sorrows, his vices, crimes, miseries, his loftiest aspirations and most +ideal state—may be so copied that the picture will express all its +beauty and sweetness, all its happiness and mirth, all its dignity, and +all its moral admonition and significance, for the benefit of the world. +Such a dramatic stock-company, for example (and this is but one of the +commendable products of the modern stage), has grown up and crystallised +into a form of refined power and symmetry, for the purpose to which it +is devoted, under the management of Augustin Daly. That purpose is the +acting of comedy. Mr. Daly began management in 1869, and he has remained +in it, almost continually, from that time to this. Many players, first +and last, have served under his direction. His company has known +vicissitudes. But the organisation has not lost its comprehensive form, +its competent force, and its attractive quality of essential grace. No +thoughtful observer of its career can have failed to perceive how prompt +the manager has been to profit by every lesson of experience; what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> keen +perception he has shown as to the essential constituents of a theatrical +troop; with what fine judgment he has used the forces at his disposal; +with what intrepid resolution and expeditious energy he has animated +their spirit and guided their art; and how naturally those players have +glided into their several stations and assimilated in one artistic +family. How well balanced, how finely equipped, how distinctively able +that company is, and what resources of poetry, thought, taste, +character, humour, and general capacity it contains, may not, perhaps, +be fully appreciated in the passing hour. "<i>Non, si male nunc, et olim +sic erit.</i>" Fifty years from now, when perchance some veteran, still +bright and cheery "in the chimney-nook of age," shall sit in his +armchair and prose about the past, with what complacent exultation will +he speak of the beautiful Ada Rehan, so bewitching as Peggy in <i>The +Country Girl</i>, so radiant, vehement, and stormily passionate as +Katherine; of manly John Drew, with his nonchalant ease, incisive tone, +and crisp and graceful method; of noble Charles Fisher, and sprightly +and sparkling James Lewis, and genial, piquant, quaint Mrs. Gilbert! I +mark the gentle triumph in that aged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> reminiscent voice, and can respect +an old man's kindly and natural sympathy with the glories and delights +of his vanished youth. But I think it is not necessary to wait till you +are old before you begin to praise anything, and then to praise only the +dead. Let us recognise what is good in our own time, and honour and +admire it with grateful hearts.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>—At the Garrick club, London, June 26, 1885, it was my fortune to +meet Mr. Fladgate, "father of the Garrick," who was then aged 86. The +veteran displayed astonishing resources of memory and talked most +instructively about the actors of the Kemble period. He declared John +Philip Kemble to have been the greatest of actors, and said that his +best impersonations were Penruddock, Zanga, and Coriolanus. Mrs. +Siddons, he said, was incomparable, and the elder Mathews a great +genius,—the precursor of Dickens. For Edmund Kean he had no enthusiasm. +Kean, he said, was at his best in Sir Edward Mortimer, and after that in +Shylock. Miss O'Neill he remembered as the perfect Juliet: a beautiful, +blue-eyed woman, who could easily weep, and who retained her beauty to +the last, dying at 85, as Lady Wrixon Becher.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p> +<h2>II.</h2> + +<h3>HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN FAUST.</h3> + + +<p>It is not surprising that the votaries of Goethe's colossal poem—a work +which, although somewhat deformed and degraded with the pettiness of +provincialism, is yet a grand and immortal creation of genius—should +find themselves dissatisfied with theatrical expositions of it. Although +dramatic in form the poem is not continuously, directly, and compactly +dramatic in movement. It cannot be converted into a play without being +radically changed in structure and in the form of its diction. More +disastrous still, in the eyes of those votaries, it cannot be and it +never has been converted into a play without a considerable sacrifice of +its contents, its comprehensive scope, its poetry, and its ethical +significance. In the poem it is the Man who predominates; it is not the +Fiend. Mephistopheles, indeed, might, for the purpose of philosophical +apprehension, be viewed as an embodied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> projection of the mind of Faust; +for the power of the one is dependent absolutely upon the weakness and +surrender of the other. The object of the poem was the portrayal of +universal humanity in a typical form at its highest point of development +and in its representative spiritual experience. Faust, an aged scholar, +the epitome of human faculties and virtues, grand, venerable, +beneficent, blameless, is passing miserably into the evening of life. He +has done no outward and visible wrong, and yet he is wretched. The utter +emptiness of his life—its lack of fulfilment, its lack of +sensation—wearies, annoys, disgusts, and torments him. He is divided +between an apathy, which heavily weighs him down into the dust, and a +passionate, spiritual longing, intense, unsatisfied, insatiable, which +almost drives him to frenzy. Once, at sunset, standing on a hillside, +and looking down upon a peaceful valley, he utters, in a poetic strain +of exquisite tenderness and beauty, the final wish of his forlorn and +weary soul. It is no longer now the god-like aspiration and imperious +desire of his prime, but it is the sufficient alternative. All he asks +now is that he may see the world always as in that sunset vision, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> +the perfection of happy rest; that he may be permitted, soaring on the +wings of the spirit, to follow the sun in its setting ("The day before +me and the night behind"), and thus to circle forever round and round +this globe, the ecstatic spectator of happiness and peace. He has had +enough and more than enough of study, of struggle, of unfulfilled +aspiration. Lonely dignity, arid renown, satiety, sorrow, knowledge +without hope, and age without comfort,—these are his present portion; +and a little way onward, waiting for him, is death. Too old to play with +passion, too young not to feel desire, he has endured a long struggle +between the two souls in his breast—one longing for heaven and the +other for the world; but he is beaten at last, and in the abject +surrender of despair he determines to die by his own act. A childlike +feeling, responsive in his heart to the divine prompting of sacred +music, saves him from self-murder; but in a subsequent bitter revulsion +he utters a curse upon everything in the state of man, and most of all +upon that celestial attribute of patience whereby man is able to endure +and to advance in the eternal process of evolution from darkness into +light. And now it is, when the soul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> of the human being, utterly baffled +by the mystery of creation, crushed by its own hopeless sorrow, and +enraged by the everlasting command to renounce and refrain, has become +one delirium of revolt against God and destiny, that the spirit of +perpetual denial, incarnated in Mephistopheles, steps forth to proffer +guidance and help. It is as if his rejection and defiance had suddenly +become embodied, to aid him in his ruin. More in recklessness than in +trust, with no fear, almost with scorn and contempt, he yet agrees to +accept this assistance. If happiness be really possible, if the true +way, after all, should lie in the life of the senses, and not in +knowledge and reason; if, under the ministrations of this fiend, one +hour of life, even one moment of it, shall ever (which is an idle and +futile supposition) be so sweet that his heart shall desire it to +linger, then, indeed, he will surrender himself eternally to this at +present preposterous Mephistopheles, whom his mood, his magic, and the +revulsion of his moral nature have evoked:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then let the death-bell chime the token!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Then art thou from thy service free!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The clock may stop, the hand be broken,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And time be finished unto me."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>Such an hour, it is destined, shall arrive, after many long and +miserable years, when, aware of the beneficence of living for others and +in the imagined prospect of leading, guiding, and guarding a free people +upon a free land, Faust shall be willing to say to the moment: "Stay, +thou art so fair"; and Mephistopheles shall harshly cry out: "The clock +stands still"; and the graybeard shall sink in the dust; and the holy +angels shall fly away with his soul, leaving the Fiend baffled and +morose, to gibe at himself over the failure of all his infernal arts. +But, meanwhile, it remains true of the man that no pleasure satisfies +him and no happiness contents, and "death is desired, and life a thing +unblest."</p> + +<p>The man who puts out his eyes must become blind. The sin of Faust is a +spiritual sin, and the meaning of all his subsequent terrible experience +is that spiritual sin must be—and will be—expiated. No human soul can +ever be lost. In every human soul the contest between good and evil must +continue until the good has conquered and the evil is defeated and +eradicated. Then, when the man's spirit is adjusted to its environment +in the spiritual world, it will be at peace—and not till then. And if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> +this conflict is not waged and completed now and here, it must be and it +will be fought out and finished hereafter and somewhere else. It is the +greatest of all delusions to suppose that you can escape from yourself. +Judgment and retribution proceed within the soul and not from sources +outside of it. That is the philosophic drift of the poet's thought +expressed and implied in his poem. It was Man, in his mortal ordeal—the +motive, cause, and necessity of which remain a mystery—whom he desired +and aimed to portray; it was not merely the triumph of a mocking devil, +temporarily victorious through ministration to animal lust and +intellectual revolt, over the weakness of the carnal creature and the +embittered bewilderment of the baffled mind. Mr. Irving may well say, as +he is reported to have said, that he will consider himself to have +accomplished a good work if his production of Faust should have the +effect of invigorating popular interest in Goethe's immortal poem and +bringing closer home to the mind of his public a true sense of its +sublime and far-reaching signification.</p> + +<p>The full metaphysical drift of thought and meaning in Goethe's poem, +however,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> can be but faintly indicated in a play. It is more distinctly +indicated in Mr. Wills's play, which is used by Mr. Irving, than in any +other play upon this subject that has been presented. This result, an +approximate fidelity to the original, is due in part to the preservation +of the witch scenes, in part to Mr. Irving's subtle and significant +impersonation of Mephistopheles, and in part to a weird investiture of +spiritual mystery with which he has artfully environed the whole +production. The substance of the piece is the love story of Faust and +Margaret, yet beyond this is a background of infinity, and over and +around this is a poetic atmosphere charged with suggestiveness of +supernatural agency in the fate of man. If the gaze of the observer be +concentrated upon the mere structure of the piece, the love story is +what he will find; and that is all he will find. Faust makes his compact +with the Fiend. He is rejuvenated and he begins a new life. In "the +Witch's Kitchen" his passions are intensified, and then they are +ignited, so that he may be made the slave of desire and afterward if +possible imbruted by sensuality. He is artfully brought into contact +with Margaret, whom he instantly loves, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> presently loves him, whom +he wins, and upon whom, since she becomes a mother out of wedlock, his +inordinate and reckless love imposes the burden of pious contrition and +worldly shame. Then, through the puissant wickedness and treachery of +Mephistopheles, he is made to predominate over her vengeful brother, +Valentine, whom he kills in a street fray. Thus his desire to experience +in his own person the most exquisite bliss that humanity can enjoy and +equally the most exquisite torture that it can suffer, becomes +fulfilled. He is now the agonised victim of love and of remorse. Orestes +pursued by the Furies was long ago selected as the typical image of +supreme anguish and immitigable suffering; but Orestes is less a +lamentable figure than Faust—fortified though he is, and because he is, +with the awful but malign, treacherous, and now impotent sovereignty of +hell. To deaden his sensibility, destroy his conscience, and harden him +in evil the Fiend leads him into a mad revel of boundless profligacy and +bestial riot—denoted by the beautiful and terrible scene upon the +Brocken—and poor Margaret is abandoned to her shame, her wandering, her +despair, her frenzy, her crime, and her punishment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> This desertion, +though, is procured by a stratagem of the Fiend and does not proceed +from the design of her lover. The expedient of Mephistopheles, to lull +his prey by dissipations, is a failure. Faust finds them "tasteless," +and he must return to Margaret. He finds her in prison, crazed and +dying, and he strives in vain to set her free. There is a climax, +whereat, while her soul is borne upward by angels he—whose destiny must +yet be fulfilled—is summoned by the terrible voice of Satan. This is +the substance of what is shown; but if the gaze of the observer pierces +beyond this, if he is able to comprehend that terrific but woeful image +of the fallen angel, if he perceives what is by no means obscurely +intimated, that Margaret, redeemed and beatified, cannot be happy unless +her lover also is saved, and that the soul of Faust can only be lost +through the impossible contingency of being converted into the likeness +of the Fiend, he will understand that a spectacle has been set before +him more august, momentous, and sublime than any episode of tragical +human love could ever be.</p> + +<p>Henry Irving, in his embodiment of Mephistopheles, fulfilled the +conception of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> poet in one essential respect and transcended it in +another. His performance, superb in ideal and perfect in execution, was +a great work—and precisely here was the greatness of it. Mephistopheles +as delineated by Goethe is magnificently intellectual and sardonic, but +nowhere does he convey even a faint suggestion of the god-head of glory +from which he has lapsed. His own frank and clear avowal of himself +leaves no room for doubt as to the limitation intended to be established +for him by the poet. I am, he declares, the spirit that perpetually +denies. I am a part of that part which once was all—a part of that +darkness out of which came the light. I repudiate all things—because +everything that has been made is unworthy to exist and ought to be +destroyed, and therefore it is better that nothing should ever have been +made. God dwells in splendour, alone and eternal, but his spirits he +thrusts into darkness, and man, a poor creature fashioned to poke his +nose into filth, he sportively dowers with day and night. My province is +evil; my existence is mockery; my pleasure and my purpose are +destruction. In a word, this Fiend, towering to the loftiest summit of +cold intellect, is the embodiment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> of cruelty, malice, and scorn, +pervaded and interfused with grim humour. That ideal Mr. Irving made +actual. The omniscient craft and deadly malignity of his impersonation, +swathed in a most specious humour at some moments (as, for example, in +Margaret's bedroom, in the garden scene with Martha, and in the duel +scene with Valentine) made the blood creep and curdle with horror, even +while they impressed the sense of intellectual power and stirred the +springs of laughter. But if you rightly saw his face, in the fantastic, +symbolical scene of the Witch's Kitchen; in that lurid moment of sunset +over the quaint gables and haunted spires of Nuremburg, when the +sinister presence of the arch-fiend deepened the red glare of the +setting sun and seemed to bathe this world in the ominous splendour of +hell; and, above all, if you perceived the soul that shone through his +eyes in that supremely awful moment of his predominance over the hellish +revel upon the Brocken, when all the hideous malignities of nature and +all those baleful "spirits which tend on mortal consequence" are loosed +into the aerial abyss, and only this imperial horror can curb and subdue +them, you knew that this Mephistopheles was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> sufferer not less than a +mocker; that his colossal malignity was the delirium of an angelic +spirit thwarted, baffled, shattered, yet defiant; never to be +vanquished; never through all eternity to be at peace with itself. The +infinite sadness of that face, the pathos, beyond words, of that +isolated and lonely figure—those are the qualities that irradiated all +its diversified attributes of mind, humour, duplicity, sarcasm, force, +horror, and infernal beauty, and invested it with the authentic quality +of greatness. There is no warrant for this treatment of the part to be +derived from Goethe's poem. There is every warrant for it in the +apprehension of this tremendous subject by the imagination of a great +actor. You cannot mount above the earth, you cannot transcend the +ordinary line of the commonplace, as a mere sardonic image of +self-satisfied, chuckling obliquity. Mr. Irving embodied Mephistopheles +not as a man but as a spirit, with all that the word implies, and in +doing that he not only heeded the fine instinct of the true actor but +the splendid teaching of the highest poetry—the ray of supernal light +that flashes from the old Hebrew Bible; the blaze that streams from the +<i>Paradise Lost</i>;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> the awful glory through which, in the pages of Byron, +the typical figure of agonised but unconquerable revolt towers over a +realm of ruin:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"On his brow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The thunder-scars are graven; from his eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Glares forth the immortality of hell."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Ellen Terry, in her assumption of Margaret, once more displayed that +profound, comprehensive, and particular knowledge of human love—that +knowledge of it through the soul and not simply the mind—which is the +source of her exceptional and irresistible power. This Margaret was a +woman who essentially loves, who exists only for love, who has the +courage of her love, who gives all for love—not knowing that it is a +sacrifice—and whose love, at last, triumphant over death, is not only +her own salvation but that also of her lover. The point of strict +conformity to the conception of the poet, in physique and in spiritual +state, may be waived. Goethe's Margaret is a handsome, hardy girl, of +humble rank, who sometimes uses bad grammar and who reveals no essential +mind. She is just a delicious woman, and there is nothing about her +either metaphysical or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> mysterious. The wise Fiend, who knows that with +such a man as Faust the love of such a woman must outweigh all the +world, wisely tempts him with her, and infernally lures him to the +accomplishment of her ruin. But it will be observed that, aside from the +infraction of the law of man, the loves of Faust and Margaret are not +only innocent but sacred. This sanctity Mephistopheles can neither +pollute nor control, and through this he loses his victims. Ellen +Terry's Margaret was a delicious woman, and not metaphysical nor +mysterious; but it was Margaret imbued with the temperament of Ellen +Terry,—who, if ever an exceptional creature lived, is exceptional in +every particular. In her embodiment she transfigured the character: she +maintained it in an ideal world, and she was the living epitome of all +that is fascinating in essential womanhood—glorified by genius. It did +not seem like acting but like the revelation of a hallowed personal +experience upon which no chill worldly gaze should venture to intrude.</p> + +<p>In that suggestive book in which Lady Pollock records her recollections +of Macready it is said that once, after his retirement, on reading a +London newspaper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> account of the production of a Shakespearean play, he +remarked that "evidently the accessories swallow up the poetry and the +action": and he proceeded, in a reminiscent and regretful mood, to speak +as follows: "In my endeavour to give to Shakespeare all his attributes, +to enrich his poetry with scenes worthy of its interpretation, to give +to his tragedies their due magnificence and to his comedies their entire +brilliancy, I have set an example which is accompanied with great peril, +for the public is willing to have the magnificence without the tragedy, +and the poet is swallowed up in display." Mr. Irving is the legitimate +successor to Macready and he has encountered that same peril. There are +persons—many of them—who think that it is a sign of weakness to praise +cordially and to utter admiration with a free heart. They are mistaken, +but no doubt they are sincere. Shakespeare, the wisest of monitors, is +never so eloquent and splendid as when he makes one of his people +express praise of another. Look at those speeches in <i>Coriolanus</i>. Such +niggardly persons, in their detraction of Henry Irving, are prompt to +declare that he is a capital stage manager but not a great actor. This +has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> an impartial air and a sapient sound, but it is gross folly and +injustice. Henry Irving is one of the greatest actors that have ever +lived, and he has shown it over and over again. His acting is all the +more effective because associated with unmatched ability to insist and +insure that every play shall be perfectly well set, in every particular, +and that every part in it shall be competently acted. But his genius and +his ability are no more discredited than those of Macready were by his +attention to technical detail and his insistence upon total excellence +of result. It should be observed, however, that he has carried stage +garniture to an extreme limit. His investiture of <i>Faust</i> was so +magnificent that possibly it may have tended in the minds of many +spectators, to obscure and overwhelm the fine intellectual force, the +beautiful delicacy, and the consummate art with which he embodied +Mephistopheles. It ought not to have produced that effect—because, in +fact, the spectacle presented was, actually and truly, that of a +supernatural being, predominant by force of inherent strength and charm +over the broad expanse of the populous and teeming world; but it might +have produced it: and, for the practical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> good of the art of acting, +progress in that direction has gone far enough. The supreme beauty of +the production was the poetic atmosphere of it—the irradiation of that +strange sensation of being haunted which sometimes will come upon you, +even at noon-day, in lonely places, on vacant hillside, beneath the dark +boughs of great trees, in the presence of the grim and silent rocks, and +by the solitary margin of the sea. The feeling was that of Goethe's own +weird and suggestive scene of the Open Field, the black horses, and the +raven-stone; or that of the shuddering lines of Coleridge:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"As one that on a lonesome road<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Doth walk in fear and dread,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, having once turned round, walks on<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And turns no more his head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because he knows a frightful fiend<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Doth close behind him tread."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p> +<h2>III.</h2> + +<h3>ADELAIDE NEILSON AS IMOGEN AND JULIET.</h3> + + +<p>Shakespeare's drama of <i>Cymbeline</i> seems not at any time in the history +of the stage to have been a favourite with theatrical audiences. In New +York it has had but five revivals in more than a hundred years, and +those occurred at long intervals and were of brief continuance. The +names of Thomas Barry, Mrs. Shaw-Hamblin (Eliza Marian Trewar), and +Julia Bennett Barrow are best remembered in association with it on the +American stage. It had slept for more than a generation when, in the +autumn of 1876, Adelaide Neilson revived it at Philadelphia; but since +then it has been reproduced by several of her imitators. She first +offered it on the New York stage in May 1877, and it was then seen that +her impersonation of Imogen was one of the best of her works. If it be +the justification of the stage as an institution of public benefit and +social ad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>vancement, that it elevates humanity by presenting noble +ideals of human nature and making them exemplars and guides, that +justification was practically accomplished by that beautiful +performance.</p> + +<p>The poetry of <i>Cymbeline</i> is eloquent and lovely. The imagination of its +appreciative reader, gliding lightly over its more sinister incidents, +finds its story romantic, its accessories—both of the court and the +wilderness—picturesque, its historic atmosphere novel and exciting, and +the spirit of it tender and noble. Such a reader, likewise, fashions its +characters into an ideal form which cannot be despoiled by comparison +with a visible standard of reality. It is not, however, an entirely +pleasant play to witness. The acting version, indeed, is considerably +condensed from the original, by the excision of various scenes +explanatory of the conduct of the story, and by the omission of the +cumbersome vision of Leonatus; and the gain of brevity thereby made +helps to commend the work to a more gracious acceptance than it would be +likely to obtain if acted exactly according to Shakespeare. Its movement +also is imbued with additional alacrity by a rearrangement of its +divisions. It is customarily presented in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> six acts. Yet, +notwithstanding the cutting and editing to which it has been subjected, +<i>Cymbeline</i> remains somewhat inharmonious alike with the needs of the +stage and the apprehension of the public.</p> + +<p>For this there are several causes. One perhaps is its mixed character, +its vague, elusive purpose, and its unreality of effect. From the nature +of his story—a tale of stern facts and airy inventions, respecting +Britain and Rome, two thousand years ago—the poet seems to have been +compelled to make a picture of human life too literal to be viewed +wholly as an ideal, and too romantic to be viewed wholly as literal. In +the unequivocally great plays of Shakespeare the action moves like the +mighty flow of some resistless river. In this one it advances with the +diffusive and straggling movement of a summer cloud. The drift and +meaning of the piece, accordingly, do not stand boldly out. That astute +thinker, Ulrici, for instance, after much brooding upon it, ties his +mental legs in a hard knot and says that Shakespeare intended, in this +piece, to illustrate that man is not the master of his own destiny. +There must be liberal scope for conjecture when a philosopher can make +such a landing as that.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> + +<p>The persons in <i>Cymbeline</i>, moreover—aside from the exceptional +character of Imogen—do not come home to a spectator's realisation, +whether of sympathy or repugnance. It is like the flower that thrives +best under glass but shivers and wilts in the open air. Its poetry seems +marred by the rude touch of the actual. Its delicious mountain scenes +lose their woodland fragrance. Its motive, bluntly disclosed in the +wager scene, seems coarse, unnatural, and offensive. Its plot, really +simple, moves heavily and perplexes attention. It is a piece that lacks +pervasive concentration and enthralling point. It might be defined as +<i>Othello</i> with a difference—the difference being in favour of +<i>Othello</i>. Jealousy is the pivot of both: but in <i>Othello</i> jealousy is +treated with profound and searching truth, with terrible intensity of +feeling, and with irresistible momentum of action. A spectator will +honour and pity Othello, and hate and execrate Iago—with some infusion, +perhaps of impatience toward the one and of admiration for the +other—but he is likely to view both Leonatus and Iachimo with +considerable indifference; he will casually recognise the infrequent +Cymbeline as an ill-tempered, sonorous old donkey; he will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> give a +passing smile of scornful disgust to Cloten—that vague hybrid of +Roderigo and Oswald; and of the proceedings of the Queen and the +fortunes of the royal family—whether as affected by the chemical +experiments of Doctor Cornelius or the bellicose attitude of Augustus +Cæsar, in reaching for his British tribute—he will be practically +unconscious. This result comes of commingling stern fact and pastoral +fancy in such a way that an auditor of the composition is dubious +whether to fix his senses steadfastly on the one or yield up his spirit +to poetic reverie on the other.</p> + +<p>Coleridge—whose intuitions as to such matters were usually as good as +recorded truth—thought that Shakespeare wrote <i>Cymbeline</i> in his +youthful period. He certainly does not manifest in it the cogent and +glittering dramatic force that is felt in <i>Othello</i> and <i>Macbeth</i>. The +probability is that he wrought upon the old legend of Holinshed in a +mood of intellectual caprice, inclining towards sensuous and fanciful +dalliance with a remote and somewhat intangible subject. Those persons +who explain the immense fecundity of his creative genius by alleging +that he must steadily have kept in view the needs of the contem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>porary +theatre seem to forget that he went much further in his plays than there +was any need for him to go, in the satisfaction of such a purpose, and +that those plays are, in general, too great for any stage that has +existed. Shakespeare, it is certain, could not have been an exception to +the law that every author must be conscious of a feeling, apart from +intellectual purpose, that carries him onward in his art. The feeling +that shines through <i>Cymbeline</i> is a loving delight in the character of +Imogen.</p> + +<p>The nature of that feeling and the quality of that character, had they +been obscure, would have been made clear by Adelaide Neilson's +embodiment. The personality that she presented was typical and unusual. +It embodied virtue, neither hardened by austerity nor vapid with excess +of goodness, and it embodied seductive womanhood, without one touch of +wantonness or guile. It presented a woman innately good and radiantly +lovely, who amid severest trials spontaneously and unconsciously acted +with the ingenuous grace of childhood, the grandest generosity, the most +constant spirit. The essence of Imogen's nature is fidelity. Faithful to +love, even till death, she is yet more faithful to honour. Her scorn of +false<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>hood is overwhelming; but she resents no injury, harbours no +resentment, feels no spite, murmurs at no misfortune. From every blow of +evil she recovers with a gentle patience that is infinitely pathetic. +Passionate and acutely sensitive, she yet seems never to think of +antagonising her affliction or to falter in her unconscious fortitude. +She has no reproach—but only a grieved submission—for the husband who +has wronged her by his suspicions and has doomed her to death. She +thinks only of him, not of herself, when she beholds him, as she +supposes, dead at her side; but even then she will submit and +endure—she will but "weep and sigh" and say twice o'er "a century of +prayers." She is only sorry for the woman who was her deadly enemy and +who hated her for her goodness—so often the incitement of mortal +hatred. She loses without a pang the heirship to a kingdom. An ideal +thus poised in goodness and radiant in beauty might well have +sustained—as undoubtedly it did sustain—the inspiration of +Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>Adelaide Neilson, with her uncommon graces of person, found it easy to +make the chamber scene and the cave scenes pictorial and charming. Her +ingenuous trepidation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> and her pretty wiles, as Fidele, in the cave, +were finely harmonious with the character and arose from it like odour +from a flower. The innocence, the glee, the feminine desire to please, +the pensive grace, the fear, the weakness, and the artless simplicity +made up a state of gracious fascination. It was, however, in the revolt +against Iachimo's perfidy, in the fall before Pisanio's fatal +disclosure, and in the frenzy over the supposed death of Leonatus that +the actress put forth electrical power and showed how strong emotion, +acting through the imagination, can transfigure the being and give to +love or sorrow a monumental semblance and an everlasting voice. The +power was harmonious with the individuality and did not mar its grace. +There was a perfect preservation of sustained identity, and this was +expressed with such a sweet elocution and such an airy freedom of +movement and naturalness of gesture that the observer almost forgot to +notice the method of the mechanism and quite forgot that he was looking +upon a fiction and a shadow. That her personation of Imogen, though more +exalted in its nature than any of her works, excepting Isabella, would +rival in public acceptance her Juliet, Viola, or Rosalind,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> was not to +be expected: it was too much a passive condition—delicate and +elusive—and too little an active effort. She woke into life the +sleeping spirit of a rather repellant drama, and was "alone the Arabian +bird."</p> + +<p>Shakespeare's Juliet, the beautiful, ill-fated heroine of his consummate +poem of love and sorrow, was the most effective, if not the highest of +Adelaide Neilson's tragic assumptions. It carried to every eye and to +every heart the convincing and thrilling sense equally of her beauty and +her power. The exuberant womanhood, the celestial affection, the +steadfast nobility, and the lovely, childlike innocence of Imogen—shown +through the constrained medium of a diffusive romance—were not to all +minds appreciable on the instant. The gentle sadness of Viola, playing +around her gleeful animation and absorbing it as the cup of the white +lily swallows the sunshine, might well be, for the more blunt senses of +the average auditor, dim, fitful, evanescent, and ineffective. Ideal +heroism and dream-like fragrance—the colours of Murillo or the poems of +Heine—are truly known but to exceptional natures or in exceptional +moods. The reckless, passionate idolatry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> of Juliet, on the +contrary,—with its attendant sacrifice, its climax of disaster, and its +sequel of anguish and death,—stands forth as clearly as the white line +of the lightning on a black midnight sky, and no observer can possibly +miss its meaning. All that Juliet is, all that she acts and all that she +suffers, is elemental. It springs directly from the heart and it moves +straight onward like a shaft of light. Othello, the perfection of +simplicity, is not simpler than Juliet. In him are embodied passion and +jealousy, swayed by an awful instinct of rude justice. In her is +embodied unmixed and immitigable passion, without law, limit, reason, +patience, or restraint. She is love personified and therefore a fatality +to herself. Presented in that way—and in that way she was presented by +Adelaide Neilson—her nature and her experience come home to the +feelings as well as the imagination, and all that we know, as well as +all that we dream, of beauty and of anguish are centred in one image. In +this we may see all the terrors of the moving hand of fate. In this we +may almost hear a warning voice out of heaven, saying that nowhere +except in duty shall the human heart find refuge and peace—or, if not +peace, submission.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p> + +<p>The question whether Shakespeare's Juliet be correctly interpreted is +not one of public importance. It might be ever so correctly interpreted +without producing the right effect. There have been many Juliets. There +has, in our time, been no Juliet so completely fascinating and +irresistible as that of Adelaide Neilson. Through the medium of that +Shakespearean character the actress poured forth that strange, +thrilling, indescribable power which more than anything else in the +world vindicates by its existence the spiritual grandeur and destiny of +the human soul. Neither the accuracy of her ideals nor the fineness of +her execution would have accomplished the result that attended her +labours and crowned her fame. There was an influence back of these—a +spark of the divine fire—a consecration of the individual life—as +eloquent to inform as it was potent to move. Adelaide Neilson was one of +those strange, exceptional natures that, often building better than they +know, not only interpret "the poet's dream" but give to it an added +emphasis and a higher symbolism. Each element of her personality was +rich and rare. The eyes—now glittering with a mischievous glee that +seemed never to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> seen a cloud or felt a sorrow, now steady, frank, +and sweet, with innocence and trust,—could, in one moment, flash with +the wild fire of defiance or the glittering light of imperious command, +or, equally in one moment, could soften with mournful thought and sad +remembrance, or darken with the far-off look of one who hears the waving +wings of angels and talks with the spirits of the dead. The face, just +sufficiently unsymmetrical to be brimful of character, whether piquant +or pensive; the carriage of body,—easy yet quaint in its artless grace, +like that of a pretty child in the unconscious fascination of infancy; +the restless, unceasing play of mood, and the instantaneous and perfect +response of expression and gesture,—all these were the denotements of +genius; and, above all these, and not to be mistaken in its irradiation +of the interior spirit of that extraordinary creature, was a voice of +perfect music—rich, sonorous, flexible, vibrant, copious in volume, yet +delicate as a silver thread—a voice</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Like the whisper of the woods<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In prime of even, when the stars are few."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It did not surprise that such a woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> should truly act Juliet. Much +though there be in a personality that is assumed, there is much more in +the personality that assumes it. Golden fire in a porcelain vase would +not be more luminous than was the soul of that actress as it shone +through her ideal of Juliet. The performance did not stop short at the +interpretation of a poetic fancy. It was amply and completely that—but +it was more than that, being also a living experience. The subtlety of +it was only equalled by its intensity, and neither was surpassed except +by its reality. The moment she came upon the scene all eyes followed +her, and every imaginative mind was vaguely conscious of something +strange and sad—a feeling of perilous suspense—a dark presentiment of +impending sorrow. In that was felt at once the presence of a nature to +which the experience of Juliet would be possible; and thus the conquest +of human sympathy was effected at the outset—by a condition, and +without the exercise of a single effort. Fate no less than art +participated in the result. Though it was the music of Shakespeare that +flowed from the harp, it was the hand of living genius that smote the +strings; it was the soul of a great woman that bore its vital<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> testimony +to the power of the universal passion.</p> + +<p>Never was poet truer to the highest truth of spiritual life than +Shakespeare is when he invests with ineffable mournfulness—shadowy as +twilight, vague as the remembrance of a dream—those creatures of his +fancy who are preordained to suffering and a miserable death. Never was +there sounded a truer note of poetry than that which thrills in +Othello's, "If it were now to die," or sobs in Juliet's "Too early seen +unknown, and known too late." It was the exquisite felicity of Adelaide +Neilson's acting of Juliet that she glided into harmony with that +tragical undertone, and, with seemingly a perfect unconsciousness of +it—whether prattling to the old nurse, or moving, sweetly grave and +softly demure, through the stately figures of the minuet—was already +marked off from among the living, already overshadowed by a terrible +fate, already alone in the bleak loneliness of the broken heart. +Striking the keynote thus, the rest followed in easy sequence. The +ecstasy of the wooing scene, the agony of the final parting from Romeo, +the forlorn tremor and passionate frenzy of the terrible night before +the burial, the fearful awak<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>ening, the desperation, the paroxysm, the +death-blow that then is mercy and kindness,—all these were in unison +with the spirit at first denoted, and through these was naturally +accomplished its prefigured doom. If clearly to possess a high purpose, +to follow it directly, to accomplish it thoroughly, to adorn it with +every grace, to conceal every vestige of its art, and to cast over the +art that glamour of poetry which ennobles while it charms, and while it +dazzles also endears,—if this is greatness in acting, then was Adelaide +Neilson's Juliet a great embodiment. It never will be forgotten. Its +soft romance of tone, its splendour of passion, its sustained energy, +its beauty of speech, and its poetic fragrance are such as fancy must +always cherish and memory cannot lose. Placing this embodiment beside +Imogen and Viola, it was easy to understand the secret of her +extraordinary success. She satisfied for all kinds of persons the sense +of the ideal. To youthful fancy she was the radiant vision of love and +pleasure; to grave manhood, the image of all that chivalry should honour +and strength protect; to woman, the type of noble goodness and constant +affection; to the scholar, a relief from thought and care;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> to the +moralist, a spring of tender pity—that loveliness, however exquisite, +must fade and vanish. Childhood, mindful of her kindness and her frolic, +scattered flowers at her feet; and age, that knows the thorny pathways +of the world, whispered its silent prayer and laid its trembling hands +in blessing on her head. She sleeps beneath a white marble cross in +Brompton cemetery, and all her triumphs and glories have dwindled to a +handful of dust.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><span class="smcap">Note on Cymbeline.</span>—Genest records productions of Shakespeare's +<i>Cymbeline</i>, in London, as follows: Haymarket, November 8, 1744; Covent +Garden, April 7, 1746; Drury Lane, November 28, 1761; Covent Garden, +December 28, 1767; Drury Lane, December 1, 1770; Haymarket, August 9, +1782; Covent Garden, October 18, 1784; Drury Lane, November 21, 1785, +and January 29 and March 20, 1787; Covent Garden, May 13, 1800, January +18, 1806, June 3, 1812, May 29, 1816, and June 2, 1825; and Drury Lane, +February 9, 1829; Imogen was represented, successively, by Mrs. +Pritchard, Miss Bride, Mrs. Yates, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bulkley, Miss +Younge, Mrs. Jordan, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Pope, Miss Smith, Mrs. H. +Johnston Miss Stephens, Miss Foote, and Miss Phillips. Later +representatives of it were Sally Booth, Helen Faucit, and Laura +Addison.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p> +<h2>IV.</h2> + +<h3>EDWIN BOOTH.</h3> + + +<p>There was a great shower of meteors on the night of November 13, 1833, +and on that night, near Baltimore, Maryland, was born the most famous +tragic actor of America in this generation, Edwin Booth. No other +American actor of this century has had a rise so rapid or a career so +early and continuously brilliant as that of Edwin Booth. His father, the +renowned Junius Brutus Booth, had hallowed the family name with +distinction and romantic interest. If ever there was a genius upon the +stage the elder Booth was a genius. His wonderful eyes, his tremendous +vitality, his electrical action, his power to thrill the feelings and +easily and inevitably to awaken pity and terror,—all these made him a +unique being and obtained for him a reputation with old-time audiences +distinct from that of all other men. He was followed as a marvel, and +even now the mention of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> name stirs, among those who remember him, +an enthusiasm such as no other theatrical memory can evoke. His sudden +death (alone, aboard a Mississippi river steamboat, November 30, 1852) +was pathetic, and the public thought concerning him thenceforward +commingled tenderness with passionate admiration. When his son Edwin +began to rise as an actor the people everywhere rejoiced and gave him an +eager welcome. With such a prestige he had no difficulty in making +himself heard, and when it was found that he possessed the same strange +power with which his father had conquered and fascinated the dramatic +world the popular exultation was unbounded.</p> + +<p>Edwin Booth went on the stage in 1849 and accompanied his father to +California in 1852, and between 1852 and 1856 he gained his first +brilliant success. The early part of his California life was marked by +hardship and all of it by vicissitude, but his authentic genius speedily +flamed out, and long before he returned to the Atlantic seaboard the +news of his fine exploits had cleared the way for his conquest of all +hearts. He came back in 1856-57, and from that time onward his fame +continually increased. He early identified himself with two of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> most +fascinating characters in the drama—the sublime and pathetic Hamlet and +the majestic, romantic, picturesque, tender, and grimly humorous +Richelieu. He first acted Hamlet in 1854; he adopted Richelieu in 1856; +and such was his success with the latter character that for many years +afterward he made it a rule (acting on the sagacious advice of the +veteran New Orleans manager, James H. Caldwell), always to introduce +himself in that part before any new community. The popular sentiment +toward him early took a romantic turn and the growth of that sentiment +has been accelerated and strengthened by every important occurrence of +his private life. In July 1860 he was married to a lovely and +interesting woman, Miss Mary Devlin, of Troy, and in February 1863 she +died. In 1867 he lost the Winter Garden theatre, which was burnt down on +the night of March 22, that year, after a performance of John Howard +Payne's <i>Brutus</i>. He had accomplished beautiful revivals of <i>Hamlet</i>, +<i>Othello</i>, <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>, and other plays at the Winter +Garden, and had obtained for that theatre an honourable eminence; but +when in 1869 he built and opened Booth's Theatre in New York, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> +proceeded to eclipse all his previous efforts and triumphs. The +productions of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, <i>Othello</i>, <i>Richelieu</i>, <i>Hamlet</i>, <i>A +Winter's Tale</i>, and <i>Julius Cæsar</i> were marked by ample scholarship and +magnificence. When the enterprise failed and the theatre passed out of +Edwin Booth's hands (1874) the play-going public endured a calamity. But +the failure of the actor's noble endeavour to establish a great theatre +in the first city of America, like every other conspicuous event in his +career, served but to deepen the public interest in his welfare. He has +more than retrieved his losses since then, and has made more than one +triumphal march throughout the length and breadth of the Republic, +besides acting in London and other cities of Great Britain, and gaining +extraordinary success upon the stage of Germany. To think of Edwin Booth +is immediately to be reminded of those leading events in his career, +while to review them, even in a cursory glance, is to perceive that, +notwithstanding calamities and sorrows, notwithstanding a bitter +experience of personal bereavement and of the persecution of envy and +malice, Edwin Booth has ever been a favourite of fortune.</p> + +<p>The bust of Booth as Brutus and that of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> John Gilbert as Sir Peter, +standing side by side in the Players' Club, stir many memories and +prompt many reflections. Gilbert was a young man of twenty-three, and +had been six years on the stage, before Edwin Booth was born; and when, +at the age of sixteen, Booth made his first appearance (September 10, +1849, at the Boston Museum, as Tressil to his father's Richard), Gilbert +had become a famous actor. The younger man, however, speedily rose to +the higher level of the best dramatic ability as well as the best +theatrical culture of his time; and it is significant of the splendid +triumph of tragic genius, and of the advantage it possesses over that of +comedy in its immediate effect upon mankind, that when the fine and +exceptional combination was made (May 21, 1888, at the Metropolitan +Opera House, New York), for a performance of <i>Hamlet</i> for the benefit of +Lester Wallack, Edwin Booth acted Hamlet, with John Gilbert for +Polonius, and Joseph Jefferson for the first Grave-digger. Booth has had +his artistic growth in a peculiar period in the history of dramatic art +in America. Just before his time the tragic sceptre was in the hands of +Edwin Forrest, who never succeeded in winning the intellectual part of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> +the public, but was constantly compelled to dominate a multitude that +never heard any sound short of thunder and never felt anything till it +was hit with a club. The bulk of Forrest's great fortune was gained by +him with <i>Metamora</i>, which is rant and fustian. He himself despised it +and deeply despised and energetically cursed the public that forced him +to act in it. Forrest's best powers, indeed, were never really +appreciated by the average mind of his fervent admirers. He lived in a +rough period and he had to use a hard method to subdue and please it. +Edwin Booth was fortunate in coming later, when the culture of the +people had somewhat increased, and when the old sledge-hammer style was +going out, so that he gained almost without an effort the refined and +fastidious classes. As long ago as 1857, with all his natural grace, +refinement, romantic charm, and fine bearing, his impetuosity was such +that even the dullest sensibilities were aroused and thrilled and +astonished by him,—and so it happened that he also gained the +multitude. To think of these things is to realise the steady advance of +the stage in the esteem of the best people, and to feel grateful that we +do not live in "the palmy days"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>—those raw times that John Brougham +used to call the days of light houses and heavy gas bills.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Asia Booth Clarke, wife of the distinguished and excellent comedian +John S. Clarke, wrote a life of her father, Junius Brutus Booth, in +which she has recounted interesting passages in his career, and +chronicled significant and amusing anecdotes of his peculiarities. He +was on the stage from 1813 to 1852, in which latter year he died, aged +fifty-six. In his youth he served for a while in the British navy, +showed some talent for painting, learned the printer's trade, wrote a +little, and dabbled in sculpture—all before he turned actor. The +powerful hostility of Edmund Kean and his adherents drove him from the +London stage, though not till after he had gained honours there, and he +came to America in 1821, and bought a farm near Baltimore, where he +settled, and where his son Edwin (the seventh of ten children) was born. +That farm remained in the family till 1880, when for the first time it +changed hands. There is a certain old cherry-tree growing upon +it—remarkable among cherry-trees for being large, tall, straight, +clean, and handsome—amid the boughs of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> the youthful Edwin might +often have been found in his juvenile days. It is a coincidence that +Edwin L. Davenport and John McCullough, also honoured names in American +stage history, were born on the same day in the same month with Edwin +Booth, though in different years.</p> + +<p>From an early age Edwin Booth was associated with his father in all the +wanderings and strange and often sad adventures of that wayward man of +genius, and no doubt the many sorrowful experiences of his youth +deepened the gloom of his inherited temperament. Those who know him well +are aware that he has great tenderness of heart and abundant playful +humour; that his mind is one of extraordinary liveliness, and that he +sympathises keenly and cordially with the joys and sorrows of others; +and yet that he seems saturated with sadness, isolated from +companionship, lonely and alone. It is this temperament, combined with a +sombre and melancholy aspect of countenance, that has helped to make him +so admirable in the character of Hamlet. Of his fitness for that part +his father was the first to speak, when on a night many years ago, in +Sacramento, they had dressed for Pierre and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> Jaffier, in <i>Venice +Preserved</i>. Edwin, as Jaffier, had put on a close-fitting robe of black +velvet. "You look like Hamlet," the father said. The time was destined +to come when Edwin Booth would be accepted all over America as the +greatest Hamlet of the day. In the season of 1864-65, at the Winter +Garden theatre, New York, he acted that part for a hundred nights in +succession, accomplishing a feat then unprecedented in theatrical +annals. Since then Henry Irving, in London, has acted Hamlet two hundred +consecutive times in one season; but this latter achievement, in the +present day and in the capital city of the world, was less difficult +than Edwin Booth's exploit, performed in turbulent New York in the +closing months of the terrible civil war.</p> + +<p>The elder Booth was a short, spare, muscular man, with a splendid chest, +a symmetrical Greek head, a pale countenance, a voice of wonderful +compass and thrilling power, dark hair, and blue eyes. His son's +resemblance to him is chiefly obvious in the shape of the head and face, +the arch and curve of the heavy eyebrows, the radiant and constantly +shifting light of expression that animates the countenance, the natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> +grace of carriage, and the celerity of movement. Booth's eyes are dark +brown, and seem to turn black in moments of excitement, and they are +capable of conveying, with electrical effect, the most diverse +meanings—the solemnity of lofty thought, the tenderness of affection, +the piteousness of forlorn sorrow, the awful sense of spiritual +surroundings, the woful weariness of despair, the mocking glee of wicked +sarcasm, the vindictive menace of sinister purpose, and the lightning +glare of baleful wrath. In range of facial expressiveness his +countenance is thus fully equal to that of his father. The present +writer saw the elder Booth but once, and then in a comparatively +inferior part—Pescara, in Shiel's ferocious tragedy of <i>The Apostate</i>. +He was a terrible presence. He was the incarnation of smooth, specious, +malignant, hellish rapacity. His exultant malice seemed to buoy him +above the ground. He floated rather than walked. His glance was deadly. +His clear, high, cutting, measured tone was the exasperating note of +hideous cruelty. He was acting a fiend then, and making the monster not +only possible but actual. He certainly gave a greater impression of +overwhelming power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> than is given by Edwin Booth, and seemed a more +formidable and tremendous man. But his face was not more brilliant than +that of his renowned son; and in fact it was, if anything, somewhat less +splendid in power of the eye. There is a book about him, called <i>The +Tragedian</i>, written by Thomas R. Gould, who also made a noble bust of +him in marble; and those who never saw him can obtain a good idea of +what sort of an actor he was by reading that book. It conveys the image +of a greater actor, but not a more brilliant one, than Edwin Booth. Only +one man of our time has equalled Edwin Booth in this singular splendour +of countenance—the great New England orator Rufus Choate. Had Choate +been an actor upon the stage—as he was before a jury—with those +terrible eyes of his, and that passionate Arab face, he must have +towered fully to the height of the tradition of George Frederick Cooke.</p> + +<p>The lurid flashes of passion and the vehement outbursts in the acting of +Edwin Booth are no doubt the points that most persons who have seen him +will most clearly remember. Through these a spectator naturally discerns +the essential nature of an actor. The image of George Frederick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> Cooke, +pointing with his long, lean forefinger and uttering Sir Giles's +imprecation upon Marrall, never fades out of theatrical history. +Garrick's awful frenzy in the storm scene of King Lear, Kean's colossal +agony in the farewell speech of Othello, Macready's heartrending yell in +<i>Werner</i>, Junius Booth's terrific utterance of Richard's "What do they +i' the north?" Forrest's hyena snarl when, as Jack Cade, he met Lord Say +in the thicket, or his volumed cry of tempestuous fury when, as Lucius +Brutus, he turned upon Tarquin under the black midnight sky—those are +things never to be forgotten. Edwin Booth has provided many such great +moments in acting, and the traditions of the stage will not let them +die. To these no doubt we must look for illuminative manifestations of +hereditary genius. Garrick, Henderson, Cooke, Edmund Kean, Junius Booth, +and Edwin Booth are names that make a natural sequence in one +intellectual family. Could we but see them together, we should +undoubtedly find them, in many particulars, kindred. Henderson +flourished in the school of nature that Garrick had created—to the +discomfiture of Quin and all the classics. Cooke had seen Henderson +act,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> and was thought to resemble him. Edmund Kean worshipped the memory +of Cooke and repeated many of the elder tragedian's ways. So far, +indeed, did he carry his homage that when he was in New York in 1824 he +caused Cooke's remains to be taken from the vault beneath St. Paul's +church and buried in the church-yard, where a monument, set up by Kean +and restored by his son Charles, by Sothern, and by Edwin Booth, still +marks their place of sepulture. That was the occasion when, as Dr. +Francis records, in his book on old New York, Kean took the index finger +of Cooke's right hand, and he, the doctor, took his skull, as relics. "I +have got Cooke's style in acting," Kean once said, "but the public will +never know it, I am so much smaller." It was not the imitation of a +copyist; it was the spontaneous devotion and direction of a kindred +soul. The elder Booth saw Kean act, and although injured by a rivalry +that Kean did not hesitate to make malicious, admired him with honest +fervour. "I will yield Othello to him," he said, "but neither Richard +nor Sir Giles." Forrest thought Edmund Kean the greatest actor of the +age, and copied him, especially in Othello. Pathos, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> all that it +implies, seems to have been Kean's special excellence. Terror was the +elder Booth's. Edwin Booth may be less than either, but he unites +attributes of both.</p> + +<p>In the earlier part of his career Edwin Booth was accustomed to act Sir +Giles Overreach, Sir Edward Mortimer, Pescara, and a number of other +parts of the terrific order, that he has since discarded. He was fine in +every one of them. The first sound of his voice when, as Sir Edward +Mortimer, he was heard speaking off the scene, was eloquent of deep +suffering, concentrated will, and a strange, sombre, formidable +character. The sweet, exquisite, icy, infernal joy with which, as +Pescara, he told his rival that there should be "music" was almost +comical in its effect of terror: it drove the listener across the line +of tragical tension and made him hysterical with the grimness of a +deadly humour. His swift defiance to Lord Lovell, as Sir Giles, and +indeed the whole mighty and terrible action with which he carried that +scene—from "What, are you pale?" down to the grisly and horrid viper +pretence and reptile spasm of death—were simply tremendous. This was in +the days when his acting yet re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>tained the exuberance of a youthful +spirit, before "the philosophic mind" had checked the headlong currents +of the blood or curbed imagination in its lawless flight. And those +parts not only admitted of bold colour and extravagant action but +demanded them. Even his Hamlet was touched with that elemental fire. Not +alone in the great junctures of the tragedy—the encounters with the +ghost, the parting with Ophelia, the climax of the play-scene, the +slaughter of poor old Polonius in delirious mistake for the king, and +the avouchment to Laertes in the graveyard—was he brilliant and +impetuous; but in almost everything that quality of temperament showed +itself, and here, of course, it was in excess. He no longer hurls the +pipe into the flies when saying "Though you may fret me, you can not +play upon me"; but he used to do so then, and the rest of the +performance was kindred with that part of it. He needed, in that period +of his development, the more terrible passions to express. Pathos and +spirituality and the mountain air of great thought were yet to be. His +Hamlet was only dazzling—the glorious possibility of what it has since +become. But his Sir Giles was a consum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>mate work of genius—as good then +as it ever afterward became, and better than any other that has been +seen since, not excepting that of E.L. Davenport. And in all kindred +characters he showed himself a man of genius. His success was great. The +admiration that he inspired partook of zeal that almost amounted to +craziness. When he walked in the streets of Boston in 1857 his shining +face, his compact figure, and his elastic step drew every eye, and +people would pause and turn in groups to look at him.</p> + +<p>The actor is born but the artist must be made, and the actor who is not +an artist only half fulfils his powers. Edwin Booth had not been long +upon the stage before he showed himself to be an actor. During his first +season he played Cassio in <i>Othello</i>, Wilford in <i>The Iron Chest</i>, and +Titus in <i>The Fall of Tarquin</i>, and he played them all auspiciously +well. But his father, not less wise than kind, knew that the youth must +be left to himself to acquire experience, if he was ever to become an +artist, and so left him in California, "to rough it," and there, and in +the Sandwich Islands and Australia, he had four years of the most severe +training that hardship, discipline,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> labour, sorrow, and stern reality +can furnish. When he came east again, in the autumn of 1856, he was no +longer a novice but an educated, artistic tragedian, still crude in some +things, though on the right road, and in the fresh, exultant vigour, if +not yet the full maturity, of extraordinary powers. He appeared first at +Baltimore, and after that made a tour of the south, and during the +ensuing four years he was seen in many cities all over the country. In +the summer of 1860 he went to England, and acted in London, Liverpool, +and Manchester, but he was back again in New York in 1862, and from +September 21, 1863 to March 23, 1867 he managed what was known as the +Winter Garden theatre, and incidentally devoted himself to the +accomplishment of some of the stateliest revivals of standard plays that +have ever been made in America. On February 3, 1869 he opened Booth's +Theatre and that he managed for five years. In 1876 he made a tour of +the south, which, so great was the enthusiasm his presence aroused, was +nothing less than a triumphal progress. In San Francisco, where he +filled an engagement of eight weeks, the receipts exceeded $96,000, a +result at that time unprecedented on the dramatic stage.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p> + +<p>The circumstances of the stage and of the lives of actors have greatly +changed since the generation went out to which such men as Junius Booth +and Augustus A. Addams belonged. No tragedian would now be so mad as to +put himself in pawn for drink, as Cooke is said to have done, nor be +found scraping the ham from the sandwiches provided for his luncheon, as +Junius Booth was, before going on to play Shylock. Our theatre has no +longer a Richardson to light up a pan of red fire, as that old showman +once did, to signalise the fall of the screen in <i>The School for +Scandal</i>. The eccentrics and the taste for them have passed away. It +seems really once to have been thought that the actor who did not often +make a maniac of himself with drink could not be possessed of the divine +fire. That demonstration of genius is not expected now, nor does the +present age exact from its favourite players the performance of all +sorts and varieties of parts. Forrest was the first of the prominent +actors to break away from the old usage in this latter particular. +During the most prosperous years of his life, from 1837 to 1850, he +acted only about a dozen parts, and most of them were old. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> only new +parts that he studied were Claude Melnotte, Richelieu, Jack Cade, and +Mordaunt, the latter in the play of <i>The Patrician's Daughter</i>, and he +"recovered" Marc Antony, which he particularly liked. Edwin Booth, who +had inherited from his father the insanity of intemperance, conquered +that utterly, many years ago, and nobly and grandly trod it beneath his +feet; and as he matured in his career, through acting every kind of +part, from a dandy negro up to Hamlet, he at last made choice of the +characters that afford scope for his powers and his aspirations, and so +settled upon a definite, restricted repertory. His characters were +Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, Iago, Richard the Second, Richard the +Third, Shylock, Cardinal Wolsey, Benedick, Petruchio, Richelieu, Lucius +Brutus, Bertuccio, Ruy Blas, and Don Cæsar de Bazan. These he acted in +customary usage, and to these he occasionally added Marcus Brutus, +Antony, Cassius, Claude Melnotte, and the Stranger. The range thus +indicated is extraordinary; but more extraordinary still was the +evenness of the actor's average excellence throughout the breadth of +that range.</p> + +<p>Booth's tragedy is better than his ele<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>gant comedy. There are other +actors who equal or surpass him in Benedick or Don Cæsar. The comedy in +which he excels is that of silvery speciousness and bitter sarcasm, as +in portions of Iago and Richard the Third and the simulated madness of +Lucius Brutus, and the comedy of grim drollery, as in portions of +Richelieu—his expression of those veins being wonderfully perfect. But +no other actor who has trod the American stage in our day has equalled +him in certain attributes of tragedy that are essentially poetic. He is +not at his best, indeed, in all the tragic parts that he acts; and, like +his father, he is an uneven actor in the parts to which he is best +suited. No person can be said to know Edwin Booth's acting who has not +seen him play the same part several times. His artistic treatment will +generally be found adequate, but his mood or spirit will continually +vary. He cannot at will command it, and when it is absent his +performance seems cold. This characteristic is, perhaps, inseparable +from the poetic temperament. Each ideal that he presents is poetic; and +the suitable and adequate presentation of it, therefore, needs poetic +warmth and glamour. Booth never goes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> behind his poet's text to find a +prose image in the pages of historic fact. The spectator who takes the +trouble to look into his art will find it, indeed, invariably accurate +as to historic basis, and will find that all essential points and +questions of scholarship have been considered by the actor. But this is +not the secret of its power upon the soul. That power resides in its +charm, and that charm consists in its poetry. Standing on the lonely +ramparts of Elsinore, and with awe-stricken, preoccupied, involuntary +glances questioning the star-lit midnight air, while he talks with his +attendant friends, Edwin Booth's Hamlet is the simple, absolute +realisation of Shakespeare's haunted prince, and raises no question, and +leaves no room for inquiry, whether the Danes in the Middle Ages wore +velvet robes or had long flaxen hair. It is dark, mysterious, +melancholy, beautiful—a vision of dignity and of grace, made sublime by +suffering, made weird and awful by "thoughts beyond the reaches of our +souls." Sorrow never looked more wofully and ineffably lovely than his +sorrow looks in the parting scene with Ophelia, and frenzy never spoke +with a wilder glee of horrid joy and fearful exultation than is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> heard +in his tempestuous cry of delirium, "Nay, I know not: is it the king?"</p> + +<p>An actor who is fine only at points is not, of course, a perfect actor. +The remark of Coleridge about the acting of Edmund Kean, that it was +like "reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning," has misled many +persons as to Kean's art. Macready bears a similar testimony. But the +weight of evidence will satisfy the reader that Kean was, in fact, a +careful student and that he never neglected any detail of his art. This +is certainly true of Edwin Booth. In the level plains that lie between +the mountain-peaks of expression he walks with as sure a footstep and as +firm a tread as on the summit of the loftiest crag or the verge of the +steepest abyss. In 1877-78, in association with the present writer, he +prepared for the press an edition of fifteen of the plays in which he +acts, and these were published for the use of actors. There is not a +line in either of those plays that he has not studiously and thoroughly +considered; not a vexed point that he has not scanned; not a +questionable reading that he has not, for his own purposes in acting, +satisfactorily settled. His Shakespearean scholarship is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> extensive and +sound, and it is no less minute than ample. His stage business has been +arranged, as stage business ought to be, with scientific precision. If, +as king Richard the Third, he is seen to be abstractedly toying with a +ring upon one of his fingers, or unsheathing and sheathing his dagger, +those apparently capricious actions would be found to be done because +they were illustrative parts of that monarch's personality, warranted by +the text and context. Many years ago an accidental impulse led him, as +Hamlet, to hold out his sword, hilt foremost, toward the receding +spectre, as a protective cross—the symbol of that religion to which +Hamlet so frequently recurs. The expedient was found to justify itself +and he made it a custom. In the graveyard scene of this tragedy he +directs that one of the skulls thrown up by the first clown shall have a +tattered and mouldy fool's-cap adhering to it, so that it may attract +attention, and be singled out from the others, as "Yorick's skull, the +king's jester." These are little things; but it is of a thousand little +things that a dramatic performance is composed, and without this care +for detail—which must be precise, logical, profound, vigilant,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> +unerring, and at the same time always unobtrusive and seemingly +involuntary—there can be neither cohesion, nor symmetry, nor an +illusory image consistently maintained; and all great effects would +become tricks of mechanism and detached exploits of theatrical force.</p> + +<p>The absence of this thoroughness in such acting as that of Edwin Booth +would instantly be felt; its presence is seldom adequately appreciated. +We feel the perfect charm of the illusion in the great fourth act of +<i>Richelieu</i>—one of the most thrilling situations, as Booth fills it, +that ever were created upon the stage; but we should not feel this had +not the foreground of character, incident, and experience been prepared +with consummate thoroughness. The character of Richelieu is one that the +elder Booth could never act. He tried it once, upon urgent solicitation, +but he had not proceeded far before he caught Joseph around the waist, +and with that astonished friar in his arms proceeded to dash into a +waltz, over which the curtain was dropped. He had no sympathy with the +moonlight mistiness and lace-like complexity of that weird and +many-fibred nature. It lacked for him the reality of the imagination, +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> trumpet blare and tempest rush of active passion. But Edwin Booth, +coming after Forrest, who was its original in America, has made +Richelieu so entirely his own that no actor living can stand a +comparison with him in the character. Macready was the first +representative of the part, as everybody knows, and his performance of +it was deemed magnificent; but when Edwin Booth acted it in London in +1880, old John Ryder, the friend and advocate of Macready, who had +participated with him in all his plays, said to the American tragedian, +with a broken voice and with tears in his eyes, "You have thrown down my +idol." Two at least of those great moments in acting that everybody +remembers were furnished by Booth in this character—the defiance of the +masked assailant, at Rouel, and the threat of excommunication delivered +upon Barradas. No spectator possessed of imagination and sensibility +ever saw, without utter forgetfulness of the stage, the imperial +entrance of that Richelieu into the gardens of the Louvre and into the +sullen presence of hostile majesty. The same spell of genius is felt in +kindred moments of his greater impersonations. His Iago, standing in the +dark street, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> sword in hand, above the prostrate bodies of Cassio +and Roderigo, and as the sudden impulse to murder them strikes his +brain, breathing out in a blood-curdling whisper, "How silent is this +town!" his Bertuccio, begging at the door of the banquet-hall, and +breaking down in hysterics of affected glee and maddening agony; his +Lear, at that supreme moment of intolerable torture when he parts away +from Goneril and Regan, with his wild scream of revenges that shall be +the terrors of the earth; his Richard the Third, with the gigantic +effrontery of his "Call him again," and with his whole matchless and +wonderful utterance of the awful remorse speech with which the king +awakens from his last earthly sleep—those, among many others, rank with +the best dramatic images that ever were chronicled, and may well be +cited to illustrate Booth's invincible and splendid adequacy at the +great moments of his art.</p> + +<p>Edwin Booth has been tried by some of the most terrible afflictions that +ever tested the fortitude of a human soul. Over his youth, plainly +visible, impended the lowering cloud of insanity. While he was yet a +boy, and when literally struggling for life in the semi-barbarous wilds +of old Califor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>nia, he lost his beloved father, under circumstances of +singular misery. In early manhood he laid in her grave the woman of his +first love—the wife who had died in absence from him, herself scarcely +past the threshold of youth, lovely as an angel and to all that knew her +precious beyond expression. A little later his heart was well-nigh +broken and his life was well-nigh blasted by the crime of a lunatic +brother that for a moment seemed to darken the hope of the world. +Recovering from that blow, he threw all his resources and powers into +the establishment of the grandest theatre in the metropolis of America, +and he saw his fortune of more than a million dollars, together with the +toil of some of the best years of his life, frittered away. Under all +trials he has borne bravely up, and kept the even, steadfast tenor of +his course; strong, patient, gentle, neither elated by public homage nor +imbittered by private grief. Such a use of high powers in the dramatic +art, and the development and maintenance of such a character behind +them, entitle him to the affection of his countrymen, proud equally of +his goodness and his renown.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p> +<h2>V.</h2> + +<h3>MARY ANDERSON: HERMIONE: PERDITA.</h3> + + +<p>On November 25, 1875 an audience was assembled in one of the theatres of +Louisville, Kentucky, to see "the first appearance upon any stage" of "a +young lady of Louisville," who was announced to play Shakespeare's +Juliet. That young lady was in fact a girl, in her sixteenth year, who +had never received any practical stage training, whose education had +been comprised in five years of ordinary schooling, whose observation of +life had never extended beyond the narrow limits of a provincial city, +who was undeveloped, unheralded, unknown, and poor, and whose only +qualifications for the task she had set herself to accomplish were the +impulse of genius and the force of commanding character. She dashed at +the work with all the vigour of abounding and enthusiastic youth, and +with all the audacity of complete inexperience. A rougher performance of +Juliet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> probably was never seen, but through all the disproportion and +turbulence of that effort the authentic charm of a beautiful nature was +distinctly revealed. The sweetness, the sincerity, the force, the +exceptional superiority and singular charm of that nature could not be +mistaken. The uncommon stature and sumptuous physical beauty of the girl +were obvious. Above all, her magnificent voice—copious, melodious, +penetrating, loud and clear, yet soft and gentle—delighted every ear +and touched every heart. The impersonation of Juliet was not highly +esteemed by judicious hearers; but some persons who saw that performance +felt and said that a new actress had risen and that a great career had +begun. Those prophetic voices were right. That "young lady of +Louisville" was Mary Anderson.</p> + +<p>It is seldom in stage history that the biographer comes upon such a +character as that of Mary Anderson, or is privileged to muse over the +story of such a career as she has had. In many cases the narrative of +the life of an actress is a narrative of talents perverted, of +opportunity misused, of failure, misfortune, and suffering. For one +story like that of Mrs. Siddons there are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> many like that of Mrs. +Robinson. For one name like that of Charlotte Cushman or that of Helen +Faucit there are many like that of Lucille Western or that of Matilda +Heron—daughters of sorrow and victims of trouble. The mind lingers, +accordingly, impressed and pleased with a sense of sweet personal worth +as well as of genius and beauty upon the record of a representative +American actress, as noble as she was brilliant, and as lovely in her +domestic life as she was beautiful, fortunate, and renowned in her +public pursuits. The exposition of her nature, as apprehended through +her acting, constitutes the principal part of her biography.</p> + +<p>Mary Anderson, a native of California, was born at Sacramento, July 28, +1859. Her father, Charles Joseph Anderson, who died in 1863, aged +twenty-nine, and was buried in Magnolia cemetery, Mobile, Alabama, was +an officer in the service of the Southern Confederacy at the time of his +death, and he is said to have been a handsome and dashing young man. Her +mother, Marie Antoinette Leugers, was a native of Philadelphia. Her +earlier years were passed in Louisville, whither she was taken in 1860, +and she was there taught in a Roman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> Catholic school and reared in the +Roman Catholic faith under the guidance of a Franciscan priest, Anthony +Miller, her mother's uncle. She left school before she was fourteen +years old and she went upon the stage before she was sixteen. She had +while a child seen various theatrical performances, notably those given +by Edwin Booth, and her mind had been strongly drawn toward the stage +under the influence of those sights. The dramatic characters that she +first studied were male characters—those of Hamlet, Wolsey, Richelieu, +and Richard III.—and to those she added Schiller's Joan of Arc. She +studied those parts privately, and she knew them all and knew them well. +Professor Noble Butler, of Louisville, gave her instruction in English +literature and elocution, and in 1874, at Cincinnati, Charlotte Cushman +said a few encouraging words to her, and told her to persevere in +following the stage, and to "begin at the top." George Vandenhoff gave +her a few lessons before she came out, and then followed her début as +Juliet, leading to her first regular engagement, which began at Barney +Macaulay's Theatre, Louisville, January 20, 1876. From that time onward +for thirteen years she was an ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>tress,—never in a stock company but +always as a star,—and her name became famous in Great Britain as well +as America. She had eight seasons of steadily increasing prosperity on +the American stage before she went abroad to act, and she became a +favourite all over the United States. She filled three seasons at the +Lyceum Theatre, London (from September 1, 1883, to April 5, 1884; from +November 1, 1884, to April 25, 1885; and from September 10, 1887, to +March 24, 1888), and her success there surpassed, in profit, that of any +American actor who had appeared in England. She revived <i>Romeo and +Juliet</i> with much splendour at the London Lyceum on November 1, 1884, +and she restored <i>A Winter's Tale</i> to the stage, bringing forward that +comedy on September 10, 1887, and carrying it through the season. She +made several prosperous tours of the English provincial theatres, and +established herself as a favourite actress in fastidious Edinburgh, +critical Manchester, and impulsive but exacting Dublin. The repertory +with which she gained fame and fortune included Juliet, Hermione, +Perdita, Rosalind, Lady Macbeth, Julia, Bianca, Evadne, Parthenia, +Pauline, The Countess, Galatea, Clarice,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> Ion, Meg Merrilies, Berthe, +and the Duchess de Torrenueva. She incidentally acted a few other parts, +Desdemona being one of them. Her distinctive achievements were in +Shakespearean drama. She adopted into her repertory two plays by +Tennyson, <i>The Cup</i> and <i>The Falcon</i>, but never produced them. This +record signifies the resources of mind, the personal charm, the exalted +spirit, and the patient, wisely directed and strenuous zeal that +sustained her achievements and justified her success.</p> + +<p>Aspirants in the field of art are continually coming to the surface. In +poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and in acting—which involves and +utilises those other arts—the line of beginners is endless. Constantly, +as the seasons roll by, these essayists emerge, and as constantly, after +a little time, they disappear. The process is sequent upon an obvious +law of spiritual life,—that all minds which are conscious of the art +impulse must at least make an effort toward expression, but that no mind +can succeed in the effort unless, in addition to the art impulse, it +possesses also the art faculty. For expression is the predominant +necessity of human nature. Out of this proceed forms and influences of +beauty. These<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> react upon mankind, pleasing an instinct for the +beautiful, and developing the faculty of taste. Other and finer forms +and influences of beauty ensue, civilisation is advanced, and thus +finally the way is opened toward that condition of immortal spiritual +happiness which this process of experience prefigures and prophesies. +But the art faculty is of rare occurrence. At long intervals there is a +break in the usual experience of stage failure, and some person hitherto +unknown not only takes the field but keeps it. When Garrick came out, as +the Duke of Gloster, in the autumn of 1741, in London, he had never been +heard of, but within a brief time he was famous. "He at once decided the +public taste," said Macklin; and Pope summed up the victory in the +well-known sentence, "That young man never had an equal, and will never +have a rival." Tennyson's line furnishes the apt and comprehensive +comment—"The many fail, the one succeeds." Mary Anderson in her day +furnished the most conspicuous and striking example, aside from that of +Adelaide Neilson, to which it is possible to refer of this exceptional +experience. And yet, even after years of trial and test, it is doubtful +whether the excel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>lence of that remarkable actress was entirely +comprehended in her own country. The provincial custom of waiting for +foreign authorities to discover our royal minds is one from which many +inhabitants of America have not yet escaped. As an actress, indeed, Mary +Anderson was, probably, more popular than any player on the American +stage excepting Edwin Booth or Joseph Jefferson; but there is a +difference between popularity and just and comprehensive intellectual +recognition. Many actors get the one; few get the other.</p> + +<p>Much of the contemporary criticism that is lavished upon actors in this +exigent period—so bountifully supplied with critical observations, so +poorly furnished with creative art—touches only upon the surface. +Acting is measured with a tape and the chief demand seems to be for +form. This is right, and indeed is imperative, whenever it is certain +that the actor at his best is one who never can rise above the +high-water mark of correct mechanism. There are cases that need a deeper +method of inquiry and a more searching glance. A wise critic, when this +emergency comes, is something more than an expert who gives an opinion +upon a professional exploit. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> special piece of work may contain +technical flaws, and yet there may be within it a soul worth all the +"icily regular and splendidly null" achievements that ever were possible +to proficient mediocrity. That soul is visible only to the observer who +can look through the art into the interior spirit of the artist, and +thus can estimate a piece of acting according to its inspirational drift +and the enthralling and ennobling personality out of which it springs. +The acting of Mary Anderson, from the first moment of her career, was of +the kind that needs that deep insight and broad judgment,—aiming to +recognise and rightly estimate its worth. Yet few performers of the day +were so liberally favoured with the monitions of dullness and the +ponderous patronage of self-complacent folly.</p> + +<p>Conventional judgment as to Mary Anderson's acting expressed itself in +one statement—"she is cold." There could not be a greater error. That +quality in Mary Anderson's acting—a reflex from her spiritual +nature—which produced upon the conventional mind the effect of coldness +was in fact distinction, the attribute of being exceptional. The +judgment that she was cold was a resentful judgment, and was given in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> a +spirit of detraction. It proceeded from an order of mind that can never +be content with the existence of anything above its own level. "He +hath," said Iago, speaking of Cassio, "a daily beauty in his life that +makes me ugly." Those detractors did not understand themselves as well +as the wily Italian understood himself, and they did not state their +attitude with such precision; in fact, they did not state it at all, for +it was unconscious with them and involuntary. They saw a being unlike +themselves, they vaguely apprehended the presence of a superior nature, +and that they resented. The favourite popular notion is that all men are +born free and equal; which is false. Free and equal they all are, +undoubtedly, in the eye of the law. But every man is born subject to +heredity and circumstance, and whoever will investigate his life will +perceive that he never has been able to stray beyond the compelling and +constraining force of his character—which is his fate. All men, +moreover, are unequal. To one human being is given genius; to another, +beauty; to another, strength; to another, exceptional judgment; to +another, exceptional memory; to another, grace and charm; to still +another, physical ugli<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>ness and spiritual obliquity, moral taint, and +every sort of disabling weakness. To the majority of persons Nature +imparts mediocrity, and it is from mediocrity that the derogatory denial +emanates as to the superior men and women of our race. A woman of the +average kind is not difficult to comprehend. There is nothing +distinctive about her. She is fond of admiration; rather readily +censorious of other women; charitable toward male rakes; and partial to +fine attire. The poet Wordsworth's formula, "Praise, blame, love, +kisses, tears, and smiles," comprises all that is essential for her +existence, and that bard has himself precisely described her, in a +grandfatherly and excruciating couplet, as</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A creature not too bright and good<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For human nature's daily food."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Women of that sort are not called "cold." The standard is ordinary and +it is understood. But when a woman appears in art whose life is not +ruled by the love of admiration, whose nature is devoid of vanity, who +looks with indifference upon adulation, whose head is not turned by +renown, whose composure is not disturbed by flattery, whose simplicity +is not marred by wealth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> who does not go into theatrical hysterics and +offer that condition of artificial delirium as the mood of genius in +acting, who above all makes it apparent in her personality and her +achievements that the soul can be sufficient to itself and can exist +without taking on a burden of the fever or dulness of other lives, there +is a flutter of vague discontent among the mystified and bothered rank +and file, and we are apprised that she is "cold." That is what happened +in the case of Mary Anderson.</p> + +<p>What are the faculties and attributes essential to great success in +acting? A sumptuous and supple figure that can realise the ideals of +statuary; a mobile countenance that can strongly and unerringly express +the feelings of the heart and the workings of the mind; eyes that can +awe with the majesty or startle with the terror or thrill with the +tenderness of their soul-subduing gaze; a voice, deep, clear, resonant, +flexible, that can range over the wide compass of emotion and carry its +meaning in varying music to every ear and every heart; intellect to +shape the purposes and control the means of mimetic art; deep knowledge +of human nature; delicate intuitions; the skill to listen as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> well as +the art to speak; imagination to grasp the ideal of a character in all +its conditions of experience; the instinct of the sculptor to give it +form, of the painter to give it colour, and of the poet to give it +movement; and, back of all, the temperament of genius—the genialised +nervous system—to impart to the whole artistic structure the thrill of +spiritual vitality. Mary Anderson's acting revealed those faculties and +attributes, and those observers who realised the poetic spirit, the +moral majesty, and the isolation of mind that she continually suggested +felt that she was an extraordinary woman. Such moments in her acting as +that of Galatea's mute supplication at the last of earthly life, that of +Juliet's desolation after the final midnight parting with the last human +creature whom she may ever behold, and that of Hermione's despair when +she covers her face and falls as if stricken dead, were the eloquent +denotements of power, and in those and such as those—with which her art +abounded—was the fulfilment of every hope that her acting inspired and +the vindication of every encomium that it received.</p> + +<p>Early in her professional career, when considering her acting, the +present essayist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> quoted as applicable to her those lovely lines by +Wordsworth:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The stars of midnight shall be dear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To her, and she shall lean her ear<br /></span> +<span class="i4">In many a secret place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where rivulets dance their wayward round,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And beauty born of murmuring sound<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Shall pass into her face."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In the direction of development thus indicated she steadily advanced. +Her affiliations were with grandeur, purity, and loveliness. An inherent +and passionate tendency toward classic stateliness increased in her more +and more. Characters of the statuesque order attracted her +imagination—Ion, Galatea, Hermione—but she did not leave them +soulless. In the interpretation of passion and the presentation of its +results she revealed the striking truth that her perceptions could +discern those consequences that are recorded in the soul and in +comparison with which the dramatic entanglements of visible life are +puny and evanescent. Though living in the rapid stream of the social +world she dwelt aloof from it. She thought deeply, and in mental +direction she took the pathway of intellectual power. It is not +sur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>prising that the true worth of such a nature was not accurately +apprehended. Minds that are self-poised, stately, irresponsive to human +weakness, unconventional and self-liberated from allegiance to the +commonplace are not fully and instantly discernible, and may well +perplex the smiling glance of frivolity; but they are permanent forces +in the education of the human race. Mary Anderson retired from the +stage, under the pressure of extreme fatigue, in the beginning of 1889 +and entered upon a matrimonial life on June 17, 1890. It is believed +that her retirement is permanent. The historical interest attaching to +her dramatic career justifies the preservation of this commemorative +essay.</p> + +<p>There is so much beauty in the comedy of <i>A Winter's Tale</i>—so much +thought, character, humour, philosophy, sweetly serene feeling and +loveliness of poetic language—that the public ought to feel obliged to +any one who successfully restores it to the stage, from which it usually +is banished. The piece was written in the maturity of Shakespeare's +marvellous powers, and indeed some of the Shakespearean scholars believe +it to be the last work that fell from his hand. Human life, as depicted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> +in <i>A Winter's Tale</i>, shows itself like what it always seems to be in +the eyes of patient, tolerant, magnanimous experience—the eyes "that +have kept watch o'er man's mortality"—for it is a scene of inexplicable +contrasts and vicissitudes, seemingly the chaos of caprice and chance, +yet always, in fact, beneficently overruled and guided to good ends. +Human beings are shown in it as full of weakness; often as the puppets +of laws that they do not understand and of universal propensities and +impulses into which they never pause to inquire; almost always as +objects of benignant pity. The woful tangle of human existence is here +viewed with half-cheerful, half-sad tolerance, yet with the hope and +belief that all will come right at last. The mood of the comedy is +pensive but radically sweet. The poet is like the forest in Emerson's +subtle vision of the inherent exultation of nature:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sober, on a fund of joy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The woods at heart are glad."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Mary Anderson doubled the characters of Hermione and Perdita. This had +not been conspicuously done until it was done by her, and her +innovation, in that respect,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> was met with grave disapproval. The moment +the subject is examined, however, objection to that method of procedure +is dispelled. Hermione, as a dramatic person, disappears in the middle +of the third act of Shakespeare's comedy and comes no more until the end +of the piece, when she emerges as a statue. Her character has been +entirely expressed and her part in the action of the drama has been +substantially fulfilled before she disappears. There is no intermediate +passion to be wrought to a climax, nor is there any intermediate mood, +dramatically speaking, to be sustained. The dramatic environment, the +dramatic necessities, are vastly unlike, for example, those of Lady +Macbeth—one of the hardest of all parts to play well, because exhibited +intermittently, at long intervals, yet steadily constrained by the +necessity of cumulative excitement. The representative of Lady Macbeth +must be identified with that character, whether on the stage or off, +from the beginning of it to the end. Hermione, on the contrary, is at +rest from the moment when she faints upon receiving information of the +death of her boy. A lapse of sixteen years is assumed, and then, +standing forth as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> statue, she personifies majestic virtue and +victorious fortitude. When she descends from the pedestal she silently +embraces Leontes, speaks a few pious, maternal and tranquil lines (there +are precisely seven of them in the original, but Mary Anderson added +two, from "All's Well"), and embraces Perdita, whom she has not seen +since the girl's earliest infancy. This is their only meeting, and +little is sacrificed by the use of a substitute for the daughter in that +scene. Perdita's brief apostrophe to the statue has to be cut, but it is +not missed in the representation. The resemblance between mother and +daughter heightens the effect of illusion, in its impress equally upon +fancy and vision; and a more thorough elucidation is given than could be +provided in any other way of the spirit of the comedy. It was a +judicious and felicitous choice that the actress made when she selected +those two characters, and the fact that her impersonation of them +carried a practically disused Shakespearean comedy through a season of +one hundred and fifty nights at the Lyceum Theatre in London furnishes +an indorsement alike of her wisdom and her ability. She played in a +stage version of the piece,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> in five acts, containing thirteen scenes, +arranged by herself.</p> + +<p>While Mary Anderson was acting those two parts in London the sum of +critical opinion seemed to be that her performance of Perdita was better +than her performance of Hermione; but beneath that judgment there was, +apparently, the impression that Hermione is a character fraught with +superlatively great passions, powers, and qualities, such as are only to +be apprehended by gigantic sagacity and conveyed by herculean talents +and skill. Those vast attributes were not specified, but there was a +mysterious intimation of their existence—as of something vague, +formidable, and mostly elusive. But in truth Hermione, although a +stronger part than Perdita, is neither complex, dubious, nor +inaccessible; and Mary Anderson, although more fascinating in Perdita, +could and did rise, in Hermione, to a noble height of tragic power—an +excellence not possible for her, nor for anybody, in the more juvenile +and slender character.</p> + +<p>Hermione has usually been represented as an elderly woman and by such an +actress as is technically called "heavy." She ought to be represented as +about thirty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> years of age at the beginning of the piece, and forty-six +at the end of it. Leontes is not more than thirty-four at the opening, +and he would be fifty at the close. He speaks, in his first scene, of +his boyhood as only twenty-three years gone, when his dagger was worn +"muzzled, lest it should bite its master"—at which time he may have +been ten years old; certainly not more, probably less. His words, toward +the end of act third, "so sure as this beard's gray," refer to the beard +of Antigonus, not to his own. He is a young man when the play begins, +and Polixenes is about the same age, and Hermione is a young woman. +Antigonus and Paulina are middle-aged persons in the earlier scenes and +Paulina is an elderly woman in the statue scene—almost an old woman, +though not too old to be given in marriage to old Camillo, the +ever-faithful friend. In Mary Anderson's presentation of <i>A Winter's +Tale</i> those details received thoughtful consideration and correct +treatment.</p> + +<p>In Hermione is seen a type of the celestial nature in woman—infinite +love, infinite charity, infinite patience. Such a nature is rare; but it +is possible, it exists, and Shakespeare, who depicted everything, did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> +not omit to portray that. To comprehend Hermione the observer must +separate her, absolutely and finally, from association with the +passions. Mrs. Jameson acutely and justly describes her character as +exhibiting "dignity without pride, love without passion, and tenderness +without weakness." That is exactly true. Hermione was not easily won, +and the best thing known about Leontes is that at last she came to love +him and that her love for him survived his cruel and wicked treatment, +chastened him, reinstated him, and ultimately blessed him. Hermione +suffers the utmost affliction that a good woman can suffer. Her boy +dies, heart-broken, at the news of his mother's alleged disgrace. Her +infant daughter is torn from her breast and cast forth to perish. Her +husband becomes her enemy and persecutor. Her chastity is assailed and +vilified. She is subjected to the bitter indignity of a public trial. It +is no wonder that at last her brain reels and she falls as if stricken +dead. The apparent anomaly is her survival for sixteen years, in lonely +seclusion, and her emergence, after that, as anything but a forlorn +shadow of her former self. The poet Shelley has recorded the truth that +all great emotions either kill<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> themselves or kill those who feel them. +It is here, however, that the exceptional temperament of Hermione +supplies an explanatory and needed qualification. Her emotions are never +of a passionate kind. Her mind predominates. Her life is in the +affections and therefore it is one of thought. She sees clearly the +facts of her experience and condition, and she knows exactly how those +facts look in the eyes of others. She is one of those persons who +possess a keen and just prescience of events, who can look far into the +future and discern those resultant consequences of the present which, +under the operation of inexorable moral law, must inevitably ensue. +Self-poised in the right and free from the disturbing force of impulse +and desire, she can await the justice of time, she can live, and she can +live in the tranquil patience of resignation. True majesty of the person +is dependent on repose of the soul, and there can be no repose of the +soul without moral rectitude and a far-reaching, comprehensive, wise +vision of events. Mary Anderson embodied Hermione in accordance with +that ideal. By the expression of her face and the tones of her voice, in +a single speech, the actress placed beyond question her grasp of the +character:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"Good my lords,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am not prone to weeping, as our sex<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Commonly are—the want of which vain dew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Perchance shall dry your pities—but I have<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That honourable grief lodged here, which burns<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Worse than tears drown."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The conspicuous, predominant, convincing artistic beauty in Mary +Anderson's impersonation of Hermione was her realisation of the part, in +figure, face, presence, demeanour, and temperament. She did not afflict +her auditor with the painful sense of a person struggling upward toward +an unattainable identity. She made you conscious of the presence of a +queen. This, obviously, is the main thing—that the individuality shall +be imperial, not merely wearing royal attire but being invested with the +royal authenticity of divine endowment and consecration. Much emphasis +has been placed by Shakespeare upon that attribute of innate grandeur. +Leontes, at the opening of the trial scene, describes his accused wife +as "the daughter of a king," and in the same scene her father is +mentioned as the Emperor of Russia. The gentleman who, in act fifth, +recounts to Autolycus the meeting between Leontes and his daughter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> +Perdita especially notes "the majesty of the creature, in resemblance of +the mother." Hermione herself, in the course of her +vindication—expressed in one of the most noble and pathetic strains of +poetical eloquence in our language—names herself "a great king's +daughter," therein recalling those august and piteous words of +Shakespeare's Katharine:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We are a Queen, or long have thought so, certain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The daughter of a king."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Poor old Antigonus, in his final soliloquy, recounting the vision of +Hermione that had come upon him in the night, declares her to be a woman +royal and grand not by descent only but by nature:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I never saw a vessel of like sorrow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So filled and so becoming. In pure white robes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like very sanctity, she did approach."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That image Mary Anderson embodied, and therefore the ideal of +Shakespeare was made a living thing—that glorious ideal, in shaping +which the great poet "from all that are took something good, to make a +perfect woman." Toward Polixenes, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> the first scene, her manner was +wholly gracious, delicately playful, innocently kind, and purely frail. +Her quiet archness at the question, "Will you go yet?" struck exactly +the right key of Hermione's mood. With the baby prince Mamillius her +frolic and banter, affectionate, free, and gay, were in a happy vein of +feeling and humour. Her simple dignity, restraining both resentment and +grief, in face of the injurious reproaches of Leontes, was entirely +noble and right, and the pathetic words, "I never wished to see you +sorry, now I trust I shall," could not have been spoken with more depth +and intensity of grieved affection than were felt in her composed yet +tremulous voice. The entrance, at the trial scene, was made with the +stateliness natural to a queenly woman, and yet with a touch of +pathos—the cold patience of despair. The delivery of Hermione's +defensive speeches was profoundly earnest and touching. The simple cry +of the mother's breaking heart, and the action of veiling her face and +falling like one dead, upon the announcement of the prince's death, were +perfect denotements of the collapse of a grief-stricken woman. The skill +with which the actress, in the monument scene—which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> is all repose and +no movement—contrived nevertheless to invest Hermione with steady +vitality of action, and to imbue the crisis with a feverish air of +suspense, was in a high degree significant of the personality of genius. +For such a performance of Hermione Shakespeare himself has provided the +sufficient summary and encomium:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Women will love her, that she is a woman<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More worth than any man; men that she is<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The rarest of all women."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is one thing to say that Mary Anderson was better in Perdita than in +Hermione, and another thing to say that the performance of Perdita was +preferred. Everybody preferred it—even those who knew that it was not +the better of the two; for everybody loves the sunshine more than the +shade. Hermione means grief and endurance. Perdita means beautiful youth +and happy love. It does not take long for an observer to choose between +them. Suffering is not companionable. By her impersonation of Hermione +the actress revealed her knowledge of the stern truth of life, its +trials, its calamities, and the possible heroism of character under its +sorrowful discipline. Into that identity she passed by the force<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> of her +imagination. The embodiment was majestic, tender, pitiable, +transcendent, but its colour was the sombre colour of pensive melancholy +and sad experience. That performance was the higher and more significant +of the two. But the higher form of art is not always the most +alluring—never the most alluring when youthful beauty smiles and rosy +pleasure beckons another way. All hearts respond to happiness. By her +presentment of Perdita the actress became the glittering image and +incarnation of glorious youthful womanhood and fascinating joy. No +exercise of the imagination was needful to her in that. There was an +instantaneous correspondence between the part and the player. The +embodiment was as natural as a sunbeam. Shakespeare has left no doubt +about his meaning in Perdita. The speeches of all around her continually +depict her fresh and piquant loveliness, her innate superiority, her +superlative charm; while her behaviour and language as constantly show +forth her nobility of soul. One of the subtlest side lights thrown upon +the character is in the description of the manner in which Perdita heard +the story of her mother's death—when "attentiveness wounded" her +"till,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> from one sign of dolour to another, she did bleed tears." And of +the fibre of her nature there is perhaps no finer indication than may be +felt in her comment on old Camillo's worldly view of prosperity as a +vital essential to the permanence of love:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I think affliction may subdue the cheek,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But not take in the mind."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In the thirty-seven plays of Shakespeare there is no strain of the +poetry of sentiment and grace essentially sweeter than that which he has +put into the mouth of Perdita; and poetry could not be more sweetly +spoken than it was by Mary Anderson in that delicious scene of the +distribution of the flowers. The actress evinced comprehension of the +character in every fibre of its being, and she embodied it with the +affluent vitality of splendid health and buoyant temperament—presenting +a creature radiant with goodness and happiness, exquisite in natural +refinement, piquant with archness, soft, innocent, and tender in +confiding artlessness, and, while gleeful and triumphant in beautiful +youth, gently touched with an intuitive pitying sense of the thorny +aspects of this troubled world. The giving of the flowers completely +be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>witched her auditors. The startled yet proud endurance of the king's +anger was in an equal degree captivating. Seldom has the stage displayed +that rarest of all combinations, the passionate heart of a woman with +the lovely simplicity of a child. Nothing could be more beautiful than +she was to the eyes that followed her lithe figure through the merry +mazes of her rustic dance—an achievement sharply in contrast with her +usually statuesque manner. It "makes old hearts fresh" to see a +spectacle of grace and joy, and that spectacle they saw then and will +not forget. The value of those impersonations of Hermione and Perdita, +viewing them as embodied interpretations of poetry was great, but they +possessed a greater value and a higher significance as denotements of +the guiding light, the cheering strength, the elevating loveliness of a +noble human soul. They embodied the conception of the poet, but at the +same time they illumined an actual incarnation of the divine spirit. +They were like windows to a sacred temple, and through them you could +look into the soul of a true woman—always a realm where thoughts are +gliding angels, and feelings are the faces of seraphs, and sounds are +the music of the harps of heaven.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p> +<h2>VI.</h2> + +<h3>HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN OLIVIA.</h3> + + +<p>It has sometimes been thought that the acting of Henry Irving is seen at +its best in those impersonations of his that derive their vitality from +the grim, ghastly, and morbid attributes of human nature. That he is a +unique actor, and distinctively a great actor, in Hamlet, Mathias, +Eugene Aram, Louis XI., Lesurque, and Dubosc, few judges will deny. His +performances of those parts have shown him to be a man of weird +imagination, and they have shown that his characteristics, mental and +spiritual, are sombre. Accordingly, when it was announced that he would +play Dr. Primrose—Goldsmith's simple, virtuous, homely, undramatic +village-preacher, the <i>Vicar of Wakefield</i>,—a doubt was felt as to his +suitability for the part and as to the success of his endeavour. He +played Dr. Primrose, and he gained in that character some of the +brightest laurels of his profes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>sional career. The doubt proved +unwarranted. More than one competent observer of that remarkable +performance has granted it an equal rank with the best of Henry Irving's +achievements; and now, more clearly than before, it is perceived that +the current of his inspiration flows as freely from the silver spring of +goodness as from the dark and troubled fountain of human misery.</p> + +<p>On the first night of <i>Olivia</i>, at the Lyceum Theatre (it was May 27, +1885, when the present writer happened to be in London), Henry Irving's +performance of Dr. Primrose was fettered by a curb of constraint. The +actor's nerves had been strained to a high pitch of excitement and he +was obviously anxious. His spirit, accordingly, was not fully liberated +into the character. He advanced with cautious care and he executed each +detail of his design with precise accuracy. To various auditors, for +that reason, the work seemed a little Methodistical; and drab is a +colour at which the voice of the scoffer is apt to scoff. But the +impersonation of Dr. Primrose soon became equally a triumph of +expression and of ideal; not only flowing out of goodness, but flowing +smoothly and producing the effect of nature. It was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> absolutely and +identically the Vicar that Goldsmith has drawn, for its personality was +unmarked by either rusticity or strong humour; but it was a kindred and +higher type of the simple truth, the pastoral sweetness, the benignity, +and the human tenderness of that delightful original. To invest goodness +with charm, to make virtue piquant, and to turn common events of +domestic life to exquisite pathos and noble exaltation was the actor's +purpose. It was accomplished; and Dr. Primrose, thitherto an idyllic +figure, existent only in the chambers of fancy, is henceforth as much a +denizen of the stage as Luke Fielding or Jesse Rural; a man not merely +to be read of, as one reads of Uncle Toby and Parson Adams, but to be +known, remembered, and loved.</p> + +<p>Wills's drama of <i>Olivia</i>, based upon an episode in Goldsmith's story, +is one of extreme simplicity. It may be described as a series of +pictures displaying the consequences of action rather than action +itself. It contains an abundance of incident, but the incident is mostly +devoid of inherent dramatic force and therefore is such as must derive +its chief effect from the manner in which it is treated by the actors +who repre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>sent the piece. Nevertheless, the piece was found to be, +during its first three acts, an expressive, coherent, interesting play. +It tells its story clearly and entirely, not by narrative but by the +display of characters in their relations to each other. Its language, +flavoured here and there with the phraseology of the novel, is +consistently appropriate. The fourth and last act is feeble. Nobody can +sympathise with "the late remorse of love" in a nature so trivial as +that of Thornhill, and the incident of the reconciliation between Olivia +and her husband, therefore, goes for nothing. It is the beautiful +relation between the father and his daughter that animates the play. It +is paternal love that thrills its structure with light, warmth, colour, +sincerity, moral force, and human significance. Opinion may differ as to +the degree of skill with which Wills selected and employed the materials +of Goldsmith's story; but nobody can justly deny that he wrought for the +stage a practical dramatic exposition of the beauty and sanctity of the +holiest relation that is possible in human life; and to have done that +is to have done a noble thing.</p> + +<p>Many persons appear to think that criticism falls short of its duty +unless it wounds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> and hurts. Goldsmith himself observed that fact. It +was in the story of <i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i> that he made his playful +suggestion that a critic should always take care to say that the picture +would have been better if the painter had taken more pains. Wills +probably heard more than enough for his spiritual welfare about the +faults of his piece; yet there is really nothing weak in the play except +the conclusion. It is not easy to suggest, however, in what way the +fourth act could be strengthened, unless it were by a recasting and +renovation of the character of Squire Thornhill. But the victory was +gained, in spite of a feeble climax. Many persons also appear to think +that it is a sort of sacrilege to lay hands upon the sacred ark of a +classic creation. Dion Boucicault, perceiving this when he made a play +about <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>, felt moved to deprecate anticipated public +resentment of the liberties that he had taken with Richardson's novel. +Yet it is difficult to see why the abundant details of that excellent +though protracted narrative should not be curtailed, in order to +circumscribe its substance within the limits of a practical drama. +Jefferson was blamed for condensing and slightly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> changing the comedy of +<i>The Rivals</i>. Yet the author, who probably knew something about his +work, deemed it a wretchedly defective piece, and expressed the +liveliest regret for having written it. Wills did not reproduce +Goldsmith's Vicar upon the stage: in some particulars he widely diverged +from it—and his work, accordingly, may be censured. Yet <i>The Vicar of +Wakefield</i> is far from being a faultless production, such as a divinity +should be supposed to hedge. Critical students are aware of this. It is +not worth while to traverse the old ground. The reader who will take the +trouble—and pleasure—to refer to that excellent chapter on Goldsmith +in Dr. Craik's <i>History of English Literature</i> will find the structural +defects of the novel specifically enumerated. If the dramatist has +ignored many details he has at least extracted from the narrative the +salient points of a consistent, harmonious story. The spectator can +enjoy the play, whether he has read the original or not. At the end of +its first act he knows the Vicar and his family, their home, their way +of life, their neighbours, the two suitors for the two girls, the +motives of each and every character, and the relations of each to all; +and he sees,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> what is always touching in the spectacle of actual human +life, the contrasted states of circumstance and experience surrounding +and enmeshing all. After this preparation the story is developed with +few and rapid strokes. Two of the pictures were poems. At the end of act +first the Vicar, who has been apprised of the loss of his property, +imparts this sad news to his family. The time is the gloaming. The +chimes are sounding in the church-tower. It is the hour of evening +prayer. The gray-haired pastor calls his loved ones around him, in his +garden, and simply and reverently tells them of their misfortune, which +is to be accepted submissively, as Heaven's will. The deep religious +feeling of that scene, the grouping, the use of sunset lights and +shadows, the melody of the chimes, the stricken look in the faces of the +women and children, the sweet gravity of the Vicar—instinct with the +nobleness of a sorrow not yet become corrosive and lachrymose, as is the +tendency of settled grief—and, over all, the sense of blighted +happiness and an uncertain future, made up a dramatic as well as a +pictorial effect of impressive poetic significance. In act second—which +is pictorial almost without intermission—there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> was a companion +picture, when the Vicar reads, at his fireside, a letter announcing the +restitution of his estate; while his wife and children and Mr. Burchell +are assembled around the spinet singing an old song. The repose with +which Henry Irving made that scene tremulous, almost painful, in its +suspense, was observed as one of the happiest strokes of his art. The +face and demeanour of Dr. Primrose, changing from the composure of +resignation to a startled surprise, and then to almost an hysterical +gladness, presented a study not less instructive than affecting of the +resources of acting. Only two contemporary actors have presented +anything kindred with Mr. Irving's acting in that situation and +throughout the scene that is sequent on the discovery of Olivia's +flight—Jefferson in America and Got in France.</p> + +<p>Evil is restless and irresistibly prone to action. Goodness is usually +negative and inert. Dr. Primrose is a type of goodness. In order to +invest him with piquancy and dramatic vigour Henry Irving gave him +passion, and therewithal various attributes of charming eccentricity. +The clergyman thus presented is the fruition of a long life of virtue. +He has the complete repose of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> innocence, the sweet candour of absolute +purity, the mild demeanour of spontaneous, habitual benevolence, the +supreme grace of unconscious simplicity. But he is human and passionate; +he shows—in his surroundings, in his quick sympathy with natural +beauty, and in his indicated rather than directly stated ideals of +conduct—that he has lived an imaginative and not a prosaic life; he is +vaguely and pathetically superstitious; and while essentially grand in +his religious magnanimity he is both fascinating and morally formidable +as a man. Those denotements point at Henry Irving's ideal. For his +method it is less easy to find the right description. His mechanical +reiteration of the words that are said to him by Sophia, in the moment +when the fond father knows that his idolised Olivia has fled with her +lover; his collapse, when the harmless pistols are taken from his +nerveless hands; his despairing cry, "If she had but died!"; his +abortive effort to rebuke his darling child in the hour of her +abandonment and misery, and the sudden tempest of passionate affection +with which the great tender heart sweeps away that inadequate and paltry +though eminently appropriate morality, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> takes its idol to itself as +only true love can do—those were instances of high dramatic achievement +for which epithets are inadequate, but which the memory of the heart +will always treasure.</p> + +<p>It was said by the poet Aaron Hill, in allusion to Barton Booth, that +the blind might have seen him in his voice and the deaf might have heard +him in his visage. Such a statement made concerning an actor now would +be deemed extravagant. But, turning from the Vicar to his cherished +daughter, that felicitous image comes naturally into the mind. To think +of Ellen Terry as Olivia will always be to recall one especial and +remarkable moment of beauty and tenderness. It is not her distribution +of the farewell gifts, on the eve of Olivia's flight—full although that +was of the emotion of a good heart torn and tortured by the conflict +between love and duty—and it is not the desperate resentment with which +Olivia beats back her treacherous betrayer, when, at the climax of his +baseness, he adds insult to heartless perfidy. Those, indeed, were made +great situations by the profound sincerity and the rich, woman-like +passion of the actress. But there was one instant, in the second act of +the play, when the wo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>man's heart has at length yielded to her lover's +will, and he himself, momentarily dismayed by his own conquest, strives +to turn back, that Ellen Terry made pathetic beyond description. The +words she spoke are simply these, "But I said I would come!" What +language could do justice to the voice, to the manner, to the sweet, +confiding, absolute abandonment of the whole nature to the human love by +which it had been conquered? The whole of that performance was +astonishing, was thrilling, with knowledge of the passion of love. That +especial moment was the supreme beauty of it. At such times human nature +is irradiated with a divine fire, and art fulfils its purpose.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p> +<h2>VII.</h2> + +<h3>ON JEFFERSON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.</h3> + + +<p>Joseph Jefferson has led a life of noble endeavour and has had a career +of ample prosperity, culminating in honourable renown and abundant +happiness. He was born in Philadelphia, February 20, 1829. He went on +the stage when he was four years old and he has been on the stage ever +since. His achievements as an actor have been recognised and accepted +with admiration in various parts of the world; in Australia and New +Zealand and in England, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as in the United +States. Among English-speaking actors he is the foremost living +representative of the art of eccentric comedy. He has not, of late +years, played a wide range of parts, but, restricting himself to a few +characters, and those of a representative kind, the manner in which he +has acted them is a perfect manner—and it is this that has gained for +him his distinctive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> eminence. Jefferson, however, is not simply and +exclusively an actor. His mind is many sided. He has painted landscape +pictures of a high order of merit,—pictures in which elusive moods and +subtle sentiments of nature are grasped with imaginative insight and +denoted and interpreted with a free, delicate, and luminous touch. He +has also addressed the public as an author. He has written an easy, +colloquial account of his own life, and that breezy, off-hand, +expeditious work,—after passing it as a serial through their Century +Magazine,—the Century Company has published in a beautiful volume. It +is a work that, for the sake of the writer, will be welcomed everywhere, +and, for its own sake as well as his, will everywhere be preserved.</p> + +<p>Beginning a theatrical career nearly sixty years ago (1833), roving up +and down the earth ever since, and seldom continuing in one place, +Jefferson has had uncommon opportunities of noting the development of +the United States and of observing, in both hemispheres, the changeful +aspect of one of the most eventful periods in the history of the world. +Actors, as a class, know nothing but the stage and see noth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>ing but the +pursuit in which they are occupied. Whoever has lived much among them +knows that fact, from personal observation. Whoever has read the various +and numerous memoirs that have from time to time been published by +elderly members of that profession must have been amused to perceive +that, while they conventionally agree that "all the world's a stage," +they are enthusiastically convinced that the stage is all the world. +Jefferson's book, although it contains much about the theatre, shows him +to be an exception in this respect, even as he is in many others. He has +seen many countries and many kinds of men and things, and he has long +looked upon life with the thoughtful gaze of a philosopher as well as +the wise smile of a humourist. He can, if he likes, talk of something +besides the shop. His account of his life "lacks form a little," and his +indifference to "accurate statistics"—which he declares to be "somewhat +tedious"—is now and then felt to be an embarrassment. One would like to +know, for instance, while reading about the primitive theatrical times, +when actors sailed the western rivers in flatboats, and shot beasts and +birds on the bank, precisely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> the extent and limits of that period. Nor +is this the only queer aspect of the dramatic past that might be +illumined. The total environment of a man's life is almost equally +important with the life itself—being, indeed, the scenery amid which +the action passes—and a good method for the writing of a biography is +that which sharply defines the successive periods of childhood, youth, +manhood, and age, and, while depicting the development of the individual +from point to point, depicts also the entire field through which he +moves, and the mutations, affecting his life, that occur in the historic +and social fabric around him. Jefferson, while he has painted vigorously +and often happily, on a large canvas, has left many spaces empty and +others but thinly filled. The reader who accompanies him may, +nevertheless, with a little care, piece out the story so as to perceive +it as a sequent, distinct, harmonious, and rounded narrative. Meanwhile +the companionship of this heedless historian is delightful—for whether +as actor, painter, or writer, Jefferson steadily exerts the charm of a +genial personality. You are as one walking along a country road, on a +golden autumn day, with a kind, merry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> companion, who knows all about +the trees that fringe your track and the birds that flit through their +branches, and who beguiles the way with many a humorous tale and many a +pleasant remembrance, now impressing your mind by the sagacity of his +reflections, now touching your heart by some sudden trait of sentiment +or pathos, and always pleasing and satisfying you with the consciousness +of a sweet, human, broad, charitable, piquant nature. Although an +autobiographer Jefferson is not egotistical, and although a moralist he +is not a bore. There is a tinge of the Horatian mood in him—for his +reader often becomes aware of that composed, sagacious, half-droll, +quizzical mind that indicates, with grave gentleness, the folly of +ambition, the vanity of riches, the value of the present hour, the +idleness of borrowing trouble, the blessing of the golden medium in +fortune, the absurdity of flatterers, and the comfort of keeping a +steadfast spirit amid the inevitable vicissitudes of this mortal state.</p> + +<p>Jefferson has memories of a boyhood that was passed in Washington, +Baltimore, and New York. He went to Chicago in 1838, when that place was +scarcely more than a village—making the journey from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> New York to +Buffalo in a canal-boat, and sailing thence, aboard a steamer, through +the lakes of Erie, Huron, and Michigan. He travelled with his parents, +and they gave dramatic performances, in which he assisted, in western +towns. It was a time of poverty and hardship, but those ills were borne +cheerfully—the brighter side of a hard life being kept steadily in +view, and every comic incident of it being seen and appreciated. His +father was a gentleman of the Mark Tapley temperament, who came out +strong amid adverse circumstances, and the early disappearance from the +book of that delightful person (who died in 1842, of yellow fever, at +Mobile), is a positive sorrow. His mother, a refined and gentle lady, of +steadfast character and of uncommon musical and dramatic talents and +accomplishments, survived till 1849, and her ashes rest in Ronaldson's +cemetery, in Philadelphia. Jefferson might have said much more about his +parents, and especially about his famous grandfather, without risk of +becoming tedious—for they were remarkably interesting people; but he +was writing his own life and not theirs, and he has explained that he +likes not to dwell much upon domestic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> matters. The story of his long +ancestry of actors, which reaches back to the days of Garrick (for there +have been five generations of the Jeffersons upon the stage), he has not +mentioned; and the story of his own young days is hurried rapidly to a +conclusion. He was brought on the stage, when a child, at the theatre in +Washington, D.C., by the negro comedian Thomas D. Rice, who emptied him +out of a bag; and thereupon, being dressed as "a nigger dancer," in +imitation of Rice, he performed the antics of Jim Crow. He adverts to +his first appearance in New York and remembers his stage combat with +Master Titus; and he thinks that Master Titus must remember it +also,—since one of that boy's big toes was nearly cut off in the fray. +That combat occurred at the Franklin theatre, September 30, 1837—a +useful fact that the autobiographer cares not to mention. He speedily +becomes a young man, as the reader follows him through the first three +chapters of his narrative,—of which there are seventeen,—and he is +found to be acting, as a stock player, in support of James W. Wallack, +Junius Brutus Booth, W.C. Macready, and Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Wallack, Jr. +Upon the powers and peculi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>arities of those actors, and upon the traits +of many others who, like them, are dead and gone (for there is scarcely +a word in the book about any of his living contemporaries), he comments +freely and instructively. He was "barn-storming" in Texas when the +Mexican war began, and he followed in the track of the American army, +and acted in the old Spanish theatre in Matamoras, in the spring of +1846; and, subsequently, finding that this did no good, he opened a +stall there for the sale of coffee and other refreshments, in the corner +of a gambling hell. He calls to mind the way of domestic life and the +every-day aspect of houses, gardens, people, and manners in Matamoras, +and those he describes with especial skill—deftly introducing the +portraiture of a dusky, black-eyed, volatile Mexican girl, to whom he +lost, temporarily, the light heart of youth, and whom he thinks that he +might have married had he not deemed it prudent to journey northward +toward a cooler clime. In New Orleans, at about that time, he first saw +the then young comedian John E. Owens: and he records the fact that his +ambition to excel as an actor was awakened by the spectacle of that +rival's success. Owens<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> has had his career since then,—and a brilliant +one it was,—and now he sleeps in peace.</p> + +<p>After that experience Jefferson repaired to Philadelphia, and during the +next ten years, from 1846 to 1856, he wrought in that city and in New +York, Baltimore, Richmond, and other places, sometimes as a stock actor, +sometimes as a star, and sometimes as a manager. He encountered various +difficulties. He took a few serious steps and many comic ones. He was +brought into contact with some individuals that were eminent and with +some that were ludicrous. He crossed the Allegheny mountains in +mid-winter, from Wheeling to Cumberland, in a cold stage-coach, and +almost perished. He was a member of Burton's company at the Arch Street +theatre, Philadelphia, and was one of the chorus in that great actor's +revival of <i>Antigone</i>—which there is little doubt that the chorus +extinguished. He was the low comedian in Joseph Foster's amphitheatre, +where he sang <i>Captain Kidd</i> to fill up the "carpenter scenes," and +where he sported amid the turbulent rhetorical billows of <i>Timour the +Tartar</i> and <i>The Terror of the Road</i>. He acted in New York at the +Franklin theatre and also at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> the Chatham. He managed theatres in Macon +and Savannah, where he brought out the blithe Sir William Don; and one +of the sprightliest episodes of his memoir is the chapter in which he +describes that tall, elegant, nonchalant adventurer. Don was a +Scotchman, born in 1826, who made his first appearance in America in +November 1850 at the Broadway theatre, New York, and afterward drifted +aimlessly through the provincial theatres. Don was married in 1857 to +Miss Emily Sanders, and he died at Tasmania, March 19, 1862, and was +buried at Hobartstown. Jefferson saw the dawn of promise in the career +of Julia Dean,—when that beautiful girl was acting with him, in the +stock—and afterwards he saw the noonday splendour of her prosperity; +and he might have recalled, but that sad touches are excluded from his +biography, her mournful decline. In 1853 he was stage manager of the +Baltimore museum, for Henry C. Jarrett, and in 1854 he was manager of +the Richmond theatre, for John T. Ford. Among the players whom he met, +and who deeply influenced him, were James E. Murdoch, Henry Placide, +Edwin Forrest, Edwin Adams, and Agnes Robertson. But the actor who most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> +affected the youth of Joseph Jefferson, whose influence sank deepest +into his heart and has remained longest in his memory and upon his +style, was his half-brother, Charles Burke: and certainly, as a +serio-comic actor, it may be doubted whether Charles Burke ever was +surpassed. That comedian was born March 27, 1822, in Philadelphia, and +he died in New York, November 10, 1854. Jefferson's mother, Cornelia +Frances Thomás, born in New York, October 1, 1796, the daughter of +French parents, was married in her girlhood to the Irish comedian Thomas +Burke, who died in 1824; and she contracted her second marriage, with +Jefferson's father, in 1826. Jefferson writes at his best in the +description of scenery, in the analysis of character, and in the +statement of artistic principles. His portraiture of Murdoch, as a +comedian, is particularly clear and fine. His account of Julia Dean's +hit, as Lady Priory, is excellent and will often be cited. His portrayal +of the reciprocal action of Burton and Charles Burke, when they were +associated in the same piece, conveys a valuable lesson. His anecdotes +of Edwin Forrest present that grim figure as yet again the involuntary +cause of mirth. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> often was so. Jefferson, however, draws a veil of +gentle charity over those misused powers, that perverse will, that +wasted life. The most striking dramatic portraiture in the book is that +bestowed on Charles Burke, William Warren, George Holland, Tom Glessing, +and Edwin Adams. Those were men who lived in Jefferson's affections, and +when he wrote about them he wrote from the heart. The sketch of +Glessing, whom everybody loved that ever knew him, is in a touching +strain of tender remembrance.</p> + +<p>Jefferson visited England and France in 1856, but not to act. At that +time he saw the famous English comedians Compton, Buckstone, Robson, and +Wright, and that extraordinary actor, fine alike in tragedy and comedy, +the versatile Samuel Phelps. In 1857 he was associated with Laura Keene +at her theatre in New York; and from that date onward his career has +been upon a high and sunlit path, visible to the world. His first part +at Laura Keene's theatre was Dr. Pangloss. Then came <i>Our American +Cousin</i>, in which he gained a memorable success as Asa Trenchard, and in +which Edward A. Sothern laid the basis of that fantastic structure of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> +whim and grotesque humour that afterward became famous as Lord +Dundreary. Sothern, Laura Keene, and William Rufus Blake, of course, +gained much of Jefferson's attention at that time, and he has not +omitted to describe them. His account of Blake, however, does not impart +an adequate idea of the excellence of that comedian. In 1858 he went to +the Winter Garden theatre, and was associated with the late Dion +Boucicault. His characters then were Newman Hoggs, Caleb Plummer, and +Salem Scudder—in <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, <i>The Cricket on the Hearth</i>, and +<i>The Octoroon</i>. Mr. Boucicault told him not to make Caleb Plummer a +solemn character at the beginning—a deliverance that Jefferson seems to +have cherished as one of colossal wisdom. He made a brilliant hit in +Salem Scudder, and it was then that he determined finally to assume the +position of a star. "Art has always been my sweetheart," exclaims +Jefferson, "and I have loved her for herself alone." No observer can +doubt that who has followed his career. It was in 1859 that he reverted +to the subject of Rip Van Winkle, as the right theme for his dramatic +purpose. He had seen Charles Burke as Rip, and he knew the several<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> +versions of Washington Irving's story that had been made for the theatre +by Burke, Hackett, and Yates. The first Rip Van Winkle upon the stage, +of whom there is any record in theatrical annals, was Thomas Flynn +(1804-1849). That comedian, the friend of the elder Booth, acted the +part for the first time on May 24, 1828, at Albany. Charles B. Parsons, +who afterward acted in many theatres as Rip, and ultimately became a +preacher, was, on that night, the performer of Derrick. Jefferson's +predecessors as Rip Van Winkle were remarkably clever men—Flynn, +Parsons, Burke, Chapman, Hackett, Yates, and William Isherwood. But it +remained for Jefferson to do with that character what no one else had +ever thought of doing—to lift it above the level of the tipsy rustic +and make it the poetical type of the drifting and dreaming +vagrant—half-haunted, half-inspired, a child of the trees and the +clouds. Jefferson records that he was lying on the hay in a barn in +Paradise Valley, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1859, taking advantage +of a rainy day to read Washington Irving's <i>Life and Letters</i>, when that +plan came to him. It proved an inspiration of happiness to thousands of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> +people all over the world. The comedian made a play for himself, on the +basis of Charles Burke's play, but with one vital improvement—he +arranged the text and business of the supernatural scene so that Rip +only should speak, while the ghosts should remain silent. That stroke of +genius accomplished his object. The man capable of that exploit in +dramatic art could not fail to win the world, because he would at once +fascinate its imagination while touching its heart.</p> + +<p>In 1861 Jefferson went to California and thence to Australia, and in the +latter country he remained four years. He has written a fine description +of the entrance to the harbour at Sydney. His accounts of "the skeleton +dance," as he saw it performed by the black natives of that land; of his +meeting with the haunted hermit in the woods; of the convict audience at +Tasmania, for whom he acted in <i>The Ticket-of-Leave Man</i>; and of the +entertainment furnished in a Chinese theatre, are compositions that +would impart to any book the interest of adventure and the zest of +novelty. Such pictures as those have a broad background; they are not +circumscribed within the proscenium frame. The man is seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> in those +passages as well as the actor; and he plays his part well, amid +picturesque surroundings of evil and peril, of tragedy and of pathos. In +Australia Jefferson met Charles Kean and his wife (Ellen Tree), of whom +his sketches are boldly drawn and his memories are pleasant. Mr. and +Mrs. Kean afterward made their farewell visit to the United States, +beginning, when they reached New York (from San Francisco, in April +1865), with <i>Henry VIII.</i>, and closing with <i>The Jealous Wife</i>. In 1865 +Jefferson went from Australia to South America and passed some time in +Lima, where he saw much tropical luxury and many beautiful ladies—an +inspiriting spectacle, fittingly described by him in some of the most +felicitous of his fervent words. In June 1865 he reached London, and +presently he came forth, at the Adelphi, as Rip Van Winkle,—having +caused the piece to be rewritten by Mr. Boucicault, who introduced the +colloquy of the children, paraphrased for it the recognition scene +between King Lear and Cordelia, and kept Gretchen alive to be married to +Derrick. Mr. Boucicault, however, had no faith in the piece or the +actor's plan, and down to the last moment prophesied fail<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>ure. +Jefferson's success was unequivocal. Friends surrounded him and in the +gentle and genial record that he has made of those auspicious days some +of the brightest names of modern English literature sparkle on his page. +Benjamin Webster, Paul Bedford, John Billington, John Brougham, and +Marie Wilton were among the actors who were glad to be his associates. +Robertson, the dramatist, was his constant companion—one of the most +intellectual and one of the wittiest of men. Planché, aged yet hearty +and genial (and no man had more in his nature of the sweet spirit of the +comrade), speedily sought him. Charles Reade and Anthony Trollope became +his cronies; and poor Artemas Ward arrived and joined the party just as +Jefferson was leaving it—as bright a spirit, as kind a heart, and as +fine and quaint a humourist as ever cheered this age—from which he +vanished too soon for the happiness of his friends and for the fruition +of his fame. "I was much impressed," says the comedian, "with Ward's +genial manner; he was not in good health, and I advised him to be +careful lest the kindness of London should kill him." That advice was +not heeded, and the kindness of London speedily ended Ward's days.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p> + +<p>Jefferson came home in 1866 and passed ten years in America—years of +fame and fortune, whereof the record is smooth prosperity. Its most +important personal incident was his second marriage, on December 20, +1867, at Chicago, to Miss Sarah Warren. In July 1873 he made a voyage to +Europe, with his wife and William Warren, the comedian, and remained +there till autumn. From November 1, 1875 to April 29, 1876 and from +Easter 1877 until midsummer he was again acting in London, where he +redoubled his former success. In October 1877 he returned home, and +since then he has remained in America. The chronicle that he has written +glides lightly over these latter years, only now and then touching on +their golden summits. The manifest wish of the writer has been to people +his pages as much as possible with the men and women of his artistic +circle and knowledge who would be likely to interest the reader. Robert +Browning, Charles Kingsley, and George Augustus Sala come into the +picture, and there is a pleasing story of Browning and Longfellow +walking arm in arm in London streets till driven into a cab by a summer +shower, when Longfellow insisted on pass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>ing his umbrella through the +hole in the roof, for the protection of the cab-driver. Jefferson lived +for one summer in an old mansion at Morningside, Edinburgh, and he +dwells with natural delight on his recollections of that majestic city. +He had many a talk, at odd times, with the glittering farceur Charles +Mathews, about dramatic art, and some of this is recorded in piquant +anecdotes. "By many," says the amiable annalist, "he was thought to be +cold and selfish; I do not think he was so." There is a kind word for +Charles Fechter, whose imitations of Frederick Lemaitre, in <i>Belphegor, +the Mountebank</i>, live in Jefferson's remembrance as wonderfully graphic. +There are glimpses of James Wallack, Walter Montgomery, Peter Richings, +E.A. Sothern, Laura Keene, James G. Burnett, John Gilbert, Tyrone Power, +Lester Wallack, John McCullough, John T. Raymond, Mr. and Mrs. Barney +Williams, John Drew (the elder), F.S. Chanfrau, Charlotte Cushman, Mrs. +Drake, and many others; and the record incorporates two letters, not +before published, from John Howard Payne, the author of <i>Home, Sweet +Home</i>—a melody that is the natural accompaniment of Jefferson's life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> +There is a pretty picture of that ancient supper-room at No. 2 Bulfinch +Place, Boston—Miss Fisher's kitchen—as it appeared when William Warren +sat behind the mound of lobsters, at the head of the table, while the +polished pewters reflected the cheerful light, and wit and raillery +enlivened the happy throng, and many a face was wreathed with smiles +that now is dark and still forever. In one chapter Jefferson sets forth +his views upon the art of acting; and seldom within so brief a compass +will so many sensible reflections be found so simply and tersely +expressed. The book closes with words of gratitude for many blessings, +and with an emblematic picture of a spirit resigned to whatever +vicissitudes of fortune may yet be decreed.</p> + +<p>Jefferson's memoir is a simple message to simple minds. It will find its +way to thousands of readers to whom a paper by Addison or an essay by +Hume would have no meaning. It will point for them the moral of a good +life. It will impress them with the spectacle of a noble actor, +profoundly and passionately true to the high art by which he lives, +bearing eloquent testimony to its beauty and its worth, and to the fine +powers and sterling virtues of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> good men and women with whom he has +been associated in its pursuit. It will display to them—and to all +others who may chance to read it—a type of that absolute humility of +spirit which yet is perfectly compatible with a just pride of intellect. +It will help to preserve interesting traits of famous actors of an +earlier time, together with bright stories that illumine the dry +chronicle of our theatrical history. And, in its simple record of the +motives by which he has been impelled, and the artistic purposes that he +has sought to accomplish, it will remain an eloquent, vital, +indestructible memorial to the art and the character of a great +comedian, when the present reality of his exquisite acting shall have +changed to a dim tradition and a fading memory of the past.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p> +<h2>VIII.</h2> + +<h3>ON JEFFERSON'S ACTING.</h3> + + +<p>Fifty years from now the historian of the American stage, if he should +be asked to name the actor of this period who was most beloved by the +people of this generation, will answer that it was Joseph Jefferson. +Other actors of our time are famous, and they possess in various degrees +the affection of the public. Jefferson is not only renowned but +universally beloved. To state the cause of this effect is at once to +explain his acting and to do it the honour to which it is entitled. That +cause can be stated in a single sentence. Jefferson is at once a poetic +and a human actor, and he is thus able to charm all minds and to win all +hearts. His success, therefore, is especially important not to himself +alone but to the people.</p> + +<p>Public taste is twofold. It has a surface liking, and it has a deep, +instinctive, natural preference. The former is alert, capricious,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> +incessant, and continually passes from fancy to fancy. It scarcely knows +what it wants, except that it wants excitement and change. Those persons +in the dramatic world who make a point to address it are experimental +speculators, whose one and only object is personal gain, and who are +willing and ready to furnish any sort of entertainment that they think +will please a passing caprice, and thereby will turn a penny for +themselves. To judge the public entirely by this surface liking is to +find the public what Tennyson once called it—a many-headed beast. With +that animal every paltry and noxious thing can be made, for a time, to +flourish; and that fact leads observers who do not carefully look +beneath the surface to conclude that the public is always wrong. But the +deep preference of the public comes into the question, and observers who +are able to see and to consider that fact presently perceive that the +artist, whether actor or otherwise, who gives to the public, not what it +says it wants but what it ought to have, is in the long run the victor. +The deep preference is for the good thing, the real thing, the right. It +is not intelligent. It does not go with thinking and reasoning. It does +not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> pretend to have grounds of belief. It simply responds. But upon the +stage the actor who is able to reach it is omnipotent. Jefferson +conspicuously is an actor who appeals to the deep, instinctive, natural +preference of humanity, and who reaches it, arouses it, and satisfies +it. Throughout the whole of his mature career he has addressed the +nobler soul of humanity and given to the people what they ought to have; +and the actor who is really able to do that naturally conquers +everything. It is not a matter of artifice and simulation; it is a +matter of being genuine and not a sham.</p> + +<p>Still further, Jefferson has aroused and touched and satisfied the +feelings of the people, not by attempting to interpret literature but by +being an actor. An actor is a man who acts. He may be an uneducated man, +deficient in learning and in mental discipline, and yet a fine actor. +The people care not at all for literature. They do not read it, and they +know nothing about it until it is brought home to their hearts by some +great interpreter of it. What they do know is action. They can see and +they can feel, and the actor who makes them see and feel can do +anything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> with them that he pleases. It is his privilege and his +responsibility. Jefferson is one of those artists (and they are few) who +depend for their effects not upon what authors have written but upon +impersonation. He takes liberties with the text. It would not perhaps be +saying too much to say that he does not primarily heed the text at all. +He is an actor; and speaking with reference to him and to others like +him it would perhaps be well if those persons who write criticisms upon +the stage would come to a definite conclusion upon this point and +finally understand that an actor must produce his effects on the instant +by something that he does and is, and not by rhetoric and elocution, and +therefore that he should not be expected to repeat every word of every +part, or to be a translator of somebody else, but that he must be +himself. If we want the full, literal text of Shakespeare we can stop at +home and read it. What we want of the actor is that he should give +himself; and the true actor does give himself. The play is the medium. A +man who acts Romeo must embody, impersonate, express, convey, and make +evident what he knows and feels about love. He need not trouble himself +about Shakespeare. That great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> poet will survive; while if Romeo, being +ever so correct, bores the house, Romeo will be damned. Jefferson is an +actor who invariably produces effect, and he produces it by +impersonation, and by impersonation that is poetic and human.</p> + +<p>Jefferson's performance of Acres conspicuously exemplifies the +principles that have been stated here. He has not hesitated to alter the +comedy of <i>The Rivals</i>, and in his alteration of it he has improved it. +Acres has been made a better part for an actor, and a more significant +and sympathetic part for an audience. You could not care particularly +for Acres if he were played exactly as he is written. You might laugh at +him, and probably would, but he would not touch your feelings. Jefferson +embodies him in such a way that he often makes you feel like laughing +and crying at the same moment, and you end with loving the character, +and storing it in your memory with such cherished comrades of the fancy +as Mark Tapley and Uncle Toby. There is but little human nature in Acres +as Sheridan has drawn him, and what there is of human nature is coarse; +but as embodied by Jefferson, while he never ceases to be comically +absurd, he becomes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> fine and sweet, and wins sympathy and inspires +affection, and every spectator is glad to have seen him and to remember +him. It is not possible to take that sort of liberty with every author. +You can do it but seldom with Shakespeare; never in any but his juvenile +plays. But there are authors who can be improved by that process, and +Sheridan—in <i>The Rivals</i>, not in <i>The School for Scandal</i>—is one of +them. And anyway, since it ought to be felt, known, understood, and +practically admitted that an actor is something more than a telegraph +wire, that his personal faculty and testimony enter into the matter of +embodiment and expression, Jefferson's rare excellence and great success +as Acres should teach a valuable lesson, correcting that pernicious +habit of the critical mind which measures an actor by the printed text +of a play-book and by the hide-bound traditions of custom on the stage. +Jefferson has had a royal plenitude of success as an actor, chiefly with +the part of Rip Van Winkle, but also with the characters of Caleb +Plummer, Bob Brierly, Dr. Pangloss, Dr. Ollapod, Mr. Golightly, and Hugh +de Brass. The reason of that success cannot be found in conventional +adherence to stage customs and critical standards.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p> + +<p>Jefferson has gained his great power over the people—of which his great +fame is the shadow—- by giving himself in his art—his own rich and +splendid nature and the crystallised conclusions of his experience. As +an artist, when it comes to execution, he leaves nothing to chance. The +most seemingly artless of his proceedings is absolutely defined in +advance, and never is what heedless observers call impulsive and +spontaneous. But his temperament is free, fluent, opulent, and +infinitely tender; and when the whole man is aroused, this flows into +the moulds of literary and dramatic art and glorifies them. When you are +looking at Jefferson as Acres in the duel scene in <i>The Rivals</i>, you +laugh at him, but almost you laugh through your tears. When you see +Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle confronting the ghosts on the lonely +mountain-top at midnight, you see a display of imaginative personality +quite as high as that of Hamlet in tremulous sensibility to supernatural +influence, although wholly apart from Hamlet in altitude of intellect +and in anguish of experience. The poetry of the impersonation, though, +is entirely consonant with Hamlet, and that is the secret of Jefferson's +excep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>tional hold upon the heart and the imagination of his time. The +public taste does not ask Jefferson to trifle with his art. Its deep, +spontaneous, natural preference feels that he is a true actor, and so +yields to his power, and enjoys his charm, and is all the time improved +and made fitter to enjoy it. He has reached as great a height as it is +possible to reach in his profession. He could if he chose play greater +parts than he has ever attempted; he could not give a better +exemplification than he gives, in his chose and customary achievement, +of all that is distinctive, beautiful, and beneficent in the art of the +actor.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p> +<h2>IX.</h2> + +<h3>JEFFERSON AND FLORENCE IN OLD COMEDY.</h3> + + +<p>A revival of <i>The Heir at Law</i> was accomplished in the New York season +of 1890, with Joseph Jefferson in the character of Dr. Pangloss and +William James Florence in that of Zekiel Homespun. That play dates back +to 1797, a period in which a sedulous deference to conventionality +prevailed in the British theatre, as to the treatment of domestic +subjects; and, although the younger Colman wrote in a more flexible +style than was possessed by any other dramatist of the time, excepting +Sheridan, he was influenced to this extent by contemporary usage, that +often when he became serious he also became artificial and stilted. The +sentimental part of <i>The Heir at Law</i> is trite in plan and hard in +expression. Furthermore that portion of it which, in the character of +Dr. Pangloss, satirises the indigent, mercenary, disreputable private +tutors who constituted a distinct and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> pernicious class of social +humbugs in Colman's day, has lost its direct point for the present age, +through the disappearance of the peculiar type of imposture against +which its irony was directed. Dr. Pangloss, nevertheless, remains +abstractly a humorous personage; and when he is embodied by an actor +like Jefferson, who can elucidate his buoyant animal spirits, his gay +audacity, his inveterate good-nature, his nimble craft, his jocular +sportiveness, his shrewd knowledge of character and of society, and his +scholar-like quaintness, he becomes a delightful presence; for his +mendacity disappears in the sunshine of his humour; his faults seem +venial; and we entertain him much as we do the infinitely greater and +more disreputable character of Falstaff,—knowing him to be a vagabond, +but finding him a charming companion, for all that. This is one great +relief to the hollow and metallic sentimentality of the piece. Persons +like Henry Moreland, Caroline Dormer, and Mr. Steadfast would be +tiresome in actual life; they belong, with Julia and Falkland and +Peregrine and Glenroy, to the noble army of the bores, and they are +insipid on the stage; but the association of the sprightly and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> jocose +Pangloss with those drab-tinted and preachy people irradiates even their +constitutional platitude with a sparkle of mirth. They shine, in spite +of themselves.</p> + +<p>Colman's humour is infectious and penetrating. In that quality he was +original and affluent. As we look along the line of the British +dramatists for the last hundred years we shall find no parallel to his +felicity in the use of comic inversion and equivoke, till we come to +Gilbert. Though he was tedious while he deferred to that theatrical +sentimentality which was the fashion of his day (and against which +Goldsmith, in <i>She Stoops to Conquer</i>, was the first to strike), he +could sometimes escape from it; and when he did escape he was brilliant. +In <i>The Heir at Law</i> he has not only illumined it by the contrast of Dr. +Pangloss but by the unctuous humour and irresistible comic force of the +character of Daniel Dowlas, Lord Duberly. Situations in a play, in order +to be invested with the enduring quality of humour, must result from +such conduct as is the natural and spontaneous expression of comic +character. The idea of the comic parvenue is ancient. It did not +originate with Colman. His application of it, however, was novel and his +treat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>ment of it—taking fast hold of the elemental springs of mirth—is +as fresh to-day as it was a hundred years ago. French minds, indeed, and +such as subscribe to French notions, would object that the means +employed to elicit character and awaken mirth are not scientifically and +photographically correct, and that they are violent. Circumstances, they +would say, do not so fall out that a tallow-chandler is made a lord. The +Christopher Sly expedient, they would add, is a forced expedient. +Perhaps it is. But English art sees with the eyes of the imagination and +in dramatic matters it likes to use colour and emphasis. Daniel Dowlas, +as Lord Duberly, is all the droller for being a retired tallow-chandler, +ignorant, greasy, conventional, blunt, a sturdy, honest, ridiculous +person, who thinks he has observed how lords act and who intends to put +his gained knowledge into practical use. We shall never again see him +acted as he was acted by Burton, or by that fine actor William Rufus +Blake, or even by John Gilbert—who was of rather too choleric a +temperament and too fine a texture for such an oily and stupidly +complacent personage. But whenever and however he is acted he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> will be +recognised as an elemental type of absurd human nature made ludicrous by +comic circumstances; and he will give rich and deep amusement.</p> + +<p>It is to be observed, in the analysis of this comedy, that according to +Colman's intention the essential persons in it are all, at heart, human. +The pervasive spirit of the piece is kindly. Old Dowlas, restricted to +his proper place in life, is a worthy man. Dick Dowlas, intoxicated by +vanity and prosperity, has no harm in him, and he turns out well at +last. Even Dr. Pangloss—although of the species of rogue that subsists +by artfully playing upon the weakness of human vanity—is genial and +amiable; he is a laughing philosopher; he gives good counsel; he hurts +nobody; he is but a mild type of sinner—and the satirical censure that +is bestowed upon him is neither merciless nor bitter. Pangloss, in Milk +Alley, spinning his brains for a subsistence, might be expected to prove +unscrupulous; but the moraliser can imagine Pangloss, if he were only +made secure by permanent good fortune, leading a life of blameless +indolence and piquant eccentricity. From that point of view Jefferson +formed his ideal of the character; and, indeed, his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> treatment of the +whole piece denoted an active practical sympathy with that gentle view +of the subject. He placed before his audience a truthful picture of old +English manners; telling them, in rapid and cheery action, Colman's +quaint story—in which there is no malice and no bitterness, but in +which simple virtue proves superior to temptation, and integrity is +strong amid vicissitudes—and leaving in their minds, at the last, an +amused conviction that indeed "Nature hath framed strange fellows in her +time." His own performance was full of nervous vitality and mental +sparkle, and of a humour deliciously quaint and droll. Dr. Panglass, as +embodied by Jefferson, is a man who always sees the comical aspect of +things and can make you see it with him, and all the while can be +completely self-possessed and grave without ever once becoming slow or +heavy. There was an air of candour, of ingenuous simplicity, of demure +propriety, about the embodiment, that made it inexpressibly funny. There +was no effort and no distortion. The structure of the impersonation +tingled with life, and the expression of it—in demeanour, movement, +facial play, intonation and business—was clear and crisp,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> with that +absolute precision and beautiful finish for which the acting of +Jefferson has always been distinguished. He is probably the only +American comedian now left, excepting John S. Clarke, who knows all the +traditional embellishments that have gone to the making of this part +upon the stage—embellishments fitly typified by the bank-note business +with Zekiel Homespun; a device, however, that perhaps suggests a greater +degree of moral obliquity in Dr. Pangloss than was intended by the +author. It was exceedingly comical, though, and it served its purpose. +Jefferson has had the character of Pangloss in his repertory for almost +forty years. He first acted it in New York as long ago as 1857, at Laura +Keene's theatre, when that beautiful woman played Cicely and when +Duberly was represented by the lamented James G. Burnett. It takes the +playgoer a long way back, to be thinking about this old piece and the +casts that it has had upon the American stage. <i>The Heir at Law</i> was a +great favourite in Boston thirty years ago and more, when William Warren +was in his prime and could play Dr. Pangloss with the best of them, and +when Julia Bennett Barrow was living and acting, who could play Cicely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> +in a way that no later actress has excelled. John E. Owens as Pangloss +will never be forgotten. It was a favourite part with John Brougham. And +the grotesque fun of John S. Clarke in that droll character has been +recognised on both sides of the Atlantic.</p> + +<p>In Jefferson's impersonation of Dr. Pangloss the predominant beauty was +spontaneous and perfectly graceful identification with the part. The +felicity of the apt quotations seemed to be accidental. The manner was +buoyant, but the alacrity of the mind was more nimble than the celerity +of the body, and those wise and witty comments that Pangloss makes upon +life, character, and manners flowed naturally from a brain that was in +the vigour and repose of intense animation. The actor was completely +merged in the character, which nevertheless his judgment dominated and +his will directed. No other representative of Pangloss has quite +equalled Jefferson in the element of authoritative and convincing +sincerity. His demure sapience was of the most intense order and it +arose out of great mental excitement. No other actor of the part has +equalled him in softness and winning charm of humour. His embodiment of +Dr. Pangloss has left in the mem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>ory of his time an image of eccentric +character not less lovable than ludicrous.</p> + +<p>With Zekiel Homespun, an actor who is true to the author's plan will +produce the impression of an affectionate heart, virtuous principles, +and absolute honesty of purpose, combined with rustic simplicity. +Florence easily reached that result. His preservation of a dialect was +admirably exact. The soul of the part is fraternal love, and when Zekiel +finds that his trusted friend has repulsed him and would wrong his +sister, there is a fine flash of noble anger in the pride and scorn with +which he confronts this falsehood and dishonour. Florence in days when +he used to act the Irish Emigrant proved himself the consummate master +of simple pathos. He struck that familiar note again in the lovely +manner of Zekiel toward his sister Cicely, and his denotement of the +struggle between affection and resentment in the heart of the brother +when wounded by the depravity of his friend was not less beautiful in +the grace of art than impressive in simple dignity and touching in +passionate fervour. In point of natural feeling Zekiel Homespun is a +stronger part than Dr. Pangloss, although not nearly so complex nor so +difficult to act.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> The sentiments by which it is animated awaken instant +sympathy and the principles that impel command universal respect. No +actor who has attempted Zekiel Homespun in this generation on the +American stage has approached the performance that was given by +Florence, in conviction, in artless sweetness, in truth of passion, and +in the heartfelt expression of the heart.</p> + +<p>Purists customarily insist that the old comedies are sacred; that no one +of their celestial commas or holy hyphens can be omitted without sin; +and that the alteration of a sentence in them is sacrilege. The truth +stands, however, without regard to hysterics: and it is a truth that the +old comedies owe their vitality mostly to the actors who now and then +resuscitate them. No play of the past is ever acted with scrupulous +fidelity to the original text. The public that saw the <i>Heir-at-Law</i> and +the <i>Rivals</i>, when Jefferson and Florence acted in them, saw condensed +versions, animated by a living soul of to-day, and therefore it was +impressed. The one thing indispensable on the stage is the art of the +actor.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p> +<h2>X.</h2> + +<h3>ON THE DEATH OF FLORENCE.</h3> + + +<p>The melancholy tidings of the death of Florence came suddenly (he died +in Philadelphia, after a brief illness, November 19, 1891), and struck +the hearts of his friends not simply with affliction but with dismay. +Florence was a man of such vigorous and affluent health that the idea of +illness and death was never associated with him. Whoever else might go, +he at least would remain, and for many cheerful years he would please +our fancy and brighten our lives. His spirit was so buoyant and +brilliant that it seemed not possible it could ever be dimmed. Yet now, +in a moment, his light was quenched and there was darkness on his mirth. +We shall hear his pleasant voice no more and see no more the sunshine of +a face that was never seen without joy and can never be remembered +without sorrow. The loss to the public was great. Few actors within the +last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> forty years have stood upon a level with Florence in versatility +and charm. His gentleness, his simplicity, his modesty, his affectionate +fidelity, his ready sympathy, his inexhaustibly patience, his fine +talents—all those attributes united with his spontaneous drollery to +enshrine him in tender affection.</p> + +<p>William James Florence, whose family name was Conlin, was born in +Albany, July 26, 1831. When a youth he joined the Murdoch Dramatic +Association, and he early gave evidence of extraordinary dramatic +talent. On December 9, 1849 he made his first appearance on the regular +stage, at the Marshall theatre in Richmond, Virginia, where he +impersonated Tobias, in <i>The Stranger</i>. After that he met with the usual +vicissitudes of a young player. He was a member of various stock +companies—notably that of W.C. Forbes, of the Providence museum, and +that of the once-popular John Nickinson, of Toronto and Quebec—the +famous Havresack of his period. Later he joined the company at Niblo's +theatre, New York, under the management of Chippendale and John Sefton, +appearing there on May 8, 1850. He also acted at the Broadway, under +Marshall's man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>agement, and in 1852 he was a member of the company at +Brougham's Lyceum. On January 1, 1853 he married Malvina Pray, sister of +the wife of Barney Williams; and in that way those two Irish comedians +came to be domestically associated.</p> + +<p>At that time Florence wrote several plays, upon Irish and Yankee +subjects, then very popular, and he began to figure as a star—his wife +standing beside him. They appeared at Purdy's National theatre, June 8, +1853, and then, and for a long time afterward, they had much popularity +and success. Florence had composed many songs of a sprightly character +(one of them, called <i>Bobbing Around</i>, had a sale of more than 100,000 +copies), and those songs were sung by his wife, to the delight of the +public. The Irish drama served his purpose for many years, but he varied +that form of art by occasional resort to burlesque and by incursions +into the realm of melodrama. One of his best performances was that of +O'Bryan, in John Brougham's play of <i>Temptation, or the Irish Emigrant</i>, +with which he often graced the stage of the Winter Garden. In that he +touched the extremes of gentle humour and melting pathos. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> was +delightfully humorous, also, in Handy Andy, and in all that long line of +Irish characters that came to our stage with Tyrone Power and the elder +John Drew. He had exceptional talent for burlesque, and that was often +manifested in his early days. <i>Fra Diavolo</i>, <i>Beppo</i>, <i>Lallah Rookh</i>, +<i>The Lady of the Lions</i>, and <i>The Colleen Bawn</i>, were among the +burlesques that he produced, and with those he was the pioneer.</p> + +<p>Engagements were filled by Mr. and Mrs. Florence, at the outset of their +starring tour, in many cities of the republic, and everywhere they met +with kindness and honour. Among the plays written by Florence were <i>The +Irish Princess</i>, <i>O'Neil the Great</i>, <i>The Sicilian Bride</i>, <i>Woman's +Wrongs</i>, <i>Eva</i>, and <i>The Drunkard's Doom</i>. On April 2, 1856 Mr. and Mrs. +Florence sailed for England, and presently they appeared at Drury Lane +theatre, where they at once stepped into favour. The performance of the +<i>Yankee Gal</i> by Mrs. Florence aroused positive enthusiasm—for it was +new, and Mrs. Florence was the first American comic actress that had +appeared upon the English stage. More than two hundred representations +of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> it were given at that time. Florence used to relate that his +fortunes were greatly benefited by his success in London, and he +habitually spoke with earnest gratitude of the kindness that he received +there. From that time onward he enjoyed almost incessant prosperity. A +tour of the English provincial cities followed his London season. He +acted at Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, and Dublin, +and both his wife and himself became favourites—so that their songs +were sung and whistled in the streets, wherever they went.</p> + +<p>Returning to the United States Mr. and Mrs. Florence renewed their +triumphs, all over the land. In 1861 Florence played some of Burton's +characters in Wallack's theatre—among them being Toodle and Cuttle. At +a later period he made it a custom to lease Wallack's theatre during the +summer, and there he produced many burlesques. In 1863, at the Winter +Garden, he offered <i>The Ticket-of-Leave Man</i> and acted Bob Brierly, +which was one of the best exploits of his life. In 1867 Wallack's old +theatre being then called the Broadway and managed by Barney Williams, +he brought to that house the comedy of <i>Caste</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> and presented it with a +distribution of the parts that has not been equalled. The actors were +Mrs. Chanfrau, Mrs. Gilbert, Mrs. Florence, William Davidge, Owen +Marlowe, Edward Lamb, and Florence—who played George D'Alroy. In 1868 +he presented <i>No Thoroughfare</i> and enacted Obenreizer,—a performance +that established his rank among the leading actors of the time. In 1876 +he made a remarkable hit as the Hon. Bardwell Slote in the play of <i>The +Mighty Dollar</i>, by Benjamin E. Woolff. That was the last important new +play that he produced. During the last fifteen years of his life he +offered selections from his accepted repertory. For a time he was +associated with Jefferson—to whom he brought a strength that was deeply +valued and appreciated, equally by that famous actor and by the +public—acting Sir Lucius O'Trigger in <i>The Rivals</i> and Zekiel Homespun +in <i>The Heir-at-Law</i>.</p> + +<p>The power of Florence was that of impersonation. He was imaginative and +sympathetic; his style was flexible; and he had an unerring instinct of +effect. The secret of his success lay in his profound feeling, guided by +perfect taste and perfect self-control. He was an actor of humanity, and +he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> diffused an irresistible charm of truth and gentleness. His place +was his own and it can never be filled.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="center">An Epitaph.</p> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Here Rest the Ashes of</i><br /> +<span class="smcap">William James Florence</span>,<br /> +<i>Comedian</i>.<br /> +</p> + +<p><i>His Copious and Varied Dramatic Powers, together with the Abundant +Graces of his Person, combined with Ample Professional Equipment and a +Temperament of Peculiar Sensibility and Charm, made him one of the Best +and Most Successful Actors of his Time, alike in Comedy and in Serious +Drama. He ranged easily from Handy Andy to Bob Brierly, and from Cuttle +to Obenreizer. In Authorship, alike of Plays, Stories, Music, and Song, +he was Inventive, Versatile, Facile, and Graceful. In Art Admirable; in +Life Gentle; he was widely known, and he was known only to be loved.</i></p> + +<p class="center"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> +<span class="smcap">He was Born in Albany, N.Y.</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">July</span> 26, 1831.<br /> +<span class="smcap">He Died in Philadelphia Penn.</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">November</span> 19, 1891.<br /> +</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">By Virtue cherished, by Affection mourned,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By Honour hallowed and by Fame adorned,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here FLORENCE sleeps, and o'er his sacred rest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each word is tender and each thought is blest.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Long, for his loss, shall pensive Mem'ry show,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through Humour's mask, the visage of her woe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Day breathe a darkness that no sun dispels,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Night be full of whispers and farewells;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While patient Kindness, shadow-like and dim,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Droops in its loneliness, bereft of him,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Feels its sad doom and sure decadence nigh,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For how should Kindness live, when he could die!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The eager heart, that felt for every grief,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The bounteous hand, that loved to give relief,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> +<span class="i0">The honest smile, that blessed where'er it lit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dew of pathos and the sheen of wit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sweet, blue eyes, the voice of melting tone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That made all hearts as gentle as his own,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Actor's charm, supreme in royal thrall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That ranged through every field and shone in all—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For these must Sorrow make perpetual moan,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bereaved, benighted, hopeless, and alone?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah, no; for Nature does no act amiss,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Heaven were lonely but for souls like this.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p> +<h2>XI.</h2> + +<h3>HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.</h3> + + +<p>In his beautiful production of <i>The Merchant of Venice</i> Henry Irving +restored the fifth act, the jailer scene, and the casket scenes in full, +and the piece was acted with strict fidelity to Shakespeare. With Ellen +Terry for Portia that achievement became feasible. With an ordinary +actress in that character the comedy might be tedious—notwithstanding +its bold and fine contrasts of character, its fertility of piquant +incident, and its lovely poetry. Radiant with her fine spirit and +beautiful presence, and animated and controlled in every fibre by his +subtle and authoritative intellect, judiciously cast and correctly +dressed and mounted, Henry Irving's revival of <i>The Merchant of Venice</i> +captured the public fancy; and in every quarter it was sincerely felt +and freely proclaimed that here, at last, was the perfection of stage +display. That suc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>cess has never faded. The performance was round, +symmetrical, and thorough—every detail being kept subordinate to +intelligent general effect, and no effort being made toward overweening +individual display.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare's conception of Shylock has long been in controversy. +Burbage, who acted the part in Shakespeare's presence, wore a red wig +and was frightful in form and aspect. The red wig gives a hint of low +comedy, and it may be that the great actor made use of low comedy +expedients to cloak Shylock's inveterate malignity and sinister purpose. +Dogget, who played the part in Lord Lansdowne's alteration of +Shakespeare's piece, turned Shylock into farce. Macklin, when he +restored the original play to the stage—at Drury Lane, February 14, +1741—- wore a red hat, a peaked beard, and a loose black gown, playing +Shylock as a serious, almost a tragic part, and laying great emphasis +upon a display of revengeful passion and hateful malignity. So terrible +was he, indeed, that persons who saw him on the stage in that character +not infrequently drew the inference and kept the belief that he was +personally a monster. His look was iron-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>visaged; the cast of his +manners was relentless and savage. Quin said that his face contained not +lines but cordage. In portraying the contrasted passions of joy for +Antonio's losses and grief for Jessica's elopement he poured forth all +his fire. When he whetted his knife, in the trial scene, he was silent, +grisly, ominous, and fatal. No human touch, no hint of race-majesty or +of religious fanaticism, tempered the implacable wickedness of that +hateful ideal. Pope, who saw that Shylock, hailed it as "the Jew that +Shakespeare drew"—and Pope, among other things, was one of the editors +of Shakespeare. Cooke, who had seen Macklin's Shylock, and also those of +Henderson, King, Kemble, and Yates, adopted, maintained, and transmitted +the legend of Macklin. Edmund Kean, who worshipped Cooke, was +unquestionably his imitator in Shylock; but it seems to have been Edmund +Kean who, for the first time, gave prominence to the Hebraic majesty and +fanatical self-consecration of that hateful but colossal character. +Jerrold said that Kean's Shylock was like a chapter of Genesis. +Macready—whose utterance of "Nearest his heart" was the blood-curdling +keynote of his whole infernal ideal—declared the part to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> be "composed +of harshness," and he saw no humanity in the lament for the loss of +Leah's ring, but only a lacerated sense of the value of that jewel. +Brooke, a great Shylock, concurred with Kean's ideal and made the Jew +orientally royal, the avenger of his race, having "an oath in heaven," +and standing on the law of "an eye for an eye." Edwin Forrest, the elder +Wallack, E.L. Davenport, Edwin Booth, Bogumil Davison, and Charles Kean +steadily kept Shylock upon the stage,—some walking in the religious +track and some leaving it. But the weight of opinion and the spirit and +drift of the text would justify a presentment of the Jew as the +incarnation not alone of avarice and hate, but of the stern, terrible +Mosaic law of justice. That is the high view of the part, and in +studying Shakespeare it is safe to prefer the high view.</p> + +<p>There must be imagination, or pathos, or weirdness, or some form of +humour, or a personal charm in the character that awakens the soul of +Henry Irving and calls forth his best and finest powers. There is little +of that quality in Shylock. But Henry Irving took the high view of him. +This Jew "feeds fat the ancient grudge" against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> Antonio—until the law +of Portia, more subtle than equitable, interferes to thwart him; but +also he avenges the wrongs that his "sacred nation" has suffered. His +ideal was right, his grasp of it firm, his execution of it flexible with +skill and affluent with intellectual power. If memory carries away a +shuddering thought of his baleful gaze upon the doomed Antonio and of +his horrid cry of the summons "Come, prepare!" it also retains the image +of a father convulsed with grief—momentarily, but sincerely—and of a +man who at least can remember that he once loved. It was a most austere +Shylock, inveterate of purpose, vindictive, malignant, cruel, ruthless; +and yet it was human. No creature was ever more logical and consistent +in his own justification. By purity, sincerity, decorum, fanaticism, the +ideal was aptly suggestive of such men as Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes, +and John Felton—persons who, with prayer on their lips, were +nevertheless capable of hideous cruelty. The street scene demands +utterance, not repression. The Jew raves there, and no violence would +seem excessive. Macklin, Kean, Cooke, and the elder Booth, each must +have been terrific at that point. Henry Irving's method was that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> of the +intense passion that can hardly speak—the passion that Kean is said to +have used so grandly in giving the curse of Junius Brutus upon Tarquin. +But, there was just as much of Shylock's nature in Henry Irving's +performance as in any performance that is recorded. The lack was +overwhelming physical power—not mentality and not art. At "No tears but +of my shedding" Henry Irving's Shylock took a strong clutch upon the +emotions and created an effect that will never be forgotten.</p> + +<p>Ellen Terry's Portia long ago became a precious memory. The part makes +no appeal to the tragic depths of her nature, but it awakens her fine +sensibility, stimulates the nimble play of her intellect, and cordially +promotes that royal exultation in the affluence of physical vitality and +of spiritual freedom that so often seems to lift her above the common +earth. There have been moments when it seemed not amiss to apply +Shakespeare's own beautiful simile to the image of queen-like +refinement, soft womanhood, and spiritualised intellect that this +wonderful actress presented—"as if an angel dropped down from the +clouds." Her Portia was stately, yet fascinating; a woman to inspire awe +and yet to capti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>vate every heart. Nearer to Shakespeare's meaning than +that no actress can ever go. The large, rich, superb manner never +invalidated the gentle blandishments of her sex. The repressed ardour, +the glowing suspense, the beautiful modesty and candour with which she +awaited the decision of the casket scene, showed her to be indeed all +woman, and worthy of a true man's love. Here was no paltering of a puny +nature with great feelings and a great experience. And never in our day +has the poetry of Shakespeare fallen from human lips in a strain of such +melody—with such teeming freedom of felicitous delivery and such dulcet +purity of diction.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p> +<h2>XII.</h2> + +<h3>JOHN McCULLOUGH IN SEVERAL CHARACTERS.</h3> + + +<p>There is no greater gratification to the intellect than the sense of +power and completeness in itself or the perception of power and +completeness in others. Those attributes were in John McCullough's +acting and were at the heart of its charm. His repertory consisted of +thirty characters, but probably the most imposing and affecting of his +embodiments was Virginius. The massive grandeur of adequacy in that +performance was a great excellence. The rugged, weather-beaten plainness +of it was full of authority and did not in the least detract from its +poetic purity and ideal grace. The simplicity of it was like the lovely +innocence that shines through the ingenuous eyes of childhood, while its +majesty was like the sheen of white marble in the sunlight. It was a +very high, serious, noble work; yet,—although, to his immeasura<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>ble +credit, the actor never tried to apply a "natural" treatment to +artificial conditions or to speak blank verse in a colloquial +manner,—it was made sweetly human by a delicate play of humour in the +earlier scenes, and by a deep glow of paternal tenderness that suffused +every part of it and created an almost painful sense of sincerity. +Common life was not made commonplace life by McCullough, nor blank verse +depressed to the level of prose. The intention to be real—the intention +to love, suffer, feel, act, defend, and avenge, as a man of actual life +would do—was obvious enough, through its harmonious fulfilment; yet the +realism was shorn of all triteness, all animal excess, all of those +ordinary attributes which are right in nature, and wrong because +obstructive in the art that is nature's interpretation.</p> + +<p>Just as the true landscape is the harmonious blending of selected +natural effects, so the true dramatic embodiment is the crystallization +of selected attributes in any given type of human nature, shown in +selected phases of natural condition. McCullough did not present +Virginius brushing his hair or paying Virginia's school-bills; yet he +suggested him, clearly and beautifully, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> the sweet domestic repose +and paternal benignity of his usual life—making thus a background of +loveliness, on which to throw, in lines of living light, the terrible +image of his agonising sacrifice. And when the inevitable moment came +for his dread act of righteous slaughter it was the moral grandeur, the +heart-breaking paternal agony, and the overwhelming pathos of the deed +that his art diffused—not the "gashed stab," the blood, the physical +convulsion, the revolting animal shock. Neither was there druling, or +dirt, or physical immodesty, or any other attribute of that class of the +natural concomitants of insanity, in the subsequent delirium.</p> + +<p>A perfect and holy love is, in one aspect of it, a sadder thing to see +than the profoundest grief. Misery, at its worst, is at least final: and +for that there is the relief of death. But love, in its sacred +exaltation,—the love of the parent for the child,—is so fair a mark +for affliction that one can hardly view it without a shudder of +apprehensive dread. That sort of love was personified in McCullough's +embodiment of Virginius, and that same nameless thrill of fear was +imparted by its presence,—even before the tragedian, with an exquis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>ite +intuition of art, made Virginius convey his vague presentiment, not +admitted but quickly thrust aside, of some unknown doom of peril and +agony. There was, in fact, more heart in that single piece of acting +than in any hundred of the most pathetic performances of the "natural" +school; and all the time it was maintained at the lofty level of classic +grace. It would be impossible to overstate the excellence of all that +McCullough did and said, in the forum scene—the noble severity of the +poise, the grace of the outlines, the terrible intensity of the mood, +the heartrending play of the emotions, the overwhelming delirium of the +climax. Throughout the subsequent most difficult portraiture of +shattered reason the actor never, for an instant, lost his steadfast +grasp upon sympathy and inspiration. Every heart knew the presence of a +nature that could feel all that Virginius felt and suffer and act all +that Virginius suffered and acted; and, beyond this, in his wonderful +investiture of the mad scenes with the alternate vacancy and lamentable +and forlorn anguish of a special kind of insanity, every judge of the +dramatic art recognised the governing touch of a splendid intellect, +imperial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> over all its resources and instruments of art.</p> + +<p>Virginius as embodied by McCullough was a man of noble and refined +nature; lovely in life; cruelly driven into madness; victorious over +dishonour, by a deed of terrible heroism; triumphant over crime, even in +forlorn and pitiable dethronement and ruin; and, finally, released by +the celestial mercy of death. And this was shown by a poetic method so +absolute that Virginius, while made an actual man to every human heart, +was kept a hero to the universal imagination, whether of scholar or +peasant, and a white ideal of manly purity and grace to that great +faculty of taste which is the umpire and arbiter of the human mind.</p> + +<p>The sustained poetic exaltation of that embodiment, its unity as a grand +and sympathetic personage, and its exquisite simplicity were the +qualities that gave it vitality in popular interest, and through those +it will have permanence in theatrical history. There were many subtle +beauties in it. The illimitable tenderness, back of the sweet dignity, +in the betrothal of Virginia to Icilius; the dim, transitory, evanescent +touch of presentiment, in the forecasting of the festival joys that are +to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> succeed the war; the self-abnegation and simple homeliness of grief +for the dead Dentatus; the alternate shock of freezing terror and cry of +joy, in the camp scene—closing with that potent repression and +thrilling outburst, "Prudence, but no patience!"—a situation and words +that call at once for splendid manliness of self-command and an ominous +and savage vehemence; the glad, saving, comforting cry to Virginia, "Is +she here?"—that cry which never failed to precipitate a gush of joyous +tears; the rapt preoccupation and the exquisite music of voice with +which he said, "I never saw thee look so like thy mother, in all my +life"; the majesty of his demeanour in the forum; the look that saw the +knife; the mute parting glance at Servia; the accents of broken reason, +but unbroken and everlasting love, that called upon the name of the poor +murdered Virginia; and then the last low wail of the dying father, +conscious and happy in the great boon of death—those, as McCullough +gave them, were points of impressive beauty, invested with the +ever-varying light and shadow of a delicate artistic treatment, and all +the while animated with passionate sincerity. The perfect finish of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> +performance, indeed, was little less than marvellous, when viewed with +reference to the ever-increasing volume of power and the evident reality +of afflicting emotion with which the part was carried. If acting ever +could do good the acting of McCullough did. If ever dramatic art +concerns the public welfare it is when such an ideal of manliness and +heroism is presented in such an image of nobility.</p> + +<p>In Lear and in Othello,—as in Virginius,—the predominant quality of +McCullough's acting was a profound and beautiful sincerity. His +splendidly self-poised nature—a solid rock of truth, which enabled him, +through years of patient toil, to hold a steadfast course over all the +obstacles that oppose and amid all the chatter that assails a man who is +trying to accomplish anything grand and noble in art—bore him bravely +up in those great characters, and made him, in each of them, a stately +type of the nobility of the human soul. As the Moor, his performance was +well-nigh perfect. There was something a little fantastic, indeed, in +the facial style that he used; and that blemish was enhanced by the +display of a wild beast's head on the back of one of Othello's robes. +The ten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>dency of that sort of ornamentation—however consonant it may be +deemed with the barbaric element in the Moor—is to suggest him as +heedful of appearances, and thus to distract regard from his experience +to his accessories. But the spirit was true. Simplicity, urged almost to +the extreme of barrenness, would not be out of place in Othello, and +McCullough, in his treatment of the part, testified to his practical +appreciation of that truth. His ideal of Othello combined manly +tenderness, spontaneous magnanimity, and trusting devotion, yet withal a +volcanic ground-swell of passion, that early and clearly displayed +itself as capable of delirium and ungovernable tempest. His method had +the calm movement of a summer cloud, in every act and word by which this +was shown. For intensity and for immediate, adequate, large, and +overwhelming response of action to emotion, that performance has not +been surpassed. There were points in it, though, at which the massive +serenity of the actor's temperament now and then deadened the glow of +feeling and depressed him to undue calmness; he sometimes recovered too +suddenly and fully from a tempest of emotion—as at the agonising appeal +to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> Iago, "Give me a living reason she's disloyal"; and he was not +enough delirious in the speech about the sybil and the handkerchief. On +the other hand, once yielded to the spell of desecrated feeling, his +mood and his expression of it were immeasurably pathetic and noble. +Those two great ebullitions of despair, "O, now forever," and "Had it +pleased heaven," could not be spoken in a manner more absolutely +heart-broken or more beautifully simple than the manner that was used by +him. In his obvious though silent suffering at the disgrace and +dismissal of Cassio; in the dazed, forlorn agony that blended with his +more active passion throughout the scene of Iago's wicked conquest of +his credulity; in his occasional quick relapses into blind and sweet +fidelity to the old belief in Desdemona; in his unquenchable tenderness +for her, through the delirium and the sacrifice; and in the tone of +soft, romantic affection—always spiritualised, never sensual—that his +deep and loving sincerity diffused throughout the work, was shown the +grand unity of the embodiment; a unity based on the simple passion of +love. To hear that actor say the one supreme line to Iago, "I am bound +to thee<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> forever," was to know that he understood and felt the meaning +of the character, to its minutest fibre and its profoundest depth.</p> + +<p>There were touches of fresh and aptly illustrative "business" in the +encounter of Othello and Iago, in the great scene of the third act. The +gasping struggles of Iago heightened the effect of the Moor's fury, and +the quickly suppressed impulse and yell of rage with which he finally +bounded away made an admirable effect of nature. In the last scene +McCullough rounded his performance with a solemn act of sacrifice. There +was nothing animal, nothing barbaric, nothing insane, in the slaughter +of Desdemona. It was done in an ecstasy of justice, and the atmosphere +that surrounded the deed was that of awe and not of horror.</p> + +<p>For the character of King Lear McCullough possessed the imposing +stature, the natural majesty, the great reach of voice, and the human +tenderness that are its basis and equipment. No actor of Lear can ever +satisfy a sympathetic lover of the part unless he possesses a greatly +affectionate heart, a fiery spirit, and,—albeit the intellect must be +shown in ruins,—a regal mind. Within that grand and lamentable image of +shat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>tered royalty the man must be noble and lovable. Nothing that is +puny or artificial can ever wear the investiture of that colossal +sorrow. McCullough embodied Lear as, from the first, stricken in +mind—already the unconscious victim of incipient decay and dissolution; +not mad but ready to become so. There is a subtle apprehensiveness all +about the presence of the king, in all the earlier scenes. He diffuses +disquietude and vaguely presages disaster, and the observer looks on him +with solicitude and pain. He is not yet decrepit but he will soon break; +and the spectator loves him and is sorry for him and would avert the +destiny of woe that is darkly foreshadowed in his condition. McCullough +gave the invectives—as they ought to be given—with the impetuous rush +and wild fury of the avalanche; and yet they were felt to come out of +agony as well as out of passion. The pathos of those tremendous passages +is in their chaotic disproportion; in their lawlessness and lack of +government; in the evident helplessness of the poor old man who hurls +them forth from a breaking heart and a distracted mind. He loves, and he +loathes himself for loving: every fibre of his nature is in hor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>rified +revolt against such lack of reverence, gratitude, and affection toward +such a monarch and such a father as he knows himself to have been. The +feeling that McCullough poured through those moments of splendid yet +pitiable frenzy was overwhelming in its intense glow and in its towering +and incessant volume. There was remarkable subtlety, also, in the manner +in which that feeling was tempered. In Lear's meeting with Goneril after +the curse you saw at once the broken condition of an aged, infirm, and +mentally disordered man, who had already forgotten his own terrible +words. "We'll no more meet, no more see one another" is a line to which +McCullough gave its full eloquence of abject mournfulness and forlorn +desolation. Other denotements of subtlety were seen in his sad +preoccupation with memories of the lost Cordelia, while talking with the +Fool. "I did her wrong" was never more tenderly spoken than by him. They +are only four little words; but they carry the crushing weight of +eternal and hopeless remorse. It was in this region of delicate, +imaginative touch that McCullough's dramatic art was especially +puissant. He was the first actor of Lear to discriminate be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>tween the +agony of a man while going mad and the careless, volatile, fantastic +condition—afflicting to witness, but no longer agonising to the lunatic +himself—of a man who has actually lapsed into madness. Edwin +Forrest—whose Lear is much extolled, often by persons who, evidently, +never saw it—much as he did with the part, never even faintly suggested +such a discrimination as that.</p> + +<p>To one altitude of Lear's condition it is probably impossible for +dramatic art to rise—the mood of divine philosophy, warmed with human +tenderness, in which the dazed but semi-conscious vicegerent of heaven +moralises over human life. There is a grandeur in that conception so +vast that nothing short of the rarest inspiration of genius can rise to +it. The deficiences of McCullough's Lear were found in the analysis of +that part of the performance. He had the heart of Lear, the royalty, the +breadth; but not all of either the exalted intellect, the sorrow-laden +experience, or the imagination—so gorgeous in its disorder, so +infinitely pathetic in its misery.</p> + +<p>His performance of Lear signally exemplified, through every phase of +passion, that temperance which should give it smoothness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> The treatment +of the curse scene, in particular, was extraordinarily beautiful for the +low, sweet, and tender melody of the voice, broken only now and +then—and rightly broken—with the harsh accents of wrath. Gentleness +never accomplished more, as to taste and pathos, than in McCullough's +utterance of "I gave you all," and "I'll go with you." The rallying of +the broken spirit after that, and the terrific outburst, "I'll not +weep," had an appalling effect. The recognition of Cordelia was simply +tender, and the death scene lovely in pathos and solemn and affecting in +tragic climax.</p> + +<p>Throughout <i>Othello</i> and <i>King Lear</i> McCullough's powers were seen to be +curbed and guided, not by a cold and formal design but by a grave and +sweet gentleness of mind, always a part of his nature, but more and more +developed by the stress of experience, by the reactionary subduing +influence of noble success, and by the definite consciousness of power. +He found no difficulty in portraying the misery of Othello and of Lear, +because this is a form of misery that flows out of laceration of the +heart, and not from the more subtle wounds that are inflicted upon the +spirit through the imagination. There was no brooding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> over the awful +mysteries of the universe, nor any of that corroding, haunted gloom that +comes of an over-spiritualised state of suffering, longing, questioning, +doubting humanity. Above all things else Othello and Lear are human; and +the human heart, above all things else, was the domain of that actor.</p> + +<p>The character of Coriolanus, though high and noble, is quite as likely +to inspire resentment as to awaken sympathy. It contains many elements +and all of them are good; but chiefly it typifies the pride of +intellect. This, in itself a natural feeling and a virtuous quality, +practically becomes a vice when it is not tempered with charity for +ignorance, weakness, and the lower orders of mind. In the character of +Coriolanus it is not so tempered, and therefore it vitiates his +greatness and leads to his destruction. Much, of course, can be urged in +his defence. He is a man of spotless honour, unswerving integrity, +dauntless courage, simple mind, straightforward conduct, and magnanimous +disposition. He is always ready to brave the perils of battle for the +service of his country. He constantly does great deeds—and would +continue constantly to do them—for their own sake and in a spirit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> of +total indifference alike to praises and rewards. He exists in the +consciousness of being great and has no life in the opinions of other +persons. He dwells in "the cedar's top" and "dallies with the wind and +scorns the sun." He knows and he despises with active and immitigable +contempt the shallowness and fickleness of the multitude. He is of an +icy purity, physical as well as mental, and his nerves tingle with +disgust of the personal uncleanliness of the mob. "Bid them wash their +faces," he says—when urged to ask the suffrages of the people—"and +keep their teeth clean." "He rewards his deeds with doing them," says +his fellow-soldier Cominius, "and looks upon things precious as the +common muck of the world." His aristocracy does not sit in a corner, +deedless and meritless, brooding over a transmitted name and sucking the +orange of empty self-conceit: it is the aristocracy of achievement and +of nature—the solid superiority of having done the brightest and best +deeds that could be done in his time and of being the greatest man of +his generation. It is as if a Washington, having made and saved a +nation, were to spurn it from him with his foot, in lofty and by no +means groundless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> contempt for the ignorance, pettiness, meanness, and +filth of mankind. The story of Coriolanus, as it occurs in Plutarch, is +thought to be fabulous, but it is very far from being fabulous as it +stands transfigured in the stately, eloquent tragedy of Shakespeare. The +character and the experience are indubitably representative. It was some +modified form of the condition thus shown that resulted in the treason +and subsequent ruin of Benedict Arnold. Pride of intellect largely +dominated the career of Aaron Burr. More than one great thinker has +split on that rock, and gone to pieces in the surges of popular +resentment. "No man," said Dr. Chapin, in his discourse over the coffin +of Horace Greeley, "can lift himself above himself." He who repudiates +the humanity of which he is a part will inevitably come to sorrow and +ruin. It is perfectly true that no intellectual person should in the +least depend upon the opinions of others—which, in the nature of +things, exist in all stages of immaturity, mutability, and error—but +should aim to do the greatest deeds and should find reward in doing +them: yet always the right mood toward humanity is gentleness and not +scorn. "Thou, my father," said Matthew Arnold, in his tribute to one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> of +the best men of the century, "wouldst not be saved alone." To enlighten +the ignorant, to raise the weak, to pity the frail, to disregard the +meanness, ingratitude, misapprehension, dulness, and petty malice of the +lower orders of humanity—that is the wisdom of the wise; and that is +accordant with the moral law of the universe, from the operation of +which no man escapes. To study, in Shakespeare, the story of Coriolanus +is to observe the violation of that law and the consequent retribution.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Battles, and the breath<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of stormy war and violent death"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>fill up the first part of the tragedy as it stands in Shakespeare, and +that portion is also much diversified with abrupt changes of scene; so +that it has been found expedient to alter the piece, with a view to its +more practical adaptation to the stage. While however it is not acted in +strict accordance with Shakespeare its essential parts are retained and +represented. Many new lines, though, occur toward the close. McCullough +used the version that was used by Forrest, who followed in the footsteps +of Cooper, the elder Vandenhoff, and James<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> R. Anderson. There is, +perhaps, an excess of foreground—a superfluity of fights and +processions—by way of preparing for the ordeal through which the +character of Coriolanus is to be displayed. Yet when Hecuba at last is +reached the interest of the situation makes itself felt with force. The +massive presence and stalwart declamation of Edwin Forrest made him +superb in this character; but the embodiment of Coriolanus by +McCullough, while equal to its predecessor in physical majesty, was +superior to it in intellectual haughtiness and in refinement. An actor's +treatment of the character must, unavoidably, follow the large, broad +style of the historical painter. There is scant opportunity afforded in +any of the scenes allotted to Coriolanus for fine touches and delicate +shading. During much of the action the spectator is aware only of an +imperial figure that moves with a mountainous grace through the fleeting +rabble of Roman plebeians and Volscians, dreadful in war, loftily calm +in peace, irradiating the conscious superiority of power, dignity, +worth, and honourable renown. McCullough filled that aspect of the part +as if he had been born for it. His movements had the splen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>did repose +not merely of great strength but of intellectual poise and native mental +supremacy. The "I must be found" air of Othello was again displayed, in +ripe perfection, through the Roman toga. His declamation was as fluent +and as massively graceful as his demeanour. If this actor had not the +sonorous, clarion voice of John Kemble, he yet certainly suggested the +tradition of the stately port and dominating step of that great master +of the dramatic art. He looked Coriolanus, to the life. More of poetic +freedom might have been wished, in the decorative treatment of the +person—a touch of wildness in the hair, a tinge of imaginative +exaltation in the countenance, an air of mischance in the gashes of +combat. Still the embodiment was correct in its superficial +conventionality; and it certainly possessed affecting grandeur. Whenever +there was opportunity for fine treatment, moreover, the actor seized and +filled it, with the easy grace of unerring intuition and spontaneity. +The delicacy of vocalism, the movement, the tone of sentiment, and the +manliness of condition—the royal fibre of a great mind—in the act of +withdrawal from the senate, was right and beautiful. It is difficult not +to over-emphasise the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> physical symbols of mental condition, in the +street scene with "the voices"; but there again the actor denoted a fine +spiritual instinct. To a situation like that of the banishment he proved +easily equal: indeed, he gave that magnificent outburst of scorn with +tremendous power: but it was in the pathetic scene with Volumnia and +Virgilia that he reached the summit of the Shakespearean conception. The +deep heart as well as the imperial intellect of Coriolanus must then +speak. It is, for the distracted son, a moment of agonised and pathetic +conflict: for McCullough it was a moment of perfect adequacy and +consummate success. The stormy utterance of revolted pride and furious +disgust, in the denial of Volumnia's request—the tempestuous outburst, +"I will not do it"—made as wild, fiery, and fine a moment in tragic +acting as could be imagined; but the climax was attained in the pathetic +cry—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The gods look down, and this unnatural scene<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They laugh at."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> +<h2>XIII.</h2> + +<h3>CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.</h3> + + +<p>Making, one summer day, a pilgrimage to the grave of Charlotte Cushman, +I was guided to the place of her rest by one of the labourers employed +about the cemetery, who incidentally pronounced upon the deceased a +comprehensive and remarkable eulogium. "She was," he said, "considerable +of a woman, for a play-actress." Well—she was. The place of her +sepulture is on the east slope of the principal hill in Mount Auburn. +Hard by, upon the summit of the hill, stands the gray tower that +overlooks the surrounding region and constantly symbolises, to eyes both +far and near, the perpetual peace of which it is at once guardian and +image. All around the spot tall trees give shade and music, as the sun +streams on their branches and the wind murmurs in their leaves. At a +little distance, visible across green meadows and the river +Charles,—full and calm between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> its verdant banks,—rise the "dreaming +spires" of Cambridge. Further away, crowned with her golden dome, towers +old Boston, the storied city that Charlotte Cushman loved. Upon the spot +where her ashes now rest the great actress stood, and, looking toward +the city of her home and heart, chose that to be the place of her grave; +and there she sleeps, in peace, after many a conflict with her stormy +nature and after many sorrows and pains. What terrific ideals of the +imagination she made to be realities of life! What burning eloquence of +poesy she made to blaze! What moments of pathos she lived! What moods of +holy self-abnegation and of exalted power she brought to many a +sympathetic soul! Standing by her grave, on which the myrtle grows dense +and dark, and over which the small birds swirl and twitter in the breezy +silence, remembrance of the busy scenes of brilliant life wherein she +used to move—the pictured stage, the crowded theatre, the wild plaudits +of a delighted multitude—came strongly on the mind, and asked, in +perplexity and sadness, what was the good of it all. To her but little. +Fame and wealth were her cold rewards, after much privation and labour;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> +but she found neither love nor happiness, and the fullest years of her +life were blighted with the shadow of fatal disease and impending death. +To the world, however, her career was of great and enduring benefit. She +was a noble interpreter of the noble minds of the past, and thus she +helped to educate the men and women of her time—to ennoble them in +mood, to strengthen them in duty, to lift them up in hope of +immortality. She did not live in vain. It is not likely that the +American people will ever suffer her name to drift quite out of their +remembrance: it is a name that never can be erased from the rolls of +honourable renown.</p> + +<p>Charlotte Cushman was born on July 23, 1816, and she died on February +12, 1876. Boston was the place of her birth and of her death. She lived +till her sixtieth year and she was for forty years an actress. Her youth +was one of poverty and the early years of her professional career were +full of labour, trouble, heart-ache, and conflict. The name of Cushman +signifies "cross-bearer," and certainly Charlotte Cushman did indeed +bear the cross, long before and long after, she wore the crown. At first +she was a vocalist, but, having broken her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> voice by misusing it, she +was compelled to quit the lyric and adopt the dramatic stage, and when +nineteen years old she came out, at New Orleans, as Lady Macbeth. After +that she removed to New York and for the next seven years she battled +with adverse fortune in the theatres of that city and of Albany and +Philadelphia. From 1837 to 1840 she was under engagement at the old Park +as walking lady and for general utility business. "I became aware," she +wrote, "that one could never sail a ship by entering at the cabin +windows; he must serve and learn his trade before the mast. This was the +way that I would henceforth learn mine."</p> + +<p>Her first remarkable hits were made in Emilia, Meg Merrilies, and +Nancy—the latter in <i>Oliver Twist</i>. But it was not till she met with +Macready that the day of her deliverance from drudgery really dawned. +They acted together in New York in 1842 and 1843, and in Boston in 1844, +and in the autumn of the latter year Miss Cushman went to England, +where, after much effort, she obtained an opening in London, at the +Princess's, and in 1845 made her memorable success as Bianca. "Since the +first appearance of Edmund Kean, in 1814,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> said a London journal of +that time, "never has there been such a <i>début</i> on the stage of an +English theatre." Her engagement lasted eighty-four nights (it was an +engagement to act with Edwin Forrest), and she recorded its result in a +letter to her mother, saying: "All my successes put together since I +have been upon the stage would not come near my success in London, and I +only wanted some one of you here to enjoy it with me, to make it +complete." She acted Bianca, Emilia, Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Haller, and +Rosalind. A prosperous provincial tour followed, and then, in December, +1845, she came out at the Haymarket, as Romeo, her sister Susan +appearing as Juliet. Her stay abroad lasted till the end of the summer +of 1849, and to that period belongs her great achievement as Queen +Katharine.</p> + +<p>From the fall of 1849 till the spring of 1852 Miss Cushman was in +America, and she was everywhere received with acclamation, gathering +with ease both laurels and riches. When she first reappeared, October 8, +1849, at the old Broadway theatre, New York—as Mrs. Haller—she +introduced Charles W. Couldock to our stage, on which he has ever since +maintained his rank as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> powerful and versatile actor. He acted the +Stranger and subsequently was seen in the other leading characters +opposite to her own. Miss Cushman's repertory then included Lady +Macbeth, Queen Katharine, Meg Merrilies, Beatrice, Rosalind, Bianca, +Julia, Mariana, Katharine, the Countess, Pauline, Juliana, Lady Gay +Spanker, and Mrs. Simpson. Her principal male characters then, or later, +were Romeo, Wolsey, Hamlet, and Claude Melnotte. In 1852 she announced +her intention of retiring from the stage, and from that time till the +end of her days she wavered between retirement and professional +occupation. The explanation of this is readily divined, in her +condition. There never was a time, during all those years, when she was +not haunted by dread of the disease that ultimately destroyed her life. +From 1852 to 1857 she lived in England, and in the course of that period +she acted many times, in different cities. In December 1854, when dining +with the Duke of Devonshire, at Brighton, she read <i>Henry VIII.</i> to the +Duke and his guests, and in that way began her experience as a reader. +In the autumn of 1857 she acted at Burton's theatre, New York, and was +seen as Cardinal Wolsey, and in the early summer of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> 1858 she gave a +series of "farewell" performances at Niblo's Garden—after which she +again crossed the Atlantic and established her residence in Rome. In +June 1860 the great actress came home again and passed a year in +America. <i>Oliver Twist</i> was given at the Winter Garden in the spring of +1861, when Miss Cushman acted Nancy, and J.W. Wallack, Jr., J.B. +Studley, William Davidge, and Owen Marlowe were in the company. In 1863, +having come from Rome for that purpose, Miss Cushman acted in four +cities, for the benefit of the United States Sanitary Commission, and +earned for it $8267. The seven ensuing years were passed by her in +Europe, but in October 1870 she returned home for the last time, and the +brief remainder of her life was devoted to public readings, occasional +dramatic performances, and the society of friends. She built a villa at +Newport, which still bears her name. She gave final farewell +performances, in the season of 1874-1875, in New York, Philadelphia, and +Boston. Her final public appearance was made on June 2, 1875, at Easton, +Pennsylvania, where she gave a reading. Her death occurred at the Parker +House, in Boston, February 18, 1876, and she was buried from King's +chapel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> + +<p>There is a mournful pleasure in recalling the details of Miss Cushman's +life and meditating upon her energetic, resolute, patient, creative +nature. She was faithful, throughout her career, to high principles of +art and a high standard of duty. Nature gave her great powers but +fettered her also with great impediments. She conquered by the spell of +a strange, weird genius and by hard, persistent labour. In this latter +particular she is an example to every member of the dramatic profession, +present or future. In what she was as a woman she could not be +imitated—for her colossal individuality dwelt apart, in its loneliness, +as well of suffering that no one could share as of an imaginative life +that no one could fathom. Without the stage she would still have been a +great woman, although perhaps she might have lacked an entirely suitable +vehicle for the display of her powers. With the stage she gave a body to +the soul of some of Shakespeare's greatest conceptions, and she gave +soul and body both to many works of inferior origin. There is no +likelihood that we shall ever see again such a creation as her Meg +Merrilies. Her genius could embody the sublime, the beautiful, the +terrible, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> with all this the humorous; and it was saturated with +goodness. If the love of beauty was intensified by the influence of her +art, virtue was also strengthened by the force of her example and the +inherent dignity of her nature.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p> +<h2>XIV.</h2> + +<h3>ON THE DEATH OF LAWRENCE BARRETT.</h3> + +<p class="center">[Obiit March 20, 1891.]</p> + + +<p>The death of Lawrence Barrett was the disappearance of one of the +noblest figures of the modern stage. During the whole of his career, in +a public life of thirty-five years, he was steadily and continuously +impelled by a pure and fine ambition and the objects that he sought to +accomplish were always the worthiest and the best. His devotion to the +dramatic art was a passionate devotion, and in an equal degree he was +devoted to a high ideal of personal conduct. Doctrines of expediency +never influenced him and indeed were never considered by him. He had +early fixed his eyes on the dramatic sceptre. He knew that it never +could be gained except by the greatest and brightest of artistic +achievements, and to them accordingly he consecrated his life. Whenever +and wherever he appeared the community<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> was impressed with a sense of +intellectual character, moral worth, and individual dignity. Many other +dramatic efforts might be trivial. Those of Lawrence Barrett were always +felt to be important. Most of the plays with which his name is +identified are among the greatest plays in our language, and the spirit +in which he treated them was that of exalted scholarship, austere +reverence, and perfect refinement. He was profoundly true to all that is +noble and beautiful, and because he was true the world of art everywhere +recognised him as the image of fidelity and gave to him the high tribute +of its unwavering homage. His coming was always a signal to arouse the +mind. His mental vitality, which was very great, impressed even +unsympathetic beholders with a sense of fiery thought struggling in its +fetters of mortality and almost shattering and consuming the frail +temple of its human life. His stately head, silvered with graying hair, +his dark eyes deeply sunken and glowing with intense light, his thin +visage pallid with study and pain, his form of grace and his voice of +sonorous eloquence and solemn music (in compass, variety, and sweetness +one of the few great voices of the current dramatic gen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>eration), his +tremendous earnestness, his superb bearing, and his invariable authority +and distinction—all those attributes united to announce a ruler and +leader in the realm of the intellect. The exceeding tumult of his spirit +enhanced the effect of this mordant personality. The same sleepless +energy that inspired Loyola and Lanfranc burned in the bosom of this +modern actor; and it was entirely in keeping with the drift of his +character and the tenor of his life that the last subject that occupied +his thoughts should have been the story of Becket, the great +prelate—whom he intended to represent, and to whom in mental qualities +he was nearly allied. In losing Lawrence Barrett the American stage lost +the one man who served it with an apostle's zeal because he loved it +with an apostle's love.</p> + +<p>The essential attributes that Lawrence Barrett did not possess were +enchantment for the public and adequate and philosophic patience for +himself. He gained, indeed, a great amount of public favour, and,—with +reference to an indisputable lack of universal sympathy and +enthusiasm,—he was learning to regard that as a natural consequence of +his character which formerly he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> had resented as the injustice of the +world. Men and women of austere mind do not fascinate their +fellow-creatures. They impress by their strangeness. They awe by their +majesty. They predominate by their power. But they do not involuntarily +entice. Lawrence Barrett,—although full of kindness and gentleness, +and, to those who knew him well, one of the most affectionate and +lovable of men,—was essentially a man of austere intellect; and his +experience was according to his nature. To some persons the world gives +everything, without being asked to give at all. To others it gives only +what it must, and that with a kind of icy reluctance that often makes +the gift a bitter one. Lawrence Barrett, who rose from an obscure and +humble position,—without fortune, without friends, without favouring +circumstances, without education, without help save that of his talents +and his will,—was for a long time met with indifference, or frigid +obstruction, or impatient disparagement. He gained nothing without +battle. He had to make his way by his strength. His progress involved +continual effort and his course was attended with continual controversy +and strife. When at last it had to be conceded that he was a great +actor, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> concession was, in many quarters, grudgingly made. Even then +detraction steadily followed him, and its voice—though impotent and +immeasurably trivial—has not yet died away. There came a time when his +worth was widely recognised, and from that moment onward he had much +prosperity, and his nature expanded and grew calmer, sweeter, and +brighter under its influence. But the habit of warfare had got into his +acting, and more or less it remained there to the last. The assertive +quality, indeed, had long since begun to die away. The volume of +needless emphasis was growing less and less. Few performances on the +contemporary stage are commensurate with his embodiments of Harebell and +Gringoire, in softness, simplicity, poetic charm, and the gentle +tranquillity that is the repose of a self-centred soul. But his deep and +burning desire to be understood, his anxiety lest his effects should not +be appreciated, his inveterate purpose of conquest,—that overwhelming +solicitude of ambition often led him to insist upon his points, to +over-elaborate and enforce them, and in that way his art to some extent +defeated itself by the excess of its eager zeal. The spirit of beauty +that the human race pur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>sues is the spirit that is typified in Emerson's +poem of <i>Forerunners</i>—the elusive spirit that all men feel and no man +understands. This truth, undiscerned by him at first, had become the +conviction of his riper years; and if his life had been prolonged the +autumn of his professional career would have been gentle, serene, and +full of tranquil loveliness.</p> + +<p>The achievement of Lawrence Barrett as an actor was great, but his +influence upon the stage was greater than his achievement. Among the +Shakespearian parts that he played were Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, +Othello, Iago, Shylock, Leontes, Cassius, Wolsey, Richard III., Romeo, +and Benedick. Outside of Shakespeare (to mention only a few of his +impersonations) he acted Richelieu, Evelyn, Aranza, Garrick, Claude +Melnotte, Rienzi, Dan'l Druce, Lanciotto, Hernani, King Arthur, and +Ganelon. The parts in which he was superlatively fine,—and in some +respects incomparable,—are Cassius, Harebell, Yorick, Gringoire, King +Arthur, Ganelon, and James V., King of the Commons. In his time he had +played hundreds of parts, ranging over the whole field of the drama, but +as the years passed and the liberty of choice came more and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> more within +his reach, he concentrated his powers upon a few works and upon a +specific line of expression. The aspect of human nature and human +experience that especially aroused his sympathy was the loneliness of +beneficent intellectual grandeur, isolated by its supremacy and pathetic +in its isolation. He loved the character of Richelieu, and if he had +acted Becket, as he purposed to do, in Tennyson's tragedy, he would have +presented another and a different type of that same ideal—lonely, +austere, passionate age, defiant of profane authority and protective of +innocent weakness against wicked and cruel strength. His embodiment of +Cassius, with all its intensity of repressed spleen and caustic +malevolence, was softly touched and sweetly ennobled with the majesty of +venerable loneliness,—the bleak light of pathetic sequestration from +human ties, without the forfeiture of human love,—that is the natural +adjunct of intellectual greatness. He loved also the character of +Harebell, because in that he could express his devotion to the +beautiful, the honest impulses of his affectionate heart, and his ideal +of a friendship that is too pure and simple even to dream that such a +thing as guile can exist anywhere in the world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> Toward the expression, +under dramatic conditions, of natures such as those, the development of +his acting was steadily directed; and, even if he fell short, in any +degree, of accomplishing all that he purposed, it is certain that his +spirit and his conduct dignified the theatrical profession, strengthened +the stage in the esteem of good men, and cheered the heart and fired the +energy of every sincere artist that came within the reach of his +example. For his own best personal success he required a part in which, +after long repression, the torrent of passion can break loose in a +tumult of frenzy and a wild strain of eloquent words. The terrible +exultation of Cassius, after the fall of Cæsar, the ecstasy of Lanciotto +when he first believes himself to be loved by Francesca, the delirium of +Yorick when he can no longer restrain the doubts that madden his jealous +and wounded soul, the rapture of King James over the vindication of his +friend Seyton, whom his suspicions have wronged—those were among his +distinctively great moments, and his image as he was in such moments is +worthy to live among the storied traditions and the bright memories of +the stage.</p> + +<p>Censure seems to be easy to most people,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> and few men are rated at their +full value while they are yet alive. Just as mountains seem more sublime +in the vague and hazy distance, so a noble mind looms grandly through +the dusk of death. So it will be with him. Lawrence Barrett was a man of +high principle and perfect integrity. He never spoke a false word nor +knowingly harmed a human being, in all his life. Although sometimes he +seemed to be harsh and imperious, he was at heart kind and humble. +Strife with the world, and in past times uncertainty as to his position, +caused in him the assumption of a stern and frigid manner, but beneath +that haughty reserve there was a great longing for human affection and a +sincere humility of spirit. He never nurtured hostility. He had no +memory for injuries; but a kindness he never forgot. His good deeds were +as numerous as his days—for no day rolled over his head without its act +of benevolence in one direction or another. He was as impulsive as a +child. He had much of the woman in his nature, and therefore his views +were impetuous, strong, and often strongly stated; but his sense of +humour kept pace with his sensibility and so maintained the equilibrium +of his mind. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> temperament he was sad, pensive, introspective, almost +gloomy; but he opposed to that tendency an incessant mental activity and +the force of a tremendous will. In his lighter moods he was not only +appreciative of mirth but was the cause of it. His humour was elemental +and whatever aspect of life he saw in a comic light he could set in that +light before the eyes of others. He had been a studious reader for many +years and his mind was stored with ample, exact, and diversified +information. He had a scholar's knowledge of Roman history and his +familiar acquaintance with the character and career of the first +Napoleon was extraordinary. In acting he was largely influenced by his +studies of Edmund Kean and by his association with Charlotte Cushman. +For a few years after 1864 his art was especially affected by that of +Edwin Booth; but the style to which he finally gravitated was his own. +He was not so much an impersonator as he was an interpreter of +character, and the elocutionary part of acting was made more conspicuous +and important by him than by any other tragedian since the days of +Forrest and Brooke.</p> + +<p>It was a beautiful life prematurely ended.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> It was a brave, strong +spirit suddenly called out of the world. To the dramatic profession the +loss is irreparable. In the condition of the contemporary theatre there +are not many hopeful signs. No doubt there will be bright days in the +future, as there have been in the past. They go and they return. The +stage declines and the stage advances. At present its estate is low. Few +men like Lawrence Barrett remain for it to lose. Its main hope is in the +abiding influence of such examples as he has left. The old theatrical +period is fast passing away. The new age rushes on the scene, with +youthful vigour and impetuous tumult. But to some of us,—who perhaps +have not long to stay, and to whom, whatever be their fortune, this +tumult is unsympathetic and insignificant,—the way grows darker and +lonelier as we lay our garlands of eternal farewell upon the coffin of +Lawrence Barrett.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p> +<h2>XV.</h2> + +<h3>HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN RAVENSWOOD.</h3> + + +<p>Merivale's play of <i>Ravenswood</i>, written in four acts, was acted in six. +The first act consists of a single scene—an exterior, showing the +environment of the chapel which is the burial place of the House of +Ravenswood. A rockbound coast is visible, at some distance, together +with the ruinous tower of Wolf's Crag—which is Ravenswood's sole +remaining possession. This act presents the interrupted funeral of Alan +Ravenswood, the father of Edgar,—introducing ten of the seventeen +characters that are implicated in the piece, and skilfully laying the +basis of the action by exhibiting the essential personalities of the +story in strong contrast, and denoting their relations to each other. +Each character is clearly and boldly drawn and with a light touch. The +second act consists of three scenes—an antique library in the ancient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> +manor-house of Ravenswood, a room in a roadside ale-house, and a room in +the dilapidated tower of Wolf's Crag. This act rapidly develops the +well-known story, depicting the climax of antagonism between the Lord +Keeper Ashton and Edgar of Ravenswood and their subsequent +reconciliation. The third act passes in a lovely, romantic, rural scene, +which is called "the Mermaiden's Well,"—a fairy-like place in the +grounds of Ravenswood,—and in this scene Edgar and Lucy Ashton, who +have become lovers, are plighted by themselves and parted by Lucy's +mother, Lady Ashton. The fourth and last act shows a room at Ravenswood, +wherein is portrayed the betrothal of Lucy to Bucklaw, culminating in +Edgar's sudden irruption; and finally, it shows the desolate seaside +place of the quicksand in which, after he has slain Bucklaw, Edgar of +Ravenswood is engulfed. The house that Scott, when he wrote the novel, +had in his mind as that of Sir William Ashton is the house of Winston, +which still is standing, not many miles from Edinburgh. The tower of +Wolf's Crag was probably suggested to him by Fast Castle, the ruin of +which still lures the traveller's eye, upon the iron-ribbed and gloomy +coast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> of the North Sea, a few miles southeast of Dunbar—a place, +however, that Scott never visited, and never saw except from the ocean. +There is a beach upon that coast, just above Cockburnspath, that might +well have suggested to him the quicksand and the final catastrophe. I +saw it when the morning sun was shining upon it and upon the placid +waters just rippling on its verge; and even in the glad glow of a summer +day it was grim with silent menace and mysterious with an air of +sinister secrecy. In the preparation of this piece for the stage all the +sources and associations of the subject were considered; and the +pictorial setting, framed upon the right artistic principle—that +imagination should transfigure truth and thus produce the essential +result of poetic effect—was elaborate and magnificent. And the play is +the best one that ever has been made upon this subject.</p> + +<p>The basis of fact upon which Sir Walter Scott built his novel of the +<i>Bride of Lammermoor</i> is given in the introduction that he wrote for it +in 1829. Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Lord Stair and of his +wife Margaret Ross, had privately plighted herself to Lord Rutherford. +Those lovers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> had broken a piece of gold together, and had bound +themselves by vows the most solemn and fervent that passion could +prompt. But Lord Rutherford was objectionable to Miss Dalrymple's +parents, who liked not either his family or his politics. Lady Stair, +furthermore, had selected a husband for her daughter, in the person of +David Dunbar, of Baldoon; and Lady Stair was a woman of formidable +character, set upon having her own way and accustomed to prevail. As +soon as she heard of Janet's private engagement to Lord Rutherford she +declared the vow to be undutiful and unlawful and she commanded that it +should be broken. Lord Rutherford, a man of energy and of spirit, +thereupon insisted that he would take his dismissal only from the lips +of Miss Dalrymple herself, and he demanded and obtained an interview +with her. Lady Stair was present, and such was her ascendency over her +daughter's mind that the young lady remained motionless and mute, +permitting her betrothal to Lord Rutherford to be broken, and, upon her +mother's command, giving back to him the piece of gold that was the +token of her promise. Lord Rutherford was deeply moved, so that he +uttered curses upon Lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> Stair, and at the last reproached Janet in +these words: "For you, madam, you will be a world's wonder." After this +sad end of his hopes the unfortunate gentleman went abroad and died in +exile. Janet Dalrymple and David Dunbar meanwhile were married—the lady +"being absolutely passive in everything her mother commanded or +advised." As soon, however, as the wedded pair had retired from the +bridal feast hideous shrieks were heard to resound through the house, +proceeding from the nuptial chamber. The door was thereupon burst open +and persons entering saw the bridegroom stretched upon the floor, +wounded and bleeding, while the bride, dishevelled and stained with +blood, was grinning in a paroxysm of insanity. All she said was, "Take +up your bonny bridegroom." About two weeks later she died. The year of +those events was 1669. The wedding took place on August 24. Janet died +on September 12. Dunbar recovered, but he would never tell what occurred +in that chamber of horror, nor indeed would he permit any allusion to +the subject. He did not long survive the tragic event,—having been +fatally injured, by a fall from his horse, when riding between Leith +and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> Holyrood. He died on March 28, 1682. The death of Lord Rutherford +is assigned to the year 1685. Such is the melancholy story as it may be +gathered from Scott's preface. In writing his novel that great master of +the art of fiction,—never yet displaced from his throne or deprived of +his sceptre,—adopted fictitious names, invented fresh circumstances, +amplified and elevated the characters, judiciously veiled the +localities, and advanced the period of those tragical incidents to about +the beginning of the eighteenth century. The delicate taste with which +he used his materials has only been surpassed, in that beautiful +composition, by the affluent genius with which he vitalised every part +of his narrative. In no other of his many books has he shown a deeper +knowledge than is revealed in that one of the terrible passion of love +and of the dark and sinuous ways of political and personal craft. When +<i>The Bride of Lammermoor</i> was first published no mention was made in it +of the true story upon which remotely it had been based; but by the time +Scott came to write the preface of 1829 other writers had been less +reticent, and some account of the Dalrymple tragedy had got into print, +so that no reason existed for further silence on that subject.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p> + +<p>Sir Robert H.D. Elphinstone, writing in 1829, gave the tradition as +follows: "When, after the noise and violent screaming in the bridal +chamber comparative stillness succeeded and the door was forced, the +window was found open, and it was supposed by many that the lover, Lord +Rutherford, had, by the connivance of some of the servants, found means, +during the bustle of the marriage feast, to secrete himself within the +apartment, and that soon after the entry of the married pair, or at +least as soon as the parents and others retreated and the door was made +fast, he had come out from his concealment, attacked and desperately +wounded the bridegroom, and then made his escape, by the window, through +the garden. As the unfortunate bride never spoke after having uttered +the words mentioned by Sir Walter, no light could be thrown on the +matter by them. But it was thought that Dunbar's obstinate silence on +the subject favoured the supposition of the chastisement having been +inflicted by his rival. It is but fair to give the unhappy victim (who +was, by all accounts, a most gentle and feminine creature) the benefit +of an explanation on a doubtful point."</p> + +<p>Merivale, in dealing with this story, gave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> a conspicuous illustration +of the essential dramatic faculty. The first act is the adroit expansion +of a few paragraphs, in the second chapter of the novel, which are +descriptive of the bleak, misty November morning when Alan Ravenswood +was borne to the grave; but by the introduction of the Lord Keeper and +of the village crones into that funeral scene he opened the whole +subject, indicated all the essential antecedents of the story, and +placed his characters in a posture of lively action. That the tone is +sombre must be conceded, and people who think that the chief end of man +is to grin might condemn the piece for that reason; but <i>Ravenswood</i> is +a tragedy and not a farce, and persons who wish that their feelings may +not be affected should avoid tragedies.</p> + +<p>In the second act Ravenswood seeks Ashton at Ravenswood manor, intending +to kill him in a duel, but his hand is stayed when he catches sight of +Lucy Ashton's portrait. The incident of Edgar's rescue of Lucy is used +in this scene. In a later scene Sir William Ashton and his daughter take +refuge in Wolf's Crag, and the bewitchment of Ravenswood is +accomplished. The quarrel between Edgar and Bucklaw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> is then given, as a +basis for the ensuing rivalry and deadly conflict between them. In the +third act there is a beautiful love-scene between Edgar and Lucy, the +dialogue being especially felicitous in tenderness and grace and fraught +with that reverential quality, that condition of commingled ecstasy and +nobleness, which is always characteristic of the experience of this +passion in pure natures. Lady Ashton's interruption of their happiness +and the subsequent parting have a vigorous dramatic effect. The +character of Lucy has been much strengthened, so that it differs from +that of the original precisely as Desdemona differs from Ophelia; and +the change is an improvement. The fourth act opens with "a song of +choristers heard outside." The letters of Lucy and Edgar have been +intercepted. The lady has been told that her lover is false. The suit of +Bucklaw has been urged. The authority of the stern mother has prevailed +over her daughter's will. It is the old story. "The absent are always +wrong"—and Ravenswood is absent. Lucy Ashton yields to her fate. The +marriage contract between Lucy and Bucklaw has just been signed when +Ravenswood bursts into the group. From that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> point the action is +animated equally with celerity and passion. The misery of Ravenswood +utters itself in a swift stream of burning words. The grief of Lucy ends +tragically in a broken heart and sudden death. The fight between Bucklaw +and Ravenswood clashes for a moment but is abruptly finished on the +moonlit sands, and Edgar is seen to leap down from a rock and rush away +toward the manor, where, as his dying foe has told him, the faithful and +innocent Lucy lies dead. He disappears and comes no more; but his old +servant takes up from the beach a single black plume—the feather of a +raven—which the tide has washed ashore, and which is the last relic and +emblem of the vanished master of Ravenswood.</p> + +<p>The tragedy is kindred, as to its spirit, with <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, and +like that representative poem of love and death it is intensely +passionate, sombre, and lamentable. The first and second acts of it pass +in almost unrelieved shadow. It begins with a funeral; it incorporates +the ingredients of misery, madness, and death; it culminates in a fatal +duel; and it ends in a picture of mortal desolation, qualified only by a +mute suggestion of spiritual happiness conveyed by the pictorial emblem +of the promise of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> immortality. It is a poetical tragedy, conceived in +the spirit and written in the manner of the old masters of the poetic +art. The treatment of Scott's novel is marked by scrupulous fidelity, +not indeed to every detail of that noble book, but to its essential +quality and tone. The structure of the play reproduces in action +substantially the structure of the original story. The scene in which +Edgar and Lucy avow their love and pledge themselves to each other is +written with exquisite grace and profound tenderness. The picture +presented upon the stage when the lovers are parted was one of +astonishing animation. The scene of the interrupted wedding and of Lucy +Ashton's agony, distraction, and death was one of intense power and +dramatic effect. The duel of Ravenswood and Bucklaw upon the desolate, +moon-lit sands was invested with the excitement of suspense and with +weird horror. And the final exposition of dramatic contrast,—when upon +the wide, bleak beach, with the waste of vacant sea beyond and the +eastern heaven lit with the first splendour of sunrise, the old man +stooped to take up the raven's feather, the last relic of +Ravenswood—was so entirely beautiful that the best of words can but +poorly indi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>cate its loveliness. For an audience able to look seriously +at a serious subject, and not impatient of the foreground of gloom in +which, necessarily, the story is enveloped at its beginning, this was a +perfect work. The student of drama must go back many years to find a +parallel to it, in interest of subject, in balance, in symmetry, and in +sympathetic interpretation of character.</p> + +<p>There is a quality of Hamlet in the character of Ravenswood. He is by +nature a man of a sad mind, and under the pressure of afflicting +circumstances his sadness has become embittered. He takes life +thoughtfully and with passionate earnestness. He is a noble person, +finely sensitive and absolutely sincere, full of kindness at heart, but +touched with gloom; and his aspect and demeanour are those of pride, +trouble, self-conflict—of an individuality isolated and constrained by +dark thoughts and painful experience. That is the mood in which Henry +Irving conceived and portrayed him. You saw a picturesque figure, dark, +strange, romantic—the gravity engendered by thought and sorrow not yet +marring the bronzed face and the elastic movement of youth—and this +personality, in itself fascinating, was made all the more pictorial by +an investiture<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> of romance, alike in the scenery and the incidents +through which it moved. Around such a figure funereal banners well might +wave, and under dark and lowering skies the chill wind of the sea might +moan through monastic ruins and crumbling battlements. Edgar of +Ravenswood, standing by his lonely hearth, beneath the groined arches of +his seaside tower, revealed by the flickering firelight, looked the +ideal of romantic manhood; the incarnation of poetic fancy and of +predestinate disaster. Above the story of <i>Ravenswood</i> there is steadily +and continuously impending, and ever growing darker and coming nearer, +the vague menace of terrible calamity. This element of mystery and dread +was wrought into the structural fibre of Henry Irving's performance of +the part, and consistently coloured it. The face of Edgar was made to +wear that haunted look which,—as in the countenance of Charles the +First, in Vandyke's portraits,—may be supposed, and often has been +supposed, to foreshadow a violent and dreadful death. His sudden tremor, +when at the first kiss of Lucy Ashton the thunder is heard to break +above his ruined home, was a fine denotement of that subtle quality; and +even through the happiness of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> the betrothal scene there was a hint of +this black presentiment—just as sometimes on a day of perfect sunshine +there is a chill in the wind that tells of approaching storm. All this +is warranted by the prophetic rhymes which are several times spoken, +beginning—"When the last lord of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride." +A crone, Ailsie Gourlay by name, embodied with grim and grisly vigour by +Alice Marriott,—whose ample voice and exact elocution, together with +her formidable stature and her faculty of identification with the +character that she assumes and with the spirit of the story, made her of +great value to this play—hovered around Ravenswood, and aided to keep +this presage of evil doom fitfully present in the consciousness of its +victim. Henry Irving gave to the part its perfectly distinct +individuality, and in that respect made as fine a showing as he has ever +made of his authority as an actor. There was never the least doubt as to +what Ravenswood is and what he means. The peculiar elocution of Henry +Irving, when he is under the influence of great excitement, is not +effective upon all persons; but those who like it consider it far more +touching than a more level, more sonorous, and more accurate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> delivery. +He wrought a great effect in the scene of the marriage-contract. Indeed, +so powerful, sincere, and true was the acting upon all sides, at this +point, that not until the curtain began to descend was it remembered +that we were looking upon a fiction and not upon a fact. This points to +the peculiar power that Henry Irving and Ellen Terry conspicuously +possess—of creating and maintaining a perfect illusion.</p> + +<p>During the earlier scenes the character of Lucy Ashton is chiefly marked +by the qualities of sweetness and of glee. No one acquainted with the +acting of Ellen Terry would need to be told how well and with what +charming grace those qualities were expressed by her. In the scene of +the wooing, at the Mermaiden's Well, Lucy Ashton was not a cold woman +trying to make herself loved,—which is what most actresses habitually +proffer upon the stage,—but a loving woman, radiant with the +consciousness of the love that she feels and has inspired. Nothing could +be imagined more delicate, more delicious, more enchanting than the +high-bred distinction and soft womanlike tone of that performance. The +character, at the climax of this scene, is made to manifest decision, +firmness, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> force; and the superb manner in which she set the +maternal authority at naught and stood by her lover might seem to denote +a nature that no tyranny could subdue. Subdued, however, she is, and +forced to believe ill of her absent lover, and so the fatal marriage +contract is signed and the crash follows. When Ellen Terry came on for +that scene the glee had all vanished; the face was as white as the +garments that enswathed her; and you saw a creature whom the hand of +death had visibly touched. The stage has not at any time heard from any +lips but her own such tones of pathos as those in which she said the +simple words:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"May God forgive you, then, and pity me—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If God can pity more than mothers do."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is not a long scene, and happily not,—for the strain upon the +emotion of the actress was intense. The momentary wild merriment, the +agony of the breaking heart, the sudden delirium and collapse, were not +for an instant exaggerated. All was nature—or rather the simplicity, +fidelity, and grace of art that make the effect of nature.</p> + +<p>Beautiful scenery, painted by Craven, framed the piece with appropriate +magnificence. The several seaside pictures were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> admirably +representative of the grandeur, the gaunt loneliness, and the glorious +colour for which Scotland is so much loved.</p> + +<p>The public gain in that production was a revival of interest in one of +the most famous novels in the language; the possession of a scenical +pageant that filled the eye with beauty and strongly moved the +imagination; a play that is successful in the domain of romantic poetry; +a touching exemplification of the great art of acting; and once again +the presentment of that vast subject,—the relation of heart to heart, +under the dominion of love, in human society,—that more absorbs the +attention, affects the character, and controls the destiny of the human +race than anything else that is beneath the sun.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p> +<h2>XVI.</h2> + +<h3>THE MERRY WIVES AND FALSTAFF.</h3> + + +<p>Shakespeare wrote <i>The Merry Wives of Windsor</i> in 1601, and during the +Christmas holidays of that year it was presented upon the stage, before +Queen Elizabeth and her court, at Windsor Castle. In 1602 it was +published in London in quarto form, and in 1619 a reprint of that quarto +was published there. The version that appears in the two quartos is +considered by Shakespeare scholars to be spurious. The authentic text, +no doubt, is that of the comedy as it stands in the first folio (1623). +Shakespeare had written <i>Henry IV.</i>—both parts of it—and also <i>Henry +V.</i>, when this comedy was acted, and therefore he had completed his +portrait of Falstaff, whose life is displayed in the former piece and +whose death is described in the latter. <i>Henry IV.</i> was first printed in +1598 (we know not when it was first acted), and it passed through five +quarto editions prior to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> the publication of it in the folio of 1623. In +the epilogue to the second part of that play a promise is made that the +story shall be continued, "with Sir John in it," but it is gravely +doubted whether that epilogue was written by Shakespeare. The +continuation of the story occurs in <i>Henry V.</i>, in which Falstaff does +not figure, although he is mentioned in it. Various efforts have been +made to show a continuity between the several plays in which Falstaff is +implicated, but the attempt always fails. The histories contain the real +Falstaff. The Falstaff of the comedy is another and less important man. +If there really were a sequence of story and of time in the portraiture +of this character plays would stand in the following order: 1, <i>Henry +IV., Part First</i>; 2, <i>The Merry Wives of Windsor</i>; 3, <i>Henry IV., Part +Second</i>; 4, <i>Henry V.</i> As no such sequence exists, or apparently was +intended, the comedy should be viewed by itself. Its texture is +radically different from that of the histories. One of the best +Shakespeare editors, Charles Knight, ventures the conjecture that <i>The +Merry Wives of Windsor</i> was written first. Shakespeare invented the +chief part of the plot, taking, however, a few things from Tarl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>ton's +<i>Newes out of Purgatorie</i>, which in turn was founded on a story called +The <i>Lovers of Pisa</i>. It is possible also that he may have derived +suggestions from a German play by Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick—a +contemporary, who died in 1611—to which <i>The Merry Wives of Windsor</i> +bears some resemblance, and of which he may have received an account +from English actors who had visited Germany, as the actors of his time +occasionally did.</p> + +<p>Tradition declares that he wrote this comedy at the command of Queen +Elizabeth, who had expressed a wish to see Falstaff in love. This was +first stated by John Dennis, in the preface to an alteration of <i>The +Merry Wives of Windsor</i> which was made by him, under the name of <i>The +Comical Gallant, or the Amours of Sir John Falstaff</i>, and was +successfully acted at Drury Lane theatre. That piece, which is paltry +and superfluous, appeared in 1702. No authority was given by Dennis for +his statement about Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare's play. The +tradition rests exclusively on his word. Rowe, Pope, Theobald, and other +Shakespeare editors, have transmitted it to the present day, but it +rests on nothing but supposition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> and it is dubious. Those scholars who +accept the story of Dennis, and believe that Shakespeare wrote the piece +"to order" and within a few days, usually fortify their belief by the +allegation that the comedy falls short of Shakespeare's poetical +standard, being written mostly in prose; that it degrades his great +creation of Falstaff; that it is, for him, a trivial production; and +that it must have been written in haste and without spontaneous impulse. +If judgment were to be given on the quarto version of <i>The Merry Wives</i>, +that reasoning would commend itself as at least plausible; but it is +foolish as applied to the version in the folio, where the piece is found +to be remarkable for nimbleness of invention, strength and variety of +natural character, affluent prodigality of animal spirits, delicious +quaintness, exhilarating merriment, a lovely pastoral tone, and many +touches of the transcendent poetry of Shakespeare. Dennis probably +repeated a piece of idle gossip that he had heard, the same sort of +chatter that in the present day constantly follows the doings of +theatrical people,—and is not accurate more than once in a thousand +times. <i>The Merry Wives of Windsor</i> is a brilliant and delightful +comedy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> quite worthy of its great author (though not in his most +exalted mood), who probably wrote it because his mind was naturally +impelled to write it, and no doubt laboured over it exactly as he did +over his other writings: for we know, upon the testimony of Ben Jonson, +who personally knew him and was acquainted with his custom as a writer, +that he was not content with the first draught of anything, but wrote it +a second time, and a third time, before he became satisfied with it. Dr. +Johnson, who had studied Shakespeare as carefully as any man ever +studied him, speaking of <i>The Merry Wives of Windsor</i>, says that "its +general power—that power by which all works of genius should finally be +tried—is such that perhaps it never yet had reader or spectator who did +not think it too soon at an end." A comedy that deserves such praise as +this—which assuredly is not misplaced—need not be dismissed as a +pot-boiler.</p> + +<p>Knight's conjecture that <i>The Merry Wives</i> was written before the +histories were written is a plausible conjecture, and perhaps worthy of +some consideration. It is not easy to believe that Shakespeare, after he +had created Falstaff and thoroughly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> drawn him, was capable of lessening +the character and making it almost despicable with paltriness—as +certainly it becomes in <i>The Merry Wives</i>. That is not the natural way +of an artistic mind. But it is easier to credit the idea that the +Falstaff of <i>The Merry Wives</i> was the first study of the character, +although not first shown, which subsequently expanded into the +magnificent humorous creation of the histories. Falstaff in the comedy +is a fat man with absurd amorous propensities, who is befooled, +victimised, and made a laughing-stock by a couple of frolicsome women, +who are so much amused by his preposterous folly that they scarcely +bestow the serious consideration of contempt and scorn upon his +sensuality and insolence. No creature was ever set in a more ludicrous +light or made more contemptible,—in a kindly, good-humoured way. The +hysterical note of offended virtue is never sounded, nor is anywhere +seen the averted face of shocked propriety. The two wives are bent on a +frolic, and they will merrily punish this presumptuous sensualist—this +silly, conceited, gross fellow, "old, cold, withered, and of intolerable +entrails." If we knew no more of Falstaff<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> than the comedy tells us of +him we should by no means treasure him as we do now; but it is through +the histories that we learn to know and appreciate him, and it is of the +man portrayed there that we always unconsciously think when, in his +humiliating discomfiture, we hear him declare that "wit may be made a +Jack-a-lent when 'tis upon ill employment." For the Falstaff of the +histories is a man of intellect, wisdom, and humour, thoroughly +experienced in the ways of the world, fascinating in his drollery, +human, companionable, infinitely amusing, and capable of turning all +life to the favour of enjoyment and laughter—a man who is passionate in +the sentiment of comradeship, and who, with all his faults (and perhaps +because of some of them, for faultless persons are too good for this +world), inspires affection. "Would I were with him," cries the wretched +Bardolph, "wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell." It is not +Bardolph only whose heart has a warm corner for the memory of the poor +old jovial sinner, wounded to death by the falling off of +friendship—the implacable hardness of new-born virtue in the +regenerated royal mind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p> + +<p>A comprehensive view of Falstaff—a view that includes the afflicting +circumstances of his humiliation and of his forlorn and pathetic death +not less than the roistering frolics and jocund mendacity of his life +and character—is essential to a right appreciation of the meaning of +him. Shakespeare is never a prosy moralist, but he constantly teaches +you, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, that the moral law of the +universe, working continually for goodness and not for evil, operates in +an inexorable manner. Yet it is not of any moral consideration that the +spectator of Falstaff upon the stage ever pauses to think. It is the +humour of the fat knight that is perceived, and that alone. The +thoughtful friends of Falstaff, however, see more in him than this, and +especially they like not to think of him in a deplorable predicament. +The Falstaff of <i>The Merry Wives</i> is a man to laugh at; but he is not a +man to inspire the comrade feeling, and still less is he a man to +impress the intellect with the sense of a stalwart character and of +illimitable jocund humour. Falstaff's friends—whose hearts are full of +kindness for the old reprobate—have sat with him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> "in my Dolphin +chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire," and "have heard the +chimes at midnight" in his society, and they know what a jovial +companion he is—how abundant in knowledge of the world; how radiant +with animal spirits; how completely inexhaustible in cheerfulness; how +copious in comic invective; how incessantly nimble and ludicrous in wit +and in waggery; how strange a compound of mind and sensuality, +shrewdness and folly, fidelity and roguery, brazen mendacity, and comic +selfishness! They do not like to think of him as merely a fat old fool, +bamboozled by a pair of sprightly, not over-delicate women, far inferior +to him in mental calibre, and made a laughing-stock for Fenton and sweet +Anne Page, and the lads and lassies of Windsor, and the chattering Welsh +parson. "Have I lived," cried Falstaff, in the moment of his +discomfiture, "to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of +English?" He is a hard case, an inveterate sinner, as worthless as any +man well could be, in the eyes of decorum and respectability; but those +who know him well grow to be fond of him, even if they feel that they +ought to be ashamed of it, and they do not quite for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>give the poet for +making him contemptible.</p> + +<p>You can find many other figures that will make you laugh, but you can +find no other figure that makes you laugh with such good reason. It +seems incredible that Shakespeare, with his all-embracing mind and his +perfect instinct of art, should deliberately have chosen to lessen his +own masterpiece of humour. For Shakespeare rejoiced in Falstaff, even +while he respected and recorded the inexorable justice of the moral law +that decrees and eventually accomplishes his destruction. There is no +one of his characters whose history he has traced with such minute +elaboration. The conception is singularly ample. You may see Falstaff, +as Shallow saw him, when he was a boy and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke +of Norfolk; you may see him all along the current of his mature years; +his highway robberies on Gadshill; his bragging narrative to Prince +Henry; his frolicsome, paternal, self-defensive lecture to the prince; +his serio-comic association with the ragamuffin recruits at Coventry; +his adroit escape from the sword of Hotspur; his mendacious +self-glorification over the body of Harry Percy; his mishaps as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> +suitor to Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page; his wonderfully humorous interviews +with the Chief-Justice and with Prince John of Lancaster; his junketings +with Justice Shallow in Gloucestershire, and his rebuff and +consternation at his first and last meeting with King Henry V.; and +finally you may see him, as Mrs. Quickly saw him, on his death-bed, when +"'a cried out God! God! God! three or four times," and when "his nose +was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled o' green fields."</p> + +<p>A good and faithful study of <i>King Henry IV.</i>, and especially of the +second part of that play, is essential for a right appreciation of +Falstaff. Those scenes with the Chief-Justice are unmatched in +literature. The knight stands royally forth in them, clothed with his +entire panoply of agile intellect, robust humour, and boundless comic +effrontery. But the arrogant and expeditious Falstaff of <i>The Merry +Wives</i>—so richly freighted with rubicund sensuality, so abundant in +comic loquacity, and so ludicrous in his sorry plights—is a much less +complex person, and therefore he stands more level than the real +Falstaff does with the average comprehension of mankind. The American +stage, accord<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>ingly, by which more than by the printed book he has +become known to our people, has usually given its preference to the +Falstaff of the comedy. <i>The Merry Wives</i> was first acted in New York on +October 5, 1788 at the John Street theatre, with Harper as Falstaff. On +April 1, 1807 it was produced at the old Park, and the Falstaff then was +John E. Harwood. The same stage offered it again on January 16, 1829, +with Hilson as Falstaff. A little later, about 1832, James H. Hackett +took up the character of Falstaff, and from that time onward +performances of <i>The Merry Wives</i> occurred more frequently in different +cities of America. Nor was the historical play neglected. On August 7, +1848 a remarkably fine production of the comedy was accomplished at the +Astor Place Operahouse, New York, with Hackett as Falstaff, who never in +his time was equalled in that character, and has not been equalled +since. Another Falstaff, however, and a remarkably good one, appeared at +Burton's theatre on August 24, 1850, in the person of Charles Bass. On +March 14, 1853 <i>The Merry Wives</i> was again given at Burton's theatre, +and Burton himself played Falstaff, with characteristic humour; but +Bur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>ton never acted the part as it stands in <i>Henry IV.</i> Hackett, who +used both the history (Part I.) and the comedy, continued to act +Falstaff almost to the end of his life and Hackett did not die till +1871. A distinguished representative of Falstaff in the early days of +the American theatre—the days of the renowned Chestnut in +Philadelphia—was William Warren (1767-1832), who came from England in +1796. In recent years the part has been acted by Benedict De Bar and by +John Jack. The latest Falstaff in America was that embodied by Charles +Fisher, who first assumed the character on November 19, 1872, at Daly's +theatre, and whose performance was picturesque and humorous.</p> + +<p>On the English stage the historical play of <i>Henry IV.</i> was exceedingly +popular in Shakespeare's time. The first Falstaff, according to Malone, +whom everybody has followed as to this point, was John Heminge +(1555-1630). After him came John Lowin (1572-1654), who is thought to +have acted the part in the presence of Charles I. His successor seems to +have been Lacy, who died in 1681. Next came Cartwright, and in 1699 or +1700 the great Betterton (1635-1710) assumed the fat knight, acting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> him +in both parts of the history and in the comedy. Genest records +twenty-two revivals of the first part of <i>Henry IV.</i> upon the London +stage, at five different theatres, between 1667 and 1826; fifteen +revivals of the second part between 1720 and 1821; and sixteen revivals +of <i>The Merry Wives of Windsor</i> between 1667 and 1811. Many English +actors have played Falstaff since Betterton's time, an incomplete though +sufficiently ample list of them comprising Estcourt, 1704; F. Bullock, +1713; J. Evans and J. Hall, 1715; Mills, 1716; Quin, "dignity and +declamation," 1738; Berry, 1747; Love (whose true name was James Dance), +1762; Shuter, 1774; John Henderson, one of the greatest actors that ever +lived, 1774; Mrs. Webb (once only), 1776; Ryder, 1786; Palmer, 1788; +King, 1792; Fawcett, 1795; Stephen Kemble, who was so fat that he could +play it without stuffing or bladder, 1802; Blissett, 1803; George +Frederick Cooke, 1804; Bartley, 1812; Charles Kemble, 1824; Dowton, +1824; Elliston, 1826; and Samuel Phelps, 1846. The latest representative +of Falstaff in England was H. Beerbohm-Tree, who, although a man of +slender figure, contrived to simulate corpulence, and who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> manifested in +his acting a fine instinct as to the meaning of the character and +considerable resources of art in its expression, although the +predominant individuality and the copious luxuriance of Falstaff's rosy +and juicy humour were not within his reach. Upon the American stage the +part is practically disused; and this is a pity, seeing that a source of +great enjoyment and one of the most suggestive and fruitful topics that +exist in association with the study of human nature are thus in a great +degree sequestered from the public mind. Still it is better to have no +Falstaff on the stage than to have it encumbered with a bad one; and +certainly for the peculiar and exacting play of <i>Henry IV.</i> there are +now no actors left: at least they are not visible in America.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p> +<h2>XVII.</h2> + +<h3>ADA REHAN.</h3> + + +<p>In browsing over the fragrant evergreen pages of Cibber's delightful +book about the stage, and especially in reflecting upon the beautiful +and brilliant women who, drawn by his magic pencil, dwell there, +perpetual, in life, colour, and charm, the reflective reader may perhaps +be prompted to remember that the royal line of stage beauties is not +extinct, and that stage heroines exist in the present day who are quite +as well worthy of commemoration as any that graced the period of Charles +the Second or of good Queen Anne. Our age, indeed, has no Cibber to +describe their loveliness and celebrate their achievements; but surely +if he were living at this hour that courtly, characteristic, and +sensuous writer—who saw so clearly and could portray so well the +peculiarities of the feminine nature—would not deem the period of Ellen +Terry and Marie Wilton, of Ada<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> Rehan and Sarah Bernhardt and Genevieve +Ward, of Clara Morris and Jane Hading, unworthy of his pen. As often as +fancy ranges over those bright names and others that are kindred with +them—a glittering sisterhood of charms and talents—the regret must +arise that no literary artist with just the gallant spirit, the +chivalry, the sensuous appreciation, the fine insight, and the pictorial +touch of old Cibber is extant to perpetuate their glory. The hand that +sketched Elizabeth Barry so as to make her live forever in a few brief +lines, the hand that drew the fascinating and memorable portrait of +Susanna Mountfort ("Down goes her dainty diving body to the ground, as +if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own +attractions")—what might it not have done to preserve for the knowledge +of future generations the queens of the theatre who are crowned and +regnant to-day! Cibber could have caught and reflected the elusive charm +of such an actress as Ada Rehan. No touch less adroit and felicitous +than his can accomplish more than the suggestion of her peculiar +allurement, her originality, and her fascinating because sympathetic and +piquant mental and physical characteristics.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p> + +<p>Ada Rehan, born at Limerick, Ireland, on April 22, 1860, was brought to +America when five years old, and at that time she lived and went to +school in Brooklyn. No one of her progenitors was ever upon the stage, +nor does it appear that she was predisposed to that vocation by early +reading or training. Her elder sisters had adopted that pursuit, and +perhaps she was impelled toward it by the force of example and domestic +association, readily affecting her innate latent faculty for the +dramatic art. Her first appearance on the stage was made at Newark, New +Jersey, in 1873, in a play entitled <i>Across the Continent</i>, in which she +acted a small part, named Clara, for one night only, to fill the place +of a performer who had been suddenly disabled by illness. Her readiness +and her positive talent were clearly revealed in that effort, and it was +thereupon determined in a family council that she should proceed; so she +was soon regularly embarked upon the life of an actress. Her first +appearance on the New York stage was made a little later, in 1873, at +Wood's museum (it became Daly's theatre in 1879), when she played a +small part in a piece called <i>Thorough-bred</i>. During the seasons of +1873-74-75 she was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> associated with the Arch Street theatre, +Philadelphia,—that being her first regular professional engagement. +(John Drew, with whom, professionally, Ada Rehan has been long +associated, made his first appearance in the same season, at the same +house.) She then went to Macaulay's theatre, Louisville, where she acted +for one season. From Louisville she went to Albany, as a member of John +W. Albaugh's company, and with that manager she remained two seasons, +acting sometimes in Albany and sometimes in Baltimore. After that she +was for a few months with Fanny Davenport. The earlier part of her +career involved professional endeavours in company with the wandering +stars, and she acted in a variety of plays with Edwin Booth, Adelaide +Neilson, John McCullough, Mrs. Bowers, Lawrence Barrett, John Brougham, +Edwin Adams, Mrs. Lander, and John T. Raymond. From the first she was +devotedly fond of Shakespeare, and all the Shakespearian characters +allotted to her were studied and acted by her with eager interest and +sympathy. While thus employed in the provincial stock she enacted +Ophelia, Cordelia, Desdemona, Celia, Olivia, and Lady Anne, and in each +of those parts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> she was conspicuously good. The attention of Augustin +Daly was first attracted to her in December 1877, when she was acting at +Albaugh's theatre in Albany, the play being <i>Katharine and Petruchio</i> +(Garrick's version of the <i>Taming of the Shrew</i>), and Ada Rehan +appearing as Bianca; and subsequently Daly again observed her as an +actress of auspicious distinction and marked promise at the Grand Opera +House, New York, in April 1879. Fanny Davenport was then acting in that +theatre in Daly's strong American play of <i>Pique</i>—one of the few dramas +of American origin that aptly reflect the character of American domestic +life—and Ada Rehan appeared in the part of Mary Standish. She was +immediately engaged under Daly's management, and in May 1879 she came +forth at the Olympic theatre, New York, as Big Clemence in that author's +version of <i>L'Assommoir</i>. On September 17, 1879, Daly's theatre (which +had been suspended for about two years) was opened upon its present +site, the southwest corner of Thirtieth Street and Broadway, and Ada +Rehan made her first appearance there, enacting the part of Nelly Beers +in a play called <i>Love's Young Dream</i>. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> opening bill on that +occasion comprised that piece, together with a comedy by Olive Logan, +entitled <i>Newport</i>. On September 30 a revival of <i>Divorce</i>, one of +Daly's most fortunate plays, was effected, and Ada Rehan impersonated +Miss Lu Ten Eyck—a part originally acted (1873) by Fanny Davenport. +From that time to this (1892) Ada Rehan has remained the leading lady at +Daly's theatre; and there she has become one of the most admired figures +upon the contemporary stage. In five professional visits to Europe, +acting in London, Paris, Edinburgh, Dublin, Berlin, and other cities, +she pleased judicious audiences and augmented her renown. Daly took his +company of comedians to London for the first time in 1884, where they +fulfilled an engagement of six weeks at Toole's theatre, beginning July +19. The second visit to London was made two seasons later, when they +acted for nine weeks at the Strand theatre, beginning May 27, 1886. At +that time they also played in the English provinces, and they visited +Germany—acting at Hamburg and at Berlin, where they were much liked and +commended. They likewise made a trip to Paris. Their third season abroad +began at the Lyceum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> theatre, London, May 3, 1888, and it included +another expedition to the French capital, which was well rewarded. Ada +Rehan at that time impersonated Shakespeare's Shrew. It was in that +season also that she appeared at Stratford-upon-Avon, where Daly gave a +performance (August 3, 1888) in the Shakespeare Memorial theatre, for +the benefit of that institution. The fourth season of Daly's comedians +in London began on June 10, 1890, at the Lyceum theatre, and lasted ten +weeks; and this was signalised by Ada Rehan's impersonation of Rosalind. +The fifth London season extended from September 9 to November 13, 1891.</p> + +<p>This is an outline of her professional story; but how little of the real +life of an actor can be imparted in a record of the surface facts of a +public career! Most expressive, as a comment upon the inadequacy of +biographical details, is the exclamation of Dumas, about Aimée Desclée: +"Une femme comme celle-là n'a pas de biographie! Elle nous a émus, et +elle en est morte. Voilà toute son historie!" Ada Rehan, while she has +often and deeply moved the audience of her riper time, is happily very +far from having died of it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> There is deep feeling beneath the luminous +and sparkling surface of her art; but it is chiefly with mirth that she +has touched the public heart and affected the public experience. Equally +of her, however, as of her pathetic sister artist of the French stage, +it may be said that such a woman has no history. In a civilisation and +at a period wherein persons are customarily accepted for what they +pretend to be, instead of being seen and understood for what they are, +she has been content to take an unpretentious course, to be original and +simple, and thus to allow her faculties to ripen and her character to +develop in their natural manner. She has not assumed the position of a +star, and perhaps the American community, although favourable and +friendly toward her, may have been somewhat slow to understand her +unique personality and her superlative worth. The moment a thoughtful +observer's attention is called to the fact, however, he perceives how +large a place Ada Rehan fills in the public mind, how conspicuous a +figure she is upon the contemporary stage, and how difficult it is to +explain and classify her whether as an artist or a woman. That blending +of complexity with transparency always imparts to indi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>vidual life a +tinge of piquant interest, because it is one denotement of the +temperament of genius.</p> + +<p>The poets of the world pour themselves through all subjects by the use +of their own words. In what manner they are affected by the forces of +nature—its influences of gentleness and peace or its vast pageants of +beauty and terror—those words denote; and also those words indicate the +action, upon their responsive spirits, of the passions that agitate the +human heart. The actors, on the other hand, assuming to be the +interpreters of the poets, must pour themselves through all subjects by +the use of their own personality. They are to be estimated accordingly +by whatever the competent observer is able to perceive of the nature and +the faculties they reveal under the stress of emotion, whether tragic or +comic. Perhaps it is not possible—mind being limited in its +function—for any person to form a full, true, and definite summary of +another human creature. To view a dramatic performance with a +consciousness of the necessity of forming a judicial opinion of it is +often to see one's own thought about it rather than the thing itself. +Yet, when all allowance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> is made for difficulty of theme and for +infirmity of judgment, the observer of Ada Rehan may surely conclude +that she has a rich, tender, and sparkling nature, in which the +dream-like quality of sentiment and the discursive faculty of +imagination, intimately blended with deep, broad, and accurate +perceptions of the actual, and with a fund of keen and sagacious sense, +are reinforced with strong individuality and with affluent and +extraordinary vital force. Ada Rehan has followed no traditions. She +went to the stage not because of vanity but because of spontaneous +impulse; and for the expression of every part that she has played she +has gone to nature and not to precept and precedent. The stamp of her +personality is upon everything that she has done; yet the thinker who +looks back upon her numerous and various impersonations is astonished at +their diversity. The romance, the misery, and the fortitude of Kate +Verity, the impetuous passion of Katharine, the brilliant raillery of +Hippolyta, the enchanting womanhood of Rosalind—how clear-cut, how +distinct, how absolutely dramatic was each one of those +personifications! and yet how completely characteristic each one was of +this individual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> actress! Our works of art may be subject to the +application of our knowledge and skill, but we ourselves are under the +dominance of laws which operate out of the inaccessible and indefinable +depths of the spirit. Alongside of most players of this period Ada Rehan +is a prodigy of original force. Her influence, accordingly, has been +felt more than it has been understood, and, being elusive and strange, +has prompted wide differences of opinion. The sense that she diffuses of +a simple, unselfish, patient nature, and of impulsive tenderness of +heart, however, cannot have been missed by anybody with eyes to see. And +she crowns all by speaking the English language with a beauty that has +seldom been equalled.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p> +<h2>XVIII.</h2> + +<h3>TENNYSON'S COMEDY OF THE FORESTERS.</h3> + + +<p>"Besides, the King's name is a tower of strength." Thousands of people +all over the world honour, and ought to honour, every word that falls +from the pen of Alfred Tennyson. He is a very great man. No poet since +the best time of Byron has written the English language so well—that is +to say, with such affluent splendour of imagination; such passionate +vigour; such nobility of thought; such tenderness of pathos; such +pervasive grace, and so much of that distinctive variety, flexibility, +and copious and felicitous amplitude which are the characteristics of an +original style. No poet of the last fifty years has done so much to +stimulate endurance in the human soul and to clarify spiritual vision in +the human mind. It does not signify that now, at more than fourscore, +his hand sometimes trembles a little on the harp-strings, and his touch +falters, and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> music dies away. It is still the same harp and the +same hand. This fanciful, kindly, visionary, drifting, and altogether +romantic comedy of <i>Robin Hood</i> is not to be tried by the standard that +is author reared when he wrote <i>Ulysses</i> and <i>Tithonus</i> and <i>The Passing +of Arthur</i>—that imperial, unapproachable standard that no other poet +has satisfied.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But though the passion be subdued and the splendour faded, the deep +current of feeling flows on and the strong and tender voice can still +touch the heart and charm the ear. That tide of emotion and that tone of +melody blend in this play and make it beautiful. The passion is no +longer that of <i>Enone</i> and <i>Lucretius</i> and <i>Guinevere</i> and <i>Locksley +Hall</i> and <i>Maud</i> and <i>The Vision of Sin</i>. The thought is no longer that +of <i>In Memoriam</i>, with its solemn majesty and infinite pathos. The music +is no longer that of <i>The May Queen</i> and the <i>Talking Oak</i> and <i>Idle +Tears</i>. But why should these be expected? He who struck those notes +strikes now another; and as we listen our wonder grows, and cannot help +but grow, that a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> bard of fourscore and upward should write in such +absolute sympathy with youth, love, hope, happiness, and all that is +free and wandering and martial and active in the vicissitudes of +adventure, the exploits of chivalry, and the vagabondish spirit of gypsy +frolic. The fact that he does write in that mood points to the one +illuminative truth now essential to be remembered. The voice to which we +are privileged to listen, perhaps for the last time, is the voice of a +great poet—by which is meant a poet who is able, not through the medium +of intellect but through the medium of emotion, to make the total +experience of mankind his own experience, and to express it not only in +the form of art but with the fire of nature. The element of power, in +all the expressions of such a mind, will fluctuate; but every one of its +expressions will be sincere and in a greater or less degree will be +vital with a universal and permanent significance. That virtue is in +Alfred Tennyson's comedy of <i>Robin Hood</i>, and that virtue will insure +for it an abiding endurance in affectionate public esteem.</p> + +<p>The realm into which this play allures its auditor is the realm of +<i>Ivanhoe</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>—the far-off, romantic region of Sherwood forest, in the +ancient days of stout king Richard the First. The poet has gone to the +old legends of Robin Hood and to the ballads that have been made upon +them, and out of those materials—using them freely, according to his +fancy—he has chosen his scene and his characters and has made his +story. It is not the England of the mine and the workshop that he +represents, and neither is it the England of the trim villa and the +formal landscape; it is the England of the feudal times—of gray castle +towers, and armoured knights, and fat priests, and wandering minstrels, +and crusades and tournaments; England in rush-strewn bowers and under +green boughs; the England in which Wamba jested and Blondel sung. To +enter into that realm is to leave the barren world of prose; to feel +again the cool, sweet winds of summer upon the brow of youth; to catch, +in fitful glimpses, the shimmer of the Lincoln green in the sunlit, +golden glades of the forest, and to hear the merry note of the huntsman +commingled, far away, with "horns of Elfland faintly blowing." The +appeal is made to the primitive, elemental, poetical instinct of +mankind;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> and no detail of realism is obtruded, no question of +probability considered, no agony of the sin-tortured spirit subjected to +analysis, no controversy promoted and no moral lesson enforced. For once +the public is favoured with a serious poetical play, which aims simply +to diffuse happiness by arousing sympathy with pleasurable scenes and +picturesque persons, with virtue that is piquant and humour that is +refined, with the cheerful fortitude that takes adversity with a smile, +and with that final fortunate triumph of good over evil which is neither +ensanguined with gore nor saddened with tears, nor made acrid with +bitterness. The play is pastoral comedy, written partly in blank verse +and partly in prose, and cast almost wholly out of doors—in the open +air and under the greenwood tree—and, in order to stamp its character +beyond doubt or question, one scene of it is frankly devoted to a +convocation of fairies around Titania, their queen.</p> + +<p>The impulse that underlies this piece is the old, incessant, undying +aspiration, that men and women of the best order feel, for some avenue +of escape, some relief, some refuge, from the sickening tyranny of +convention and the commonplace, and from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> the overwhelming mystery with +which all human life is haunted and oppressed. A man who walks about in +a forest is not necessarily free. He may be as great a slave as anybody. +But the exalted imagination dwells upon his way of life as emancipated, +breezy, natural, and right. That way, to the tired thinker, lie peace +and joy. There, if anywhere—as he fancies—he might escape from all the +wrongs of the world, all the problems of society, all the dull business +of recording, and analysing, and ticketing mankind, all the clash of +selfish systems that people call history, and all the babble that they +call literature. In that retreat he would feel the rain upon his face, +and smell the grass and the flowers, and hear the sighing and whispering +of the wind in the green boughs; and there would be no need to trouble +himself any more, whether about the past or the future. Every great +intellect of the world has felt that wild longing, and has recorded +it—the impulse to revert to the vast heart of Nature, that knows no +doubt, and harbours no fear, and keeps no regret, and feels no sorrow, +and troubles itself not at all. Matthew Arnold dreamily and perhaps +austerely expressed it in <i>The Scholar</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> <i>Gypsy</i>. Byron more humanly +uttered it in four well-remembered lines, of <i>Childe Harold</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, that the desert were my dwelling-place,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With one fair spirit for my minister,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I might all forget the human race,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And, hating nothing, love but only her."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>Robin Hood</i>, as technical drama, is frail. Its movement, indeed, is not +more indolent than that of its lovely prototypes in Shakespeare, <i>As You +Like It</i> and <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i>. With all the pastorals Time +ambles. But, on the other hand, Tennyson's piece is not a match for +either of those Shakespearean works, in massiveness of dramatic +signification or in the element of opportunity for the art of acting. +Character, poetry, philosophy, humour, and suggestion it contains; but +it contains no single scene in which its persons can amply put forth +their full histrionic powers with essentially positive dramatic effect. +Its charm resides more in being than in doing, and therefore it is more +a poem than a play, and perhaps more a picture than a poem. It is not +one of those works that arouse, agitate, and impel. It aims only to +create and sustain a pleased condition; and that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> aim it has +accomplished. No spectator will be deeply moved by it, but no spectator +will look at it without delight. While, however, <i>Robin Hood</i> as a drama +is frail, it is not destitute of the dramatic element. It depicts a +central character in action, and it tells a representative love story—a +story in which the oppressive persecutor of impoverished age is foiled +and discomfited, in which faithful affection survives the test of trial, +and in which days of danger end at last in days of blissful peace. +Traces of the influence of Shakespeare—exerted by his pastoral comedies +and by the <i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>—are obvious in it. There is no +imitation; there is only kinship. The sources that Scott explored for +some of the material used in <i>Ivanhoe</i> also announce themselves. Many +stories could be derived from the old Robin Hood ballads. The poet has +only chosen and rearranged such of their incidents as would suit his +purpose—using those old ballads with perfect freedom, but also using +them with faultless taste.</p> + +<p>Robin Hood was born at Locksley, in the county of Nottingham, about +1160, when Henry the Second was king. His true name was Robert +Fitzooth—a name that popular mispronunciation converted into Robin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> +Hood—and he was of noble lineage. Old records declare him to have been +the Earl of Huntingdon. He was extravagant and adventurous, and for +reasons that are unknown he preferred to live in the woods. His haunts +were chiefly Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire, and Barnsdale, in +Yorkshire. Among his associates were William Scadlock, commonly called +Scarlet; Much, a miller's son; Friar Tuck, a vagabond monk; and Little +John, whose name was Nailor. Robin Hood and his band were kind to the +poor; but they robbed the rich and they were specially hard on the +clergy. There is a tradition that a woman named Maid Marian went with +Robin into the forest, but nothing is known about her. Robin lived till +the age of eighty-seven, and he might have lived longer but that a +treacherous relative, the prioress of Kirkley—to whose care he had +entrusted himself in order that he might be bled—allowed him to bleed +to death. At the time indicated in Tennyson's comedy—the year 1194, +which was the year of King Richard's return from captivity in +Germany—he was thirty-four years old. It is the year of <i>Ivanhoe</i>, and +in the play as in the novel, the evil agent is the usurper Prince John.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p> + +<p>Fifteen characters take part in this comedy. Act first is called "The +Bond and the Outlawry." The action begins in a garden before Sir Richard +Lea's castle—or rather the dialogue begins there, by which the basis of +the action is revealed. Maid Marian is Marian Lea, the daughter of Sir +Richard. Walter Lea, the son of Sir Richard, has been captured by the +Moors, and in order to pay the boy's ransom Sir Richard has borrowed a +large sum of money from the Abbot of York. That debt must presently be +paid; but Sir Richard does not see his way clear to its payment, and if +he does not pay it he must forfeit his land. The Sheriff of Nottingham, +a wealthy suitor for the hand of Marian, is willing to pay that debt, in +case the girl will favour his suit. But Marian loves the Earl of +Huntingdon and is by him beloved; and all would go well with those +lovers, and with Sir Richard, but that the Earl of Huntingdon is poor. +Poor though he be, however, he makes a feast, to celebrate his birthday, +and to that festival Sir Richard and his daughter are bidden. Act first +displays the joyous proceedings of that good meeting and the posture of +those characters toward each other. The Sheriff<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> of Nottingham intrudes +himself upon the scene, accompanied by Prince John, who is disguised as +a friar. The Prince has cast a covetous eye upon Marian, and, although +he outwardly favours the wish of the Sheriff, he is secretly determined +to seize her for himself. The revellers at Huntingdon's feast, unaware +of the Prince's presence, execrate his name, and at length he retires, +in a silent fury. Robin gives to Marian a remarkable ring that he has +inherited from his mother. Later a herald enters and reads a +proclamation from Prince John, declaring the Earl of Huntingdon to be a +felon, and commanding his banishment. Robin cannot forcibly oppose that +mandate, and he therefore determines to cast in his lot with Scarlet and +Friar Tuck and other "minions of the moon," and thenceforward to live a +free and merry life under the green boughs of Sherwood Forest. A year is +supposed to pass. Act second, called "The Flight of Marian," begins with +a song of the Foresters, in the deep wood—"There is no land like +England." That is a scene of much gentle beauty, enhanced by Robin +Hood's delivery of some of the finest poetry in the play, and also by +the delicious music<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> of Sir Arthur Sullivan. Robin descants upon +freedom, and upon the advantage of dwelling beneath the sky rather than +beneath a groined roof that shuts out all the meaning of heaven. There +is a colloquy between Little John, who is one of Robin's men, and Kate, +who is Marian's maid. Those two are lovers who quarrel and make it up +again, as lovers will. Kate has come to the forest, bringing word of the +flight of her mistress. Prince John has tried to seize Marian, and that +brave girl has repulsed and struck him; and she and her father have +fled—intending to make for France, in which land the old knight expects +to find a friend who will pay his debt and save his estate. While Robin +is considering these things he perceives the approach of Prince John and +the Sheriff of Nottingham, and, thereupon, he takes refuge in the hut of +an old witch and disguises himself in some of her garments. Prince John +and the Sheriff, who are in pursuit of Sir Richard and Marian, find +Robin in this disguise, and for a time they are deceived by him; but +soon they penetrate his masquerade and assail him—whereupon some of his +people come to his assistance, and he is reinforced by Sir Richard Lea. +Prince<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> John and his party are beaten and driven away. Sir Richard is +exhausted, and Robin commits him to the care of the Foresters. Marian, +arrayed as a boy, and pretending to be her brother Walter, has been +present at this combat, as a spectator, and a sparkling scene of +equivoke, mischief, and sentiment ensues between Marian and Robin. That +scene Tennyson wrote and inserted for Ada Rehan, to whose vivacious +temperament it is fitted, and whose action in it expressed with equal +felicity the teasing temper of the coquette and the propitious fondness +of the lover. Robin discovers Marian's identity by means of the ring +that he gave her, and, after due explanation, it is agreed that she and +her father will remain under his protection. Act third is called "The +Crowning of Marian," and is devoted to pictures, colloquies, and +incidents, now serious and now comical, showing the life of the +Foresters and the humorous yet discriminative justice of their gypsy +chief. Sir Richard Lea is ill and he cannot be moved. The outlaws crown +Marian, with an oaken chaplet, and declare her to be their queen. Robin +Hood vindicates his vocation, and in a noble speech on +freedom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>—deriving his similes from the giant oak tree, as Tennyson has +ever loved to do—declares himself the friend of the poor and the +servant of the king; the absent Richard of the Lion Heart, for whose +return all good men are eager. Various beggars, friars, and other +travellers are halted on the road, in practical illustration of Robin's +doctrine; comic incidents from the old ballads are reproduced; and so +the episode ends merrily of these frolics in the wood. At that point a +delicious fairy pageant is introduced, presenting Queen Titania and her +elves and illustrating at once the grievance of the fairies against the +men whose heavy feet have crushed their toads and bats and flowers and +mystic rings, and Marian's dream of love. Sir Arthur Sullivan's music is +here again used, and again it is felt to be characteristic, melodious, +and uncommonly sweet and tender. Act fourth begins in a forest bower at +sunrise. Marian and Robin meet there and talk of Sir Richard and of his +bond to the Abbot of York—soon to fall due and seemingly to remain +unpaid. Robin has summoned the Abbot and his justiciary to come into the +forest and to bring the bond. King Richard, unrecognised, now arrives, +and in submission<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> to certain laws of the woodland he engages in an +encounter of buffets, and prevails over all his adversaries. At the +approach of the Abbot, however, fearing premature recognition, the +monarch will flit away; but his gypsy friends compel him to accept a +bugle, upon which he is to blow a blast when in danger. The Abbot and +his followers arrive, and Robin Hood offers the money to redeem Sir +Richard's bond; but, upon a legal quibble, the Abbot declines to receive +it—preferring to seize the forfeited land. Prince John and the Sheriff +of Nottingham appear, and Robin and his Foresters form an ambuscade. Sir +Richard Lea has been brought in, upon his litter, and Marian stays +beside him. Prince John attempts to seize her, but this time he is +frustrated by the sudden advent of King Richard—from whose presence he +slinks away. The myrmidons of John, however, attack the King, who would +oppose them single-handed; but Friar Tuck snatches the King's bugle and +blows a blast of summons—whereupon the Foresters swarm into the field +and possess it. John's faction is dispersed, Marian is saved, the absent +Walter Lea reappears, Sir Richard is assured of his estate, the Abbot +and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> Sheriff are punished, and Robin Hood and Maid Marian may +wed—for now the good King Richard has come again to his own.</p> + +<p>The lyrics in the piece possess the charm of fluent and unaffected +sweetness, and of original, inventive, and felicitous fancy, and some of +them are tenderly freighted with that indescribable but deeply affecting +undertone of pathetic sentiment which is a characteristic attribute of +Tennyson's poetry.</p> + +<p>The characters in the comedy were creatures of flesh and blood to the +author, and they come out boldly, therefore, on the stage. Marian Lea is +a woman of the Rosalind order—handsome, noble, magnanimous, +unconventional, passionate in nature, but sufficient unto herself, +humorous, playful, and radiant with animal spirits. Ada Rehan embodied +her according to that ideal. The chief exaction of the part is +simplicity—which yet must not be allowed to degenerate into tameness. +The sweet affection of a daughter for her father, the coyness yet the +allurement of a girl for her lover, the refinement of high birth, the +blithe bearing and free demeanour of a child of the woods, and the +predominant dignity of purity and honour—those are the salient +attributes of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> the part. Ada Rehan struck the true note at the +outset—the note of buoyant health, rosy frolic, and sprightly +adventure—and she sustained it evenly and firmly to the last. Every eye +was pleased with the frank, careless, cheerful beauty of her presence, +and every ear was soothed and charmed with her fluent and expressive +delivery of the verse. In this, as in all of the important +representations that Ada Rehan has given, the delightful woman-quality +was conspicuously present. She can readily impersonate a boy. No actress +since Adelaide Neilson has done that so well. But the crowning +excellence of her art was its expression of essential womanhood. Her +acting was never trivial and it never obtruded the tedious element of +dry intellect. It refreshed—and the spectator was happier for having +seen her. Many pleasant thoughts were scattered in many minds by her +performance of Maid Marian, and no one who saw it will ever part with +the remembrance of it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p> +<h2>XIX.</h2> + +<h3>ELLEN TERRY: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.</h3> + + +<p>It was perhaps an auspicious portent, it certainly is an interesting +fact, that the first play that was ever acted in America at a regular +theatre and by a regular theatrical company was Shakespeare's comedy of +<i>The Merchant of Venice</i>. Such at least is the record made by William +Dunlap, the first historian of the American theatre, who names +Williamsburg, Virginia, as the place and September 5, 1752 as the date +of that production. It ought to be noted, however (so difficult is it to +settle upon any fact in this uncertain world), that the learned +antiquarian Judge C.P. Daly, fortified likewise by the scrupulously +accurate Ireland, dissents from Dunlap's statement and declares that +Cibber's alteration of Shakespeare's <i>Richard the Third</i> was acted by a +regular company in a large room in Nassau Street, New York, at an +earlier date, namely, on March 5, 1750. All the same,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> it appears to +have been Shakespeare's mind that started the dramatic movement in +America. The American stage has undergone great changes since that time, +but both <i>The Merchant of Venice</i> and <i>Richard the Third</i> are still +acted, and in the <i>Merchant</i>, if not in <i>Richard</i>, the public interest +is still vital. In New York, under Edwin Booth's management, at the +Winter Garden theatre, January 28, 1867, and subsequently at Booth's +theatre, and in London, under Henry Irving's management, at the Lyceum +theatre, November 1, 1879, sumptuous productions of the <i>Merchant</i> have +brilliantly marked the dramatic chronicle of our times. Discussion of +the great character of Shylock steadily proceeds and seems never to +weary either the disputants or the audience. The sentiment, the fancy, +and the ingenuity of artists are often expended not only upon the +austere, picturesque, and terrible figure of the vindictive Jew, but +upon the chief related characters in the comedy—upon Bassanio and +Portia, Gratiano and Nerissa, Lorenzo and Jessica, the princely and +pensive Antonio, the august Duke and his stately senators, and the +shrewd and humorous Gobbo. More than one painting has depicted the +ardent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> Lorenzo and his fugitive infidel as they might have looked on +that delicious summer night at Belmont when they saw "how the floor of +heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," and when the +blissful lover, radiant with happiness and exalted by the sublime, +illimitable, unfathomable spectacle of the star-strewn firmament, +murmured, in such heaven-like cadence, of the authentic music of heaven.</p> + +<p>It is not to be denied that lovely words are spoken to Jessica, and that +almost equally lovely words are spoken by her. Essayists upon the +<i>Merchant</i> have generally accepted her without a protest—so much do +youth and beauty in a woman count in the scale when weighed against duty +and integrity. There is no indication that Shylock was ever unjust or +unkind to Jessica. Whatever he may have been to others he seems always +to have been good to her; and she was the child of that lost Leah of his +youthful devotion whom he passionately loved and whom he mourned to the +last. Yet Jessica not only abandoned her father and his religion, but +robbed him of money and jewels (including the betrothal ring, the +turquoise, that her mother had given to him), when she fled with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> +young Christian who had won her heart. It was a basely cruel act; but +probably some of the vilest and cruelest actions that are done in this +world are done by persons who are infatuated by the passion of love. +Mrs. Jameson, who in her beautiful essay on Portia extenuates the +conduct of Jessica, would have us believe that Shylock valued his +daughter far beneath his wealth, and therefore deserved to be deserted +and plundered by her; and she is so illogical as to derive his +sentiments on this subject from his delirious outcries of lamentation +after he learned of her predatory and ignominious flight. The argument +is not a good one. Fine phrases do not make wrong deeds right. It were +wiser to take Jessica for the handsome and voluptuous girl that +certainly she is, and to leave her rectitude out of the question. +Shakespeare in his drawing of her was true to nature, as he always is; +but the student who wants to know where Shakespeare's heart was placed +when he drew women must look upon creatures very different from Jessica. +The women that Shakespeare seems peculiarly to have loved are Imogen, +Cordelia, Isabella, Rosalind, and Portia—Rosalind, perhaps, most of +all; for although Portia is finer than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> Rosalind, it is extremely +probable that Shakespeare resembled his fellow-men sufficiently to have +felt the preference that Tom Moore long afterward expressed:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Be an angel, my love, in the morning,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But, oh! be a woman to-night."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When Ellen Terry embodied Portia—in Henry Irving's magnificent revival +of <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>—the essential womanhood of that character +was for the first time in the modern theatre adequately interpreted and +conveyed. Upon many play-going observers indeed the wonderful wealth of +beauty that is in the part—its winsome grace, its incessant sparkle, +its alluring because piquant as well as luscious sweetness, its +impetuous ardour, its enchantment of physical equally with emotional +condition, its august morality, its perfect candour, and its noble +passion—came like a surprise. Did the great actress find those +attributes in the part (they asked themselves), or did she infuse them +into it? Previous representatives of Portia had placed the emphasis +chiefly, if not exclusively, upon morals and mind. The stage Portia of +the past has usually been a didactic lady, self-contained, formal, +conventional, and oratorical. Ellen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> Terry came, and Portia was figured +exactly as she lives in the pages of Shakespeare—an imperial and yet an +enchanting woman, dazzling in her beauty, royal in her dignity, as +ardent in temperament as she is fine in brain and various and splendid +in personal peculiarities and feminine charm. After seeing that +matchless impersonation it seemed strange that Portia should ever have +been represented in any other light, and it was furthermore felt that +the inferior, mechanical, utilitarian semblance of her could not again +be endured. Ellen Terry's achievement was a complete vindication of the +high view that Shakespearean study has almost always taken of that +character, and it finally discredited the old stage notion that Portia +is a type of decorum and declamation.</p> + +<p>Aside from Hazlitt, who thought that Portia is affected and pedantic, +and who did not like her because he did not happen to appreciate her, +the best analytical thinkers about Shakespeare's works have taken the +high view of that character. Shakespeare himself certainly took it; for +aside from her own charming behaviour and delightful words it is to be +observed that everybody in the play who speaks of her at all speaks her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> +praise. It is only upon the stage that she has been made artificial, +prim, and preachy. That misrepresentation of her has, perhaps, been +caused, in part, by the practice long prevalent in our theatre of +cutting and compressing the play so as to make Shylock the chief figure +in it. In that way Portia is shorn of much of her splendour and her +meaning. The old theatrical records dwell almost exclusively upon +Shylock, and say little if anything about Portia. In Shakespeare's time, +no doubt, <i>The Merchant of Venice</i> was acted as it is written, the +female persons in it being played by boys, or by men who could "speak +small." Alexander Cooke (1588-1614) played the light heroines of +Shakespeare while the poet was alive. All students of the subject are +aware that Burbage was the first Shylock, and that when he played the +part he wore a red wig, a red beard, and a long false nose. No record +exists as to the first Portia. The men who were acting female characters +upon the London stage when that institution was revived immediately +after the Restoration were Kynaston, James Nokes, Angel, William +Betterton, Mosely, and Floid. Kynaston, it is said, could act a woman so +well that when at length women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> themselves began to appear as actors it +was for some time doubted whether any one of them could equal him. The +account of his life, however, does not mention Portia as one of his +characters.</p> + +<p>Indeed the play of <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>, after it languished out of +sight in that decadence of the stage which ensued upon the growth of the +Puritan movement in England, did not again come into use until it was +revived in Lord Landsdowne's alteration of it produced at the theatre in +Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1701, and even then it was grossly perverted. +Forty years later, however, on St. Valentine's Day 1741, at Drury Lane, +when Macklin regenerated the character of Shylock, the original piece +was restored to the theatre. Women in the meantime had come upon the +stage. The garrulous and delightful Pepys, who had seen Kynaston play a +female part, records in his marvellous Diary that he first saw women as +actors on January 3, 1661. Those were members of Killigrew's company, +which preceded that of Davenant by several months, if not by a year; and +therefore the common statement in theatrical books that the first woman +that ever appeared on the English stage was Mrs. Sanderson, of +Dave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>nant's company, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, is erroneous: and indeed +the name of the first English actress is as much unknown as the name of +the first Portia. When Macklin restored Shakespeare's <i>Merchant of +Venice</i> to the stage it is not likely that the character of Portia was +dwarfed, for its representative then was Kitty Clive, and that actress +was a person of strong will. With Clive the long list begins of the +Portias of the stage. She was thirty years old when she played the part +with Macklin, and it is probable that she played it with dignity and +certain that she played it with sparkling animation and piquant grace. +The German Ulrici, whose descriptive epithets for Portia are "roguish +and intellectual," would doubtless have found his ideal of the part +fulfilled in Clive. The Nerissa that night was Mrs. Pritchard, then also +thirty years old, but not so famous as she afterward became.</p> + +<p>The greatest actress on the British stage in the eighteenth century +undoubtedly was Margaret Woffington (1719-1760). Sarah Siddons, to whom +the sceptre passed, was only five years old when Woffington died. Both +those brilliant names are associated with Portia. Augustin Daly's <i>Life +of Woffington</i>—the best life of her that has been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> written, and one of +the most sumptuous books that have been made—contains this reference to +her performance of that part: "All her critics agree that her +declamation was accurate and her gesture grace and nature combined; but +in tragic or even dramatic speeches her voice probably had its limits, +and in such scenes, being overtaxed, told against her. As Portia she +appeared to great advantage; but when Lorenzo says, 'This is the voice, +or I am much deceived, of Portia,' and Portia replies, 'He knows me, as +the blind man knows the cuckoo, by the bad voice,' the audience laughed +outright, and Woffington, conscious of her deficiency, with great +good-humour joined with them in their merriment." The incident is +mentioned in the <i>Table Talk</i> (1825) of Richard Ryan, to which book Daly +refers. Mrs. Siddons made her first appearance on the London stage as +Portia December 29, 1775, and conspicuously failed in the part on that +occasion, but she became distinguished in it afterward; yet it is +probable that Mrs. Siddons expressed its nobility more than its +tenderness, and much more than its buoyant and glittering glee, which +was so entirely and beautifully given by Ellen Terry. After Peg +Woffington and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> before Mrs. Siddons the most conspicuous Portia was Mrs. +Dancer, whom Hugh Kelley, in his satirical composition of <i>Thespis</i>, +calls a "moon-eyed idiot,"—from which barbarous bludgeon phrase the +reader derives a hint as to her aspect. Some of the tones of Mrs. +Dancer's voice were so tender that no one could resist them. Spranger +Barry could not, for he married her, and after his death she became Mrs. +Crawford. Miss Maria Macklin, daughter of the first true Shylock of the +stage, acted Portia, April 13, 1776, with her father. She is recorded as +an accomplished woman but destitute of genius—in which predicament she +probably was not lonesome. On June 11, 1777 Portia was acted at the +Haymarket by Miss Barsanti, afterward Mrs. Lister, an actress who, since +she excelled in such parts as were customarily taken by Fanny Abington +(the distinct opposite of Portia-like characters), must have been +unsuited for it. The names of Miss Younge, Miss Farren, Miss E. Kemble, +Miss Ryder, Mrs. Pope, Miss De Camp, and Miss Murray are in the record +of the stage Portias that comes down to 1800. Probably the best of all +those Portias was Mrs. Pope.</p> + +<p>The beautiful Mrs. Glover played Portia<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> in 1809 at the Haymarket +theatre. Mrs. Ogilvie played it, with Macready as Shylock (his first +appearance in that part), on May 13, 1823. Those figures passed and left +no shadow. Two English actresses of great fame are especially associated +with Portia—Ellen Tree, afterward Mrs. Charles Kean, and Helen Faucit, +now Lady Martin; and no doubt their assumptions of the part should be +marked as exceptions from the hard, didactic, declamatory, perfunctory +method that has customarily characterised the Portia of the stage. Lady +Martin's written analysis of Portia is noble in thought and subtle and +tender in penetration and sympathy. Charlotte Cushman read the text +superbly, but she was much too formidable ever to venture on assuming +the character. Portia is a woman who deeply loves and deeply rejoices +and exults in her love, and she is never ashamed of her passion or of +her exultation in it; and she says the finest things about love that are +said by any of Shakespeare's women; the finest because, while supremely +passionate, the feeling in them is perfectly sane. It is as a lover that +Ellen Terry embodied her, and while she made her a perfect woman, in all +the attributes that fascinate,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> she failed not, in the wonderful trial +scene, to invest her with that fine light of celestial anger—that +momentary thrill of moral austerity—which properly appertains to the +character at the climax of a solemn and almost tragical situation.</p> + +<p>On the American stage there have been many notable representatives of +the chief characters in <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>. In New York, when the +comedy was done at the old John Street theatre in 1773, Hallam was +Shylock and Mrs. Morris Portia. Twenty years afterward, at the same +house, Shylock was played by John Henry, and Portia by Mrs. Henry, while +the brilliant Hodgkinson appeared as Gratiano. Cooper, whose life has +been so well written by that ripe theatrical scholar Joseph N. Ireland, +in one of the books of the Dunlap Society, assumed Shylock in 1797 at +the theatre just then opened in Greenwich Street. The famous Miss +Brunton (then Mrs. Merry), was the Portia, and the cast included Moreton +as Bassanio, Warren as Antonio, Bernard as Gratiano, and Blissett as +Tubal. How far away and how completely lost and forgotten those once +distinguished and admired persons are! Yet Cooper in his day was +idolised: he had a fame as high, if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> not as widely spread, as that of +Henry Irving or Edwin Booth at present. William Creswick—lately dead at +an advanced age in London—was seen upon the New York stage as Shylock +in 1840; Macready in 1841; Charles Kean in 1845. With the latter, Ellen +Tree played Portia. Charles W. Couldock enacted Shylock on September 6, +1852, at the Castle Garden theatre, in a performance given to +commemorate the alleged centenary of the introduction of the drama into +America. The elder Wallack, the elder Booth, Edwin Forrest, G.V. Brooke, +George Vandenhoff, Wyzeman Marshall, and E.L. Davenport are among the +old local representatives of the Jew. Madam Ponisi used to play Portia, +and so did Mrs. Hoey.</p> + +<p>In December 1858, when <i>The Merchant of Venice</i> was finely revived at +Wallack's theatre, with the elder Wallack as Shylock, the cast included +Lester Wallack as Bassanio, John Brougham as Gratiano, A. W. Young—a +quaintly comic actor, too soon cut off—as Launcelot Gobbo, Mary +Gannon—the fascinating, the irresistible—as Nerissa, and handsome Mrs. +Sloan as Jessica. The eminent German actor Davison played Shylock, in +New York, in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> own language; and many German actors, no one of them +comparable with him, have been seen in it since. Lawrence Barrett often +played it, and with remarkable force and feeling. The triumphs won in it +by Edwin Booth are within the remembrance of many playgoers of this +generation. When he last acted the Jew Helena Modjeska was associated +with him as Portia. Booth customarily ended the piece with the trial +scene, omitting the last act; and indeed that was long the stage custom; +but with the true Portia of Ellen Terry and a good cast in general the +last act went blithely and with superb effect. The comedy was not +written for Shylock alone. He is a tremendous identity, but he is not +the chief subject. The central theme is Portia and her love. That theme +takes up a large part of the play,—which is like a broad summer +landscape strewn with many-coloured flowers that flash and glitter in +the sun, while slowly a muttering thunder-storm gathers and lowers, and +presently sweeps overhead, casting one black shadow as it passes, and +leaving the fragrant and glistening plain all the brighter and sweeter +for the contrast with its defeated menace and vanishing gloom.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p> +<h2>XX.</h2> + +<h3>RICHARD MANSFIELD AS RICHARD THE THIRD.</h3> + + +<p>The ideal of Richard that was expressed by this actor did not materially +differ from that which has been manifested by great tragic actors from +Garrick to Booth. He embodied a demoniac scoffer who, nevertheless, is a +human being. The infernal wickedness of Richard was shown to be impelled +by tremendous intellect but slowly enervated and ultimately thwarted and +ruined by the cumulative operation of remorse—corroding at the heart +and finally blasting the man with desolation and frenzy. That, +undoubtedly, was Shakespeare's design. But Richard Mansfield's +expression of that ideal differed from the expression to which the stage +has generally been accustomed, and in this respect his impersonation was +distinctive and original.</p> + +<p>The old custom of playing Richard was to take the exaggerated statements +of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> opening soliloquy in a literal sense, to provide him with a big +hump, a lame leg, and a fell of straight black hair, and to make him +walk in, scowling, with his lower lip protruded, and declare with +snarling vehemence and guttural vociferation his amiable purpose of +specious duplicity and miscellaneous slaughter. The opening speech, +which is in Shakespeare's juvenile manner—an orotund, verbose manner, +which perhaps he had caught from Marlowe, and which he outgrew and +abandoned—was thus utilised for displaying the character in a massed +aspect, as that of a loathsome hypocrite and sanguinary villain; and, +that being done, he was made to advance through about two-thirds of the +tragedy, airily yet ferociously slaying everybody who came in his way, +until at some convenient point, definable at the option of the actor, he +was suddenly smitten with a sufficient remorse to account for his +trepidation before and during the tent-scene; and thereafter he was +launched into combat like a meteoric butcher, all frenzy and all gore, +and killed, amid general acclamation, when he had fenced himself out of +breath.</p> + +<p>That treatment of the character was, doubtless, in part a necessary +consequence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> of Shakespeare's perfunctory adoption of the Tudor doctrine +that Richard was a blood-boltered monster; but in a larger degree it was +the result of Cibber's vulgar distortion of the original piece. The +actual character of the king,—who seems to have been one of the ablest +and wisest monarchs that ever reigned in England—has never recovered, +and it never will recover, from the odium that was heaped upon it by the +Tudor historians and accepted and ratified by the great genius of +Shakespeare. The stage character of the king has been almost as +effectually damned by the ingenious theatrical claptrap with which +Cibber misrepresented and vulgarised Shakespeare's conception, assisted +by the efforts of a long line of blood-and-thunder tragedians, only too +well pleased to depict a gory, blathering, mugging miscreant, such as +their limited intelligence enabled them to comprehend. The stage +Richard, however, may possibly be redeemed. In Cibber he is everything +that Queen Margaret calls him, and worse than a brute. In Shakespeare, +although a miscreant, he is a man. The return to Shakespeare, +accordingly, is a step in the right direction. That step was taken some +time ago,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> although not maintained, first by Macready, then by Samuel +Phelps, then by Edwin Booth, and then by Henry Irving. Their good +example was followed by Richard Mansfield. He used a version of the +tragedy, made by himself,—a piece indicative of thoughtful study of the +subject as well as a keen intuitive grasp of it. He did not stop short +at being a commentator. Aiming to impersonate a character he treated +Shakespeare's prolix play in such a manner as to make it a practicable +living picture of a past age. The version was in five acts, preserving +the text of the original, much condensed, and introducing a few lines +from Cibber. It began with a bright processional scene before the Tower +of London, in which Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV., was conspicuous, and +against that background of "glorious summer" it placed the dangerous +figure of the Duke of Gloster. It comprised the murder of Henry VI., the +wooing of Lady Anne,—not in a London street, but in a rural place, on +the road to Chertsey; the lamentation for King Edward IV.; the episode +of the boy princes; the condemnation of Hastings,—a scene that +brilliantly denotes the mingled artifice and savagery of Shakespeare's +Gloster; the Buckingham plot; the priest and mayor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> scene; the +temptation of Tyrrel; the fall of Buckingham; the march to battle; the +episode of the spectres; and the fatal catastrophe on Bosworth Field. +Enough of the story was thus related to satisfy the Shakespeare scholar.</p> + +<p>The notable peculiarity was the assumption that there are considerable +lapses of time at intervals during the continuance of the story. The +effort to reconcile poetry with history produced little if any +appreciable practical result upon the stage,—seeing that an audience +would not think of lapses of time unless those lapses were mentioned in +the play-bill. An incessant continuity of action, a ceaseless rush and +whirl of events, is the essential life of the play. No auditor can feel +that Richard has waited twelve years before making any movement or +striking any blow, after his aspiration that heaven will take King +Edward and leave the world for him "to bustle in." That word "bustle" is +a favourite word with Richard. And furthermore there is no development +of his character in Shakespeare's play: there is simply the presentation +of it, complete and rounded at the outset, and remaining invariably and +inflexibly the same to the close.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p> + +<p>Mansfield, however, deduced this effect from his consideration of the +flight of time: a contrast between Richard at nineteen and Richard at +thirty-three, a contrast strongly expressive of the reactionary +influence that an experience of evil deeds has produced upon a man who +at first was only a man of evil thoughts and evil will. This imported +into the performance a diversity of delineation without, however, +affecting the formidable weight of the figure of Richard, or its +brilliancy, or its final significance. The embodiment was splendid with +it, and would be just as splendid without it. The presence of heart and +conscience in that demoniac human creature is denoted by Shakespeare and +must be shown by the actor. Precisely at what point his heaven-defying +will should begin to waver is not defined. Mansfield chose to indicate +the operation of remorse and terror in Richard's soul as early as the +throne scene and before yet the king has heard that the royal boys have +been murdered. The effect of his action, equally with the method of it, +was magnificent. You presently saw him possessed of the throne for which +he had so terribly toiled and sinned, and alone upon it, bathed in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> +blood-red light, the pitiable personification of gorgeous but haunted +evil, marked off from among mankind and henceforth desolate. Throughout +that fine scene Mansfield's portrayal of the fearful struggle between +wicked will and human weakness was in a noble vein of imagination, +profound in its sincerity, affecting in its pathos, and pictorial in its +treatment. In the earlier scenes his mood and his demeanour had been +suffused with a cool, gay, mockery of elegant cynicism. He killed King +Henry with a smile, in a scene of gloomy mystery that might have come +from the pencil of Gustave Dore. He looked upon the mourning Lady Anne +with cheerful irony and he wooed her with all the fervour that passion +and pathos can engender in the behaviour of a hypocrite. His +dissimulation with the princes and with the mayor and the nobles was to +the last degree specious. One of his finest points was the temptation of +Buckingham to murder the princes. There, and indeed at all points, was +observed the absence of even the faintest reminiscence of the ranting, +mouthing, flannel-jawed king of clubs who has so generally strutted and +bellowed as Shakespeare's Gloster. All was bold and telling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> in the +manner, and yet the manner was reticent with nature and fine with +well-bred continence.</p> + +<p>With the throne scene began the spiritual conflict. At least it then +began to be disclosed; and from that moment onward the state of Richard +was seen to be that of Orestes pursued by the furies. But Mansfield was +right, and was consistent, in making the monarch faithful in his +devotion to evil. Richard's presentiments, pangs, and tremors are +intermittent. In the great, empty, darkening throne-room, with its +shadowy nooks and dim corners, shapeless and nameless spectres may +momentarily come upon him and shake his strong spirit with the sinister +menace of hell. Along the dark plains, on the fateful night before the +battle, the sad ghosts may drift and wander, moaning and wailing in the +ghastly gloom; and in that hour of haunted desolation the doomed king +may feel that, after all, he is but mortal man, and that his pre-ordered +destruction is close at hand and not to be averted; but Richard never +deceives himself; never palters with the goodness that he has scorned. +He dies as he has lived, defiant and terrible.</p> + +<p>Mansfield's treatment of the ghost scenes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> at Bosworth was novel, +original, and poetic, and his death scene was not only a display of +personal prowess but a reproduction of historical fact. With a detail +like this the truth of history becomes useful, but in general the actor +cannot safely go back of the Shakespearean scheme. To present Richard as +he probably was would be to present a man of some virtue as well as +great ability. Mansfield's acting revealed an amiable desire to infuse +as much goodness as possible into the Shakespearean conception, but he +obtained his chief success by acting the part substantially according to +Shakespeare and by setting and dressing the play with exceptional if not +altogether exact fidelity to the time, the places, and the persons that +are implicated in the story.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare's Richard is a type of colossal will and of restless, +inordinate, terrific activity. The objects of his desire and his effort +are those objects which are incident to supreme power; but his chief +object is that assertion of himself which is irresistibly incited and +steadfastly compelled by the overwhelming, seething, acrid energy of his +feverish soul, burning and raging in his fiery body. He can no more help +pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>jecting himself upon the affairs of the world than the malignant +cobra can help darting upon its prey. He is a vital, elemental force, +grisly, hectic, terrible, impelled by volcanic heat and electrified and +made lurid and deadly by the infernal purpose of restless wickedness. No +actor can impersonate Richard in an adequate manner who does not possess +transcendent force of will, combined with ambitious, incessant, and +restless mental activity. Mansfield in those respects is qualified for +the character, and out of his professional resources he was able to +supply the other elements that are requisite to its constitution and +fulfilment. He presented as Richard a sardonic, scoffing demon, who +nevertheless, somewhere in his complex nature, retains an element of +humanity. He embodied a character that is tragic in its ultimate effect, +but his method was that of the comedian. His portrayal of Richard, +except at those moments when it is veiled with craft and dissimulation, +or at those other and grander moments, infrequent but awful and +agonising, when it is convulsed with terror or with the anguish of +remorse, stood forth boldly in the sunshine, a crystallised and deadly +sarcasm,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> equally trenchant upon itself and all the world, equally +scornful of things human and things divine. That deadly assumption of +keen and mordant mockery, that cool, glittering, malignant lightness of +manner, was consistently sustained throughout the performance, while the +texture of it was made continuously entertaining by diversity of colour +and inflection, sequent on changing moods; so that Richard was shown as +a creature of the possible world of mankind and not as a fiction of the +stage.</p> + +<p>The part was acted by him: it was not declaimed. He made, indeed, a +skilful use of his uncommon voice—keeping its tones light, sweet, and +superficial during the earlier scenes (while yet, in accordance with his +theory of development, Gloster is the personification of evil purpose +only beginning to ripen into evil deed), and then permitting them to +become deeper and more significant and thrilling as the man grows old in +crime and haggard and convulsed in self-conflict and misery. But it was +less with vocal excellence that the auditor was impressed than with the +actor's identification with the part and his revelation of the soul of +it. When first presented Gloster<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> was a mocking devil. The murder of +King Henry was done with malice, but the malice was enwrapped with glee. +In the wooing of Lady Anne there was both heart and passion, but the +mood was that of lightsome duplicity. It is not until years of scheming +and of evil acts, engendering, promoting, and sustaining a condition of +mental horror and torture, have ravaged his person and set their seal +upon him, in sunken cheek and hollow eye, in shattered nerves and deep +and thrilling voice, surcharged at once with inveterate purpose and with +incessant agony, that this light manner vanishes, and the demeanour and +action of the wicked monarch becomes ruthless, direct, and terrible. +Whether, upon the basis of a play so discursive, so episodical, so +irresolutely defined as Shakespeare's <i>Richard the Third</i>, that theory +of the development of its central character is logically tenable is a +dubious question. In Shakespeare the character is presented full-grown +at the start, and then, through a confused tangle of historical events, +is launched into action. Nevertheless in his practical application of it +Mansfield made his theory effective by a novel, powerful, interesting +performance. You could not help perceiv<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>ing in Mansfield's embodiment +that Gloster was passing through phases of experience—that the man +changed, as men do change in life, the integral character remaining the +same in its original fibre, but the condition varying, in accordance +with the reaction of conduct upon temperament and conscience.</p> + +<p>Mansfield deeply moved his audience in the repulse of Buckingham, in the +moody menace of the absent Stanley, in the denunciation of Hastings, and +in the awakening from the dream on the night before the battle. +Playgoers have seldom seen a dramatic climax so thrilling as his +hysterical recognition of Catesby, after the moment of doubt whether +this be not also a phantom of his terrific dream. It was not so much by +startling theatrical effects, however, as by subtle denotements, now of +the tempest and now of the brooding horror in the king's heart, that the +actor gained his victory. The embodiment lacked incessant fiery +expedition—the explosive, meteoric quality that astounds and dazzles. +Chief among the beauties was imagination. The attitude of the monarch +toward his throne—the infernal triumph, and yet the remorseful agony +and wither<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>ing fear—in the moment of ghastly loneliness when he knows +that the innocent princes have been murdered and that his imperial +pathway is clear, made up one of the finest spectacles of dramatic +illumination that the stage has afforded. You saw the murderer's hideous +exultation, and then, in an instant, as the single ray of red light from +the setting sun streamed through the Gothic window and fell upon his +evil head, you saw him shrink in abject fear, cowering in the shadow of +his throne; and the dusky room was seemingly peopled with gliding +spectres. That treatment was theatrical, but in no derogatory sense +theatrical—for it comports with the great speech on conscience; not the +fustian of Cibber, about mutton and short-lived pleasure, but the speech +that Shakespeare has put into Richard's mouth; the speech that inspired +Mansfield's impersonation—the brilliant embodiment of an intellectual +man, predisposed to evil, who yields to that inherent impulse, and +thereafter, although intermittently convulsed with remorse, fights with +tremendous energy against the goodness that he scorns and defies, till +at last he dashes himself to pieces against the adamant of eternal law.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p> +<h2>XXI.</h2> + +<h3>GENEVIEVE WARD: FORGET ME NOT.</h3> + + +<p>In the season of 1880-81 Genevieve Ward made a remarkably brilliant hit +with her embodiment of Stephanie De Mohrivart, in the play of <i>Forget Me +Not</i>, by Herman Merivale, and since then she has acted that part +literally all round the world. It was an extraordinary +performance—potent with intellectual character, beautiful with +refinement, nervous and steel-like with indomitable purpose and icy +glitter, intense with passion, painfully true to an afflicting ideal of +reality, and at last splendidly tragic: and it was a shining example of +ductile and various art. Such a work ought surely to be recorded as one +of the great achievements of the stage. Genevieve Ward showed herself to +possess in copious abundance peculiar qualities of power and beauty upon +which mainly the part of Stephanie is reared. The points of assimilation +between the actress and the part were seen to consist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> in an imperial +force of character, intellectual brilliancy, audacity of mind, iron +will, perfect elegance of manners, a profound self-knowledge, and +unerring intuitions as to the relation of motive and conduct in that +vast network of circumstance which is the social fabric. Stephanie +possesses all those attributes; and all those attributes Genevieve Ward +supplied, with the luxuriant adequacy and grace of nature. But Stephanie +superadds to those attributes a bitter, mocking cynicism, thinly veiled +by artificial suavity and logically irradiant from natural hardness of +heart, coupled with an insensibility that has been engendered by cruel +experience of human selfishness. This, together with a certain mystical +touch of the animal freedom, whether in joy or wrath, that goes with a +being having neither soul nor conscience, the actress had to supply—and +did supply—by her art. As interpreted by Genevieve Ward the character +was reared, not upon a basis of unchastity but upon a basis of +intellectual perversion. Stephanie has followed—at first with +self-contempt, afterward with sullen indifference, finally with the bold +and brilliant hardihood of reckless defiance—a life of crime. She is +audacious, unscrupulous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> cruel; a consummate tactician; almost sexless, +yet a siren in knowledge and capacity to use the arts of her sex; +capable of any wickedness to accomplish an end, yet trivial enough to +have no higher end in view than the reinvestiture of herself with social +recognition; cold as snow; implacable as the grave; remorseless; wicked; +but, beneath all this depravity, capable of self-pity, capable of +momentary regret, capable of a little human tenderness, aware of the +glory of the innocence she has lost, and thus not altogether beyond the +pale of compassion. And she is, in externals,—in everything visible and +audible,—the ideal of grace and melody.</p> + +<p>In the presence of an admirable work of art the observer wishes that it +were entirely worthy of being performed and that it were entirely clear +and sound as to its applicability—in a moral sense, or even in an +intellectual sense—to human life. Art does not go far when it stops +short at the revelation of the felicitous powers of the artist; and it +is not altogether right when it tends to beguile sympathy with an +unworthy object and perplex a spectator's perceptions as to good and +evil. Genevieve Ward's performance of Stephanie, brilliant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> though it +was, did not redeem the character from its bleak exile from human +sympathy. The actress managed, by a scheme of treatment exclusively her +own, to make Stephanie, for two or three moments, piteous and forlorn; +and her expression of that evanescent anguish—occurring in the appeal +to Sir Horace Welby, her friendly foe, in the strong scene of the second +act—was wonderfully subtle. That appeal, as Genevieve Ward made it, +began in artifice, became profoundly sincere, and then was stunned and +startled into a recoil of resentment by a harsh rebuff, whereupon it +subsided through hysterical levity into frigid and brittle sarcasm and +gay defiance. For a while, accordingly, the feelings of the observer +were deeply moved. Yet this did not make the character of Stephanie less +detestable. The blight remains upon it—and always must remain—that it +repels the interest of the heart. The added blight likewise rests upon +it (though this is of less consequence to a spectator), that it is +burdened with moral sophistry. Vicious conduct in a woman, according to +Stephanie's logic, is not more culpable or disastrous than vicious +conduct in a man: the woman, equally with the man, should have a social +license to sow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> the juvenile wild oats and effect the middle-aged +reformation; and it is only because there are gay young men who indulge +in profligacy that women sometimes become adventurers and moral +monsters. All this is launched forth in speeches of singular terseness, +eloquence, and vigour; but all this is specious and mischievous +perversion of the truth—however admirably in character from Stephanie's +lips. Every observer who has looked carefully upon the world is aware +that the consequences of wrongdoing by a woman are vastly more +pernicious than those of wrongdoing by a man; that society could not +exist in decency, if to its already inconvenient coterie of reformed +rakes it were to add a legion of reformed wantons; and that it is innate +wickedness and evil propensity that makes such women as Stephanie, and +not the mere existence of the wild young men who are willing to become +their comrades—and who generally end by being their dupes and victims. +It is natural, however, that this adventurer—who has kept a +gambling-hell and ruined many a man, soul and body, and who now wishes +to reinstate herself in a virtuous social position—should thus strive +to palliate her past proceedings. Self-justifica<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>tion is one of the +first laws of life. Even Iago, who never deceives himself, yet announces +one adequate motive for his fearful crimes. Even Bulwer's Margrave—that +prodigy of evil, that cardinal type of infernal, joyous, animal +depravity—can yet paint himself in the light of harmless loveliness and +innocent gayety.</p> + +<p><i>Forget Me Not</i> tells a thin story, but its story has been made to yield +excellent dramatic pictures, splendid moments of intellectual combat, +and affecting contrasts of character. The dialogue, particularly in the +second act, is as strong and as brilliant as polished steel. In that +combat of words Genevieve Ward's acting was delicious with trenchant +skill and fascinating variety. The easy, good-natured, bantering air +with which the strife began, the liquid purity of the tones, the +delicate glow of the arch satire, the icy glitter of the thought and +purpose beneath the words, the transition into pathos and back again +into gay indifference and deadly hostility, the sudden and terrible mood +of menace, when at length the crisis had passed and the evil genius had +won its temporary victory—all those were in perfect taste and +consummate harmony. Seeing that brilliant, supple, relentless, +formidable figure, and hearing that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> incisive, bell-like voice, the +spectator was repelled and attracted at the same instant, and thoroughly +bewildered with the sense of a power and beauty as hateful as they were +puissant. Not since Ristori acted Lucretia Borgia has the stage +exhibited such an image of imperial will, made radiant with beauty and +electric with flashes of passion. The leopard and the serpent are fatal, +terrible, and loathsome; yet they scarcely have a peer among nature's +supreme symbols of power and grace. Into the last scene of <i>Forget Me +Not</i>,—when at length Stephanie is crushed by physical fear, through +beholding, unseen by him, the man who would kill her as a malignant and +dangerous reptile,—Genevieve Ward introduced such illustrative +"business," not provided by the piece, as greatly enhanced the final +effect. The backward rush from the door, on seeing the Corsican avenger +on the staircase, and therewithal the incidental, involuntary cry of +terror, was the invention of the actress: and from that moment to the +final exit she was the incarnation of abject fear. The situation is one +of the strongest that dramatic ingenuity has invented: the actress +invested it with a colouring of pathetic and awful truth.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p> +<h2>XXII.</h2> + +<h3>EDWARD S. WILLARD IN THE MIDDLEMAN AND JUDAH.</h3> + + +<p>E.S. Willard accomplished his first appearance upon the American stage +(at Palmer's theatre, November 10, 1890), in the powerful play of <i>The +Middleman</i>, by Henry Arthur Jones. A representative audience welcomed +the modest and gentle stranger and the greeting that hailed him was that +of earnest respect. Willard had long been known and esteemed in New York +by the dramatic profession and by those persons who habitually observe +the changeful aspects of the contemporary stage on both sides of the +ocean; but to the American public his name had been comparatively +strange. The sentiment of kindness with which he was received deepened +into admiration as the night wore on, and before the last curtain fell +upon his performance of Cyrus Blenkarn he had gained an unequivocal and +auspicious victory. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> no case has the first appearance of a new actor +been accompanied with a more brilliant exemplification of simple worth; +and in no case has its conquest of the public enthusiasm been more +decisive. Not the least impressive feature of the night was the steadily +increasing surprise of the audience as the performance proceeded. It was +the actor's way to build slowly, and at the opening of the piece the +poor inventor's blind ignorance of the calamity that is impending is +chiefly trusted to create essential sympathy. Through those moments of +approaching sorrow the sweet unconsciousness of the loving father was +expressed by Willard with touching truth. In this he astonished even as +much as he pleased his auditors; for they were not expecting it.</p> + +<p>One of the most exquisite enjoyments provided by the stage is the advent +of a new actor who is not only new but good. It is the pleasure of +discovery. It is the pleasure of contact with a rich mind hitherto +unexplored. The personal appearance, the power of the eye, the variety +of the facial expression, the tones of the voice, the carriage of the +person, the salient attributes of the individual character, the altitude +of the intellectual development, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> quality of the spirit, the extent +and the nature of those artistic faculties and resources that constitute +the professional equipment,—all those things become the subject first +of interested inquiry and next of pleased recognition. Willard is +neither of the stately, the weird, the mysterious, nor the ferocious +order of actor. There is nothing in him of either Werner, Manfred, or +Sir Giles Overreach. He belongs not to either the tradition of John +Kemble or of Edmund Kean. His personality, nevertheless, is of a +distinctive and interesting kind. He has the self-poise and the exalted +calm of immense reserve power and of tender and tremulous sensibility +perfectly controlled. His acting is conspicuously marked by two of the +loveliest attributes of art—simplicity and sincerity. He conceals +neither the face nor the heart. His figure is fine and his demeanour is +that of vigorous mental authority informed by moral purity and by the +self-respect of a manly spirit. Goodness, although a quality seldom +taken into the critical estimate, nevertheless has its part in spiritual +constitution and in consequent effect. It was, for instance, an element +of artistic potentiality in the late John McCullough. It operated +spontaneously; and just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> so it does in the acting of Willard, who, first +of all, gives the satisfying impression of being genuine. A direct and +thorough method of expression naturally accompanies that order of mind +and that quality of temperament. Every movement that Willard makes upon +the stage is clear, free, open, firm, and of an obvious significance. +Every tone of his rich and resonant voice is distinctly intended and is +distinctly heard. There are no "flaws and starts." He has formed a +precise ideal. He knows exactly how to embody and to utter it, and he +makes the manifestation of it sharp, defined, positive, and cogent. His +meaning cannot be missed. He has an unerring sense of proportion and +symmetry. The character that he represents is shown, indeed, all at +once, as a unique identity; but it is not all at once developed, the +manifestation of it being made gradually to proceed under the stress of +experience and of emotion. He rises with the occasion. His feelings are +deep, and he is possessed of extraordinary power for the utterance of +them—not simply vocal power, although that, in his case, is +exceptional, but the rare faculty of becoming convulsed, inspired, +transfigured, by passion, and of being swept along by it, and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> +sweeping along his hearers. His manner covers, without concealing, great +intensity. This is such a combination of traits as must have existed—if +the old records are read aright—in that fine and famous actor, John +Henderson, and which certainly existed in the late Benjamin Webster. It +has, however, always been rare upon the stage, and, like all rare +jewels, it is precious. The actor who, from an habitual mood of sweet +gravity and patient gentleness, can rise to the height of delirious +passion, and there sustain himself at a poise of tempestuous +concentration which is the fulfilment of nature, and never once seem +either ludicrous or extravagant, is an actor of splendid power and +extraordinary self-discipline. Such an actor is Willard. The blue eyes, +the slightly olive complexion, the compact person, the picturesque +appearance, the melodious voice, the flexibility of natural action, and +the gradual and easy ascent from the calm level of domestic peace to the +stormy summit of passionate ecstasy recall personal peculiarities and +artistic methods long passed away. The best days of Edwin L. Davenport +and the younger James Wallack are brought to mind by them.</p> + +<p>In the drama of <i>The Middleman</i> Wil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>lard had to impersonate an inventor, +of the absorbed, enthusiastic, self-regardless, fanatical kind. Cyrus +Blenkarn is a potter. His genius and his toil have enriched two persons +named Chandler, father and son, who own and conduct a porcelain factory +in an English town of the present day. Blenkarn has two daughters, and +one of them is taken from him by the younger Chandler. The circumstances +of that deprivation point at disgrace, and the inventor conceives +himself to have suffered an odious ignominy and irreparable wrong. Young +Chandler has departed and so has Mary Blenkarn, and they are eventually +to return as husband and wife; but Cyrus Blenkarn has been aroused from +his reveries over the crucible and furnace,—wherein he is striving to +discover a lost secret in the potter's art that will make him both rich +and famous,—and he utters a prayer for vengeance upon these Chandlers, +and he parts from them. A time of destitution and of pitiful struggle +with dire necessity, sleepless grief, and the maddening impulse of +vengeance now comes upon him, so that he is wasted almost to death. He +will not, however, abandon his quest for the secret of his art. He may +die of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> hunger and wretchedness; he will not yield. At the last moment +of his trial and his misery—alone—at night—in the alternate lurid +blaze and murky gloom of his firing-house—success is conquered: the +secret is found. This climax, to which the preliminaries gradually and +artfully lead, affords a great opportunity to an actor; and Willard +greatly filled it. The old inventor has been bowed down almost to +despair. Grief and destitution, the sight of his remaining daughter's +poverty, and the conflict of many feelings have made him a wreck. But +his will remains firm. It is not, however, until his last hope has been +abandoned that his success suddenly comes—and the result of this is a +delirium. That situation, one of the best in modern drama, has been +treated by the author in such a manner as to sustain for a long time the +feeling of suspense and to put an enormous strain upon the emotion and +the resources of an actor. Willard's presentment of the gaunt, +attenuated figure of Cyrus Blenkarn—hollow-eyed, half-frantic, +hysterical with grief and joy—was the complete incarnation of a +dramatic frensy; and this, being sympathetic, and moving to goodness and +not to evil, captured the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> heart. It was a magnificent exhibition, not +alone of the physical force that sometimes is so essential in acting but +of that fervour of the soul without which acting is a mockery.</p> + +<p>The skill with which Willard reserved his power, so that the +impersonation might gradually increase in strength, was one of the best +merits of his art. Blenkarn's prayer might readily be converted into the +climax of the piece, and it might readily be spoken in such a way that +no effect would be left for the culmination in the furnace-room. Those +errors were avoided, and during three out of the four acts the movement +of the piece was fluent, continuous, and cumulative. In this respect +both the drama and the performance were instructive. Henry Arthur Jones +has diversified his serious scenes with passages of sportive humour and +he has freighted the piece with conventional didacticism as to the +well-worn question of capital and labour. The humour is good: the +political economy need not detain attention. The value of the play does +not reside in its teaching but in its dramatic presentation of strong +character, individual experience, and significant story. The effect +produced by <i>The Middleman</i> is that of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> moral elevation. Its auditor is +touched and ennobled by a spectacle of stern trial, pitiable suffering, +and stoical endurance. In the purpose that presides over human +destiny—if one may accept the testimony equally of history and of +fiction—it appears to be necessary first to create strong characters +and then to break them; and the manner in which they are broken usually +involves the elements alike of dramatic effect and of pathos. That +singular fact in mortal experience may have been noticed by this author. +His drama is a forcible exposition of it. <i>The Middleman</i> was set upon +Palmer's stage in such a way as to strengthen the dramatic illusion by +the fidelity of scenery. The firing-house, with its furnaces in +operation, was a copy of what may be seen at Worcester. The picture of +English life was excellent.</p> + +<p>When Willard played the part of Judah Llewellyn for the first time in +America (December 29, 1890), he gained from a sympathetic and judicious +audience a verdict of emphatic admiration. Judah Llewellyn is a good +part in one of the most striking plays of the period—a play that tells +an interesting and significant story by expressive, felicitous, and +incessant action;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> affects the feelings by situations that are vital +with dramatic power; inspires useful thought upon a theme of +psychological importance; cheers the mind with a fresh breeze of +satirical humour; and delights the instinct of taste by its crisp and +pungent style. Alike by his choice of a comparatively original subject +and his deft method in the treatment of it Henry Arthur Jones has shown +a fine dramatic instinct; and equally in the evolution of character and +the expression of experience and emotion he has wrought with feeling and +vigour. Most of the plays that are written, in any given period, pass +away with the period to which they appertain. <i>Judah</i> is one of the +exceptions; for its brilliantly treated theme is one of perennial +interest, and there seems reason to believe, of a work so vital, that +long after the present generation has vanished it still will keep its +place in the theatre, and sometimes be acted, not as a quaint relic but +as a living lesson.</p> + +<p>That theme is the psychic force in human organism. The author does not +obtrude it; does not play the pedant with it; does not lecture upon it; +and above all does not bore with it. He only uses it; and he has been so +true to his province as a drama<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>tist and not an advocate that he never +once assumes to decide upon any question of doctrine that may be +involved in the assertion of it. His heroine is a young woman who thinks +herself to be possessed of a certain inherent restorative power of +curing the sick. This power is of psychic origin and it operates through +the medium of personal influence. This girl, Vashti Dethick, has exerted +her power with some success. Other persons, having felt its good effect, +have admitted its existence. The father of Vashti, an enterprising +scamp, has thereupon compelled the girl to trade upon her peculiar +faculty; little by little to assume miraculous powers; and finally to +pretend that her celestial talent is refreshed and strengthened by +abstinence from food, and that her cures are wrought only after she has +fasted for many days. He has thus converted her into an impostor; yet, +as her heart is pure and her moral principle naturally sound, she is ill +at ease in this false position, and her mental distress has suddenly +become aggravated, almost to the pitch of desperation, by the arrival of +love. She has lost her heart to a young clergyman, Judah Llewellyn, the +purity of whose spirit and the beauty of whose life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> are a bitter and +burning rebuke to her enforced deceitfulness of conduct. Here is a woman +innocently guilty, suddenly aroused by love, made sensitive and noble +(as that passion commonly makes those persons who really feel it), and +projected into a condition of aggrieved excitement. In this posture of +romantic and pathetic circumstances the crisis of two lives is suddenly +precipitated in action.</p> + +<p>Judah Llewellyn also is possessed of spiritual sensibility and psychic +force. In boyhood a shepherd, he has dwelt among the mountains of his +native Wales, and his imagination has heard the voices that are in rocks +and trees, in the silence of lonely places, in the desolation of the +bleak hills, and in the cold light of distant stars. He is now a +preacher, infatuated with his mission, inspired in his eloquence, +invincible in his tremendous sincerity. He sees Vashti and he loves her. +It is the first thrill of mortal passion that ever has mingled with his +devotion to his Master's work. The attraction between these creatures is +human; and yet it is more of heaven than of earth. It is a tie of +spiritual kindred that binds them. They are beings of a different order +from the common order—and, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> happens in such cases, they will be +tried by exceptional troubles and passed through a fire of mortal +anguish. For what reason experience should take the direction of misery +with fine natures in human life no philosopher has yet been able to +ascertain; but that it does take that direction all competent +observation proves. To Vashti and Judah the time speedily comes when +their love is acknowledged, upon both sides—the preacher speaking +plainly; the girl, conscious of turpitude, shrinking from a spoken +avowal which yet her whole personality proclaims. Yielding to her +father's malign will she has consented to make one more manifestation of +curative power, to go through once more,—and for the last time,—the +mockery of a pretended fast. The scene is Lord Asgarby's house; the +patient is Lord Asgarby's daughter—an only child, cursed with +constitutional debility, the foredoomed victim of premature decline. +This frail creature has heard of Vashti and believes in her, and desires +and obtains her society. To Professor Dethick this is, in every sense, a +golden opportunity, and he insists that the starvation test shall be +thoroughly made. Lord Asgarby, willing to do anything for his idolised +daughter, assents<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> to the plan, and his scientific friend, cynical +Professor Jopp, agrees, with the assistance of his erudite daughter, to +supervise the experiment. Vashti will fast for several days, and the +heir of Asgarby will then be healed by her purified and exalted +influence.</p> + +<p>The principal scene of the play shows the exterior of an ancient, unused +tower of Asgarby House, in which Vashti is detained during the fast. The +girl is supposed to be starving. Her scampish father will endeavour to +relieve her. Miss Jopp is vigilant to prevent fraud. The patient is +confident. Judah, wishful to be near to the object of his adoration, has +climbed the outer wall and is watching, beneath the window, unseen, in +the warder's seat. The time is summer, the hour midnight, and the +irrevocable vow of love has been spoken. At that supreme instant, and +under conditions so natural that the picture seems one of actual life, +the sin of Vashti is revealed and the man who had adored her as an angel +knows her for a cheat. With a difference of circumstances that +situation—in the fibre of it—is not new. Many a lover, male and +female, has learned that every idol has its flaw. But the situation is +new in its dramatic structure. For Judah the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> discovery is a terrible +one, and the resultant agony is convulsive and lamentable. He takes, +however, the only course he could be expected to take: he must vindicate +the integrity of the woman whom he loves, and he commits the crime of +perjury in order to shield her reputation from disgrace.</p> + +<p>What will a man do for the woman whom he loves? The attributes of +individual character are always to be considered as forces likely to +modify passion and to affect conduct. But in general the answer to that +question may be given in three words—anything and everything! The +history of nations, as of individuals, is never rightly read until it is +read in the light of knowledge of the influence that has been exerted +over them by women. Cleopatra, in ancient Egypt, changed the history of +Rome by the ruin of Marc Antony. Another heroine recently toppled +Ireland down the fire-escape into the back-yard. So goes the world. In +Judah, however, the crime that is done for love is pursued to its +consequence of ever-accumulative suffering, until at length, when it has +been expiated by remorse and repentance, it is rectified by confession +and obliterated by pardon. No play ever taught a lesson of truth with +more cogent dramatic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> force. The cynical, humorous scenes are +delightful.</p> + +<p>Willard's representation of Cyrus Blenkarn stamped him as one of the +best actors of the age. His representation of Judah Llewellyn deepened +that impression and reinforced it with a conviction of marked +versatility. In his utterance of passion Willard showed that he has +advanced far beyond the Romeo stage. The love that he expressed was that +of a man—intellectual, spiritual, noble, a moral being and one +essentially true. Man's love, when it is real, adores its object; +hallows it; invests it with celestial attributes; and beholds it as a +part of heaven. That quality of reverence was distinctly conveyed by the +actor, and therefore to observers who conceive passion to be delirious +abandonment (of which any animal is capable), his ardour may have seemed +dry and cold. It was nevertheless true. He made the tempestuous torrent +of Judah's avowal the more overwhelming by his preliminary +self-repression and his thoughtful gentleness of reserve; for thus the +hunger of desire was beautiful with devotion and tenderness; and while +the actor's feelings seemed borne away upon a whirling tide of +irresistible impulse his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> exquisite art kept a perfect control of face, +voice, person, demeanour, and delivery, and not once permitted a lapse +into extravagance. The character thus embodied will long be remembered +as an image of dignity, sweetness, moral enthusiasm, passionate fervour, +and intellectual power; but, also, viewed as an effort in the art of +acting, it will be remembered as a type of consummate grace in the +embodiment of a beautiful ideal clearly conceived. The effect of +spiritual suffering, as conveyed in the pallid countenance and ravaged +figure, in the last act, was that of noble pathos. The delivery of all +the speeches of the broken, humiliated, haunted minister was deeply +touching, not alone in music of voice but in denotement of knowledge of +human nature and human suffering and endurance. The actor who can play +such a part in such a manner is not an experimental artist. Rather let +him be called—in the expressive words of one of his country's poets—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sacred historian of the heart<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And moral nature's lord."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p> +<h2>XXIII.</h2> + +<h3>SALVINI AS KING SAUL AND KING LEAR.</h3> + + +<p>Salvini was grander and finer in King Saul than in any other embodiment +that he presented. He seized the idea wholly, and he executed it with +affluent power. He brought to the part every attribute necessary to its +grandeur of form and its afflicting sympathy of spirit. His towering +physique presented, with impressive accuracy, the Hebrew monarch, chosen +of God, who was "lifted a head and shoulders above the people." His +tremulous sensibility, his knowledge of suffering, his skill in +depicting it, his great resources of voice, his vigour and fineness of +action, his exceptional commingling of largeness and gentleness—all +these attributes combined in that performance, to give magnificent +reality to one of the most sublime conceptions in literature. By his +personation of Saul Salvini added a new and an immortal figure to the +stage pantheon of kings and heroes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p> + +<p>Alfieri's tragedy of <i>Saul</i> was written in 1782-83, when the haughty, +impetuous, and passionate poet was thirty-four years old, and at the +suggestion of the Countess of Albany, whom he loved. He had suffered a +bereavement at the time, and he was in deep grief. The Countess tried to +console him by reading the Bible, and when they came upon the narrative +of Saul the idea of the tragedy was struck out between them. The work +was written with vigorous impulse and the author has left, in his +autobiography, the remark that none of his tragedies cost him so little +labour. <i>Saul</i> is in five acts and it contains 1567 lines—of that +Italian <i>versi sciolti</i> which inadequately corresponds to the blank +verse of the English language. The scene is laid in the camp of Saul's +army. Six persons are introduced, namely, Saul, Jonathan, David, Michel, +Abner, and Achimelech. The time supposed to be occupied by the +action—or rather, by the suffering—of the piece is a single day, the +last in the king's life. Act first is devoted to explanation, conveyed +in warnings to David, by Jonathan, his friend, and Michel, his wife. Act +second presents the distracted monarch, who knows that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> God has forsaken +him and that death is at hand. In a speech of terrible intensity he +relates to Abner the story of the apparition of Samuel and the doom that +the ghost has spoken. His children humour and soothe the broken old man, +and finally succeed in softening his mind toward David—whom he at once +loves, dreads, and hates, as the appointed instrument of his destruction +and the successor to his crown. Act third shows David playing upon the +harp before Saul, and chanting Saul's deeds in the service and defence +of Israel—so that he calms the agonised delirium of the haunted king +and wins his blessing; but at last a boastful word makes discord in the +music's charm, and Saul is suddenly roused into a ghastly fury. Acts +fourth and fifth deal with the wild caprices and maddening agonies of +the frenzied father; the ever-varying phenomena of his mental disease; +the onslaught of the Philistines; the killing of his sons; the frequent +recurrence, before his mind's eye, of the shade of the dead prophet; and +finally his suicidal death. It is, in form, a classical tragedy, +massive, grand, and majestically simple; and it blazes from end to end +with the fire of a sublime imagination.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p> + +<p>Ardent lovers of Italian literature are fond of ranking <i>Saul</i> with +<i>Lear</i>. The claim is natural but it is not valid. In <i>Lear</i>—not to +speak of its profound revelations of universal human nature and its vast +philosophy of human life—there is a tremendous scope of action, through +which mental condition and experience are dramatically revealed; and +there is the deepest deep of pathos, because the highest height of +afflicted goodness. In <i>Saul</i> there is simply—upon a limited canvas, +without adjuncts, without the suggestion of resources, without the +relief of even mournful humour, and with a narrative rather than a +dramatic background—the portraiture of a condition; and, because the +man displayed is neither so noble nor so human, the pathos surcharging +the work is neither so harrowing nor so tender. Yet the two works are +akin in majesty of ideal, in the terrible topic of mental disease that +shatters a king, and in the atmosphere of desolation that trails after +them like a funeral pall; and it is not a wonder that Alfieri's Saul +should be deemed the greatest tragedy ever originated in the Italian +language. It attains a superb height, for it keeps an equal pace with +the severe simplicity of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> Bible narrative on which it is founded. It +depicts the condition of an imaginative mind, a stately and robust +character, an arrogant, fiery spirit, a kind heart, and a royal and +regally poised nature, that have first been undermined by sin and the +consciousness of sin, and then crazed by contact with the spirit world +and by a nameless dread of the impending anger of an offended God. It +would be difficult to conceive of a more distracting and piteous state. +Awe and terror surround that august sufferer, and make him both holy and +dreadful. In his person and his condition, as those are visible to the +imaginative mind, he combined elements that irresistibly impress and +thrill. He is of vast physical stature, that time has not bent, and of +great beauty of face, that griefs have ravaged but not destroyed. He is +a valiant and sanguinary warrior, and danger seems to radiate from his +presence. He is a magnanimous king and a loving father, and he softens +by generosity and wins by gentleness. He is a maniac, haunted by +spectres and scourged with a whip of scorpions, and his red-eyed fury +makes all space a hell and shatters silence with the shrieks of the +damned. He is a human soul, burdened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> with the frightful consciousness +of Divine wrath and poised in torment on the precipice that overhangs +the dark, storm-beaten ocean of eternity. His human weakness is frighted +by ghastly visions and indefinite horrors, against which his vain +struggle only makes his forlorn feebleness more piteous and drear. The +gleams of calm that fall upon his tortured heart only light up an abyss +of misery—a vault of darkness peopled by demons. He is already cut off +from among the living, by the doom of inevitable fate, and while we pity +him we fear him. His coming seems attended with monstrous shapes; he +diffuses dissonance; his voice is a cry of anguish or a wail of +desolation; his existence is a tempest; there can be no relief for him +save death, and the death that ends him comes like the blessing of tears +to the scorched eyelids of consuming misery. That is the Saul of the +Bible and of Alfieri's tragedy; and that is the Saul whom Salvini +embodied. It was a colossal monument of human suffering that the actor +presented, and no one could look upon it without being awed and +chastened.</p> + +<p>Salvini's embodiment of King Lear was a remarkable manifestation of +physical re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>sources and of professional skill. The lofty stature, the +ample and resonant voice, the copious animal excitement, the fluent +elocution and the vigorous, picturesque, and often melodramatic +movements, gestures, and poses of Salvini united to animate and +embellish a personality such as would naturally absorb attention and +diffuse excitement. Every artist, however, moves within certain specific +and positive limitations—spiritual, mental, and physical. No actor has +proved equal to every kind of character. Salvini, when he acted Hamlet, +was unspiritual—giving no effect to the haunted tone of that part or to +its weird surroundings; and when he acted Macbeth he was unimaginative, +obscure, common, and therefore inadequate. The only Shakespearean +character that he excelled in is Othello, and even in that his ideal +displayed neither the magnanimity nor the tenderness that are in +Shakespeare's conception. The chief attributes of the Moor that he +interpreted were physical; the loftiest heights that he reached were +terror and distracted grief; but he worked with a pictorial method and a +magnetic vigour that enthralled the feelings even when they did not +command the judgment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p> + +<p>His performance of King Lear gave new evidence of his limitations. +During the first two acts he made the king a merely restless, choleric, +disagreeable old man, deficient in dignity, destitute of grandeur, and +especially destitute of inherent personal fascination—of the +suggestiveness of ever having been a great man. Lear is a ruin—but he +has been a Titan; the delight of all hearts no less than the monarch of +all minds. The actor who does not invest him with that inherent, +overwhelming personal fascination does not attain to his altitude. The +cruel afflictions that occur in the tragedy do not of themselves +signify: the pity is only that they should occur to him. That is the +spring of all the pathos. In Salvini's Lear there were beautiful moments +and magnificent bits of action. "I gave you all" and "I'm cold myself" +were exquisite points. He missed altogether, however, the more subtle +significance of the reminiscent reference to Cordelia—as in "No more of +that, I have noted it well"—and he gave, at the beginning, no +intimation of impending madness. In fact he introduced no element of +lunacy till he reached the lines about "red-hot spits" in Edgar's first +mad scene.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p> + +<p>Much of Salvini's mechanism in Lear was crude. He put the king behind a +table, in the first scene—which had the effect of preparation for a +lecture; and it pleased him to speak the storm speech away back at the +upper entrance, with his body almost wholly concealed behind painted +crags. With all its moments of power and of tenderness the embodiment +was neither royal, lovable, nor great. It might be a good Italian Lear: +it was not the Lear of Shakespeare. Salvini was particularly out of the +character in the curse scene and in the frantic parting from the two +daughters, because there the quality of the man, behind the action, +seemed especially common. The action, though, was theatrical and had its +due effect.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span></p> +<h2>XXIV.</h2> + +<h3>HENRY IRVING AS EUGENE ARAM.</h3> + + +<p>Henry Irving's impersonation of Eugene Aram—given in a vein that is +distinctly unique—was one of strange and melancholy grace and also of +weird poetical and pathetic power.</p> + +<p>More than fifty years ago, just after Bulwer's novel on the subject of +Eugene Aram was published, that character first came upon the stage, and +its first introduction to the American theatre occurred at the Bowery, +where it was represented by John R. Scott. Aram languished, however, as +a dramatic person, and soon disappeared. He did not thrive in England, +neither, till, in 1873, Henry Irving, who had achieved great success in +<i>The Bells</i>, prompted W.G. Wills to effect his resuscitation in a new +play, and acted him in a new manner. The part then found an actor who +could play it,—investing psychological subtlety with tender human +feeling and romantic grace, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> making an imaginary experience of +suffering vital and heartrending in its awful reality. The performance +ranks with the best that Henry Irving has given—with <i>Mathias</i>, +<i>Lesurques</i>, <i>Dubosc</i>, <i>Louis XI.</i>, and <i>Hamlet</i>; those studies of the +night-side of human nature in which his imagination and intellect and +his sombre feeling have been revealed and best exemplified.</p> + +<p>Eugene Aram was born at Ramsgill, in Nidderdale, Yorkshire, in 1704. His +father, Peter Aram, was a man of good family but becoming reduced in +circumstances he took service as a gardener on the estate of Sir Edward +Blackett, of Newby Hall. In 1710 Peter Aram and his family were living +at Bondgate, near Ripon, and there Eugene went to school and learned to +read the New Testament. At a considerably later period he was +instructed, during one month, by the Rev. Mr. Alcock, of Burndall. This +was the extent of the tuition that he ever received from others. For the +rest he was self-taught. He had a natural passion for knowledge and he +displayed wonderful industry in its acquisition. When sixteen years old +he knew something of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and later he made himself +acquainted with Chaldaic and Arabic.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> His occupation, up to this time, +was that of assistant to his father, the gardener; but about 1720 he was +employed in London as a clerk to a merchant, Mr. Christopher Blackett, a +relative to his father's patron, Sir Edward. He did not remain there +long. A serious illness prostrated him, and on recovering he returned to +Nidderdale, with which romantic region his fate was to be forever +associated. He now became a tutor, and not long after he was employed as +such at a manor-house, near Ramsgill, called Gowthwaite Hall, a +residence built early in the seventeenth century by Sir John Yorke, and +long inhabited by his descendants. While living there he met and courted +Anna Spance, the daughter of a farmer, at the lonely village of +Lofthouse, and in 1731 he married her. The Middlesmoor registry contains +the record of this marriage, and of the baptism and death of their first +child. In 1734 Eugene Aram removed to Knaresborough, where he kept a +school. He had, all this while, sedulously pursued his studies, and he +now was a scholar of extraordinary acquirements, not only in the +languages but in botany, heraldry, and many other branches of learning. +His life seemed fair and his future<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> bright: but a change was at hand. +He had not resided long at Knaresborough before he became acquainted +with three persons most unlike himself in every way. These men were +Henry Terry, Richard Houseman, and Daniel Clarke. Houseman was a +flax-dresser. Clarke was a travelling jeweller. All of them were +intemperate; and it is supposed that the beginning of Eugene Aram's +downfall was the appetite for drink. The confederacy that he formed with +these men is not easily explicable, and probably it never has been +rightly explained. The accepted statement is that it was a confederacy +for fraud and theft. Clarke was reported to be the heir presumptive to a +large fortune. He purchased goods, was punctual in his payments, and +established his credit. He was supposed to be making purchases for a +merchant in London. He dealt largely in gold and silver plate and in +watches, and soon he made a liberal use of his credit to accumulate +valuable objects. In 1744 he disappeared, and he never was seen or heard +of again. His frauds became known, and the houses of Aram and Houseman, +suspected as his associates, were searched, but nothing was found to +implicate either of them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span></p> + +<p>Soon after this event Aram left Knaresborough—deserting his wife—and +proceeded to London, where for two years he had employment as a teacher +of Latin. He was subsequently an usher at the boarding school of the +Rev. Anthony Hinton, at Hayes, in Middlesex, and there it was observed +that he displayed an extraordinary and scrupulous tenderness and +solicitude as to the life and safety of even worms and insects—which he +would remove from the garden walks and put into places of security. At a +later period he found employment as a transcriber of acts of Parliament, +for registration in chancery. Still later he became an usher at the Free +School of Lynn, in Norfolk, where, among other labours, he undertook to +make a comparative lexicon, and with this purpose collated over 3000 +words in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Celtic. He had ample +opportunity to leave England but he never did so. At length, in 1759, a +labourer who was digging for limestone, at a place known as St. Robert's +Cave, Thistle Hill, near Knaresborough, came upon a human skeleton, bent +double and buried in the earth. Suspicion was aroused. These bones, it +was surmised, might be those of Daniel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> Clarke. His mysterious +disappearance and his associates were remembered. The authorities sent +forth and arrested Terry, Houseman, and Eugene Aram, and those persons +were brought to their trial at York. A bold front would have saved them, +for the evidence against them was weak. Aram stood firm, but Houseman +quailed, and presently he turned "state's evidence" and denounced Aram +as the murderer of Clarke. The accused scholar spoke in his own defence, +and with astonishing skill, but he failed to defeat the direct and +decisive evidence of his accomplice. Houseman declared that on the day +of the murder Clarke, Aram, and himself were in company, and were +occupied in disposing of the property which they had obtained; that Aram +proposed to walk in the fields, and that they proceeded, thereupon, at +nightfall, to the vicinity of St. Robert's Cave. Clarke and Aram, he +said, went over the hedge and advanced toward the cave, and Aram struck +Clarke several times upon the breast and head, and so killed him. It was +a dark night, and in the middle of winter, but the moon was shining +through drifting clouds, and Houseman said he could see the movement of +Aram's hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> but not the weapon that it held. He was about twelve yards +from the spot of the murder. He testified that the body of Clarke was +buried in the cave. The presiding justice charged against the prisoner +and Eugene Aram was convicted and condemned. He subsequently, it is +said, confessed the crime, alleging to the clergyman by whom he was +attended that his wife had been led into an intrigue by Clarke, and that +this was the cause of the murder. Here, doubtless, is the indication of +the true nature of this tragedy. Aram, prior to his execution, was +confined in York Castle, where he wrote a poem of considerable length +and some merit, and also several shorter pieces of verse. On the morning +of his execution it was found that he had opened a vein in his arm, with +the intent to bleed to death, but the wound was staunched, and he was +taken to Knaresborough and there hanged, and afterward his body was hung +in chains in Knaresborough Forest. His death occurred on August 13, +1759, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. On the night before his +execution he wrote a rhythmical apostrophe to death:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Come, pleasing rest! eternal slumber fall!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Seal mine, that once must seal the eyes of all!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Calm and composed my soul her journey takes;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No guilt that troubles and no heart that aches."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Such is the story of Eugene Aram—a story that has furnished the basis +of various fictions, notably of Bulwer's famous novel, and which +inspired one of the best of the beautiful poems of Thomas Hood. Wills +gathered hints from it, here and there, in the making of his play; but +he boldly departed from its more hideous and repulsive incidents and +from the theory of the main character that might perhaps be justified by +its drift. In the construction of the piece Henry Irving made many +material suggestions. The treatment of the character of Aram was devised +by him, and the management of the close of the second act denotes his +felicity of invention.</p> + +<p>The play opens in the rose-garden of a rural rectory in the sweet, green +valley of the shining Nidd. The time is twilight; the season summer; and +here, in a haven of peace and love, the repentant murderer has found a +refuge. Many years have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> passed since the commission of his crime, and +all those years he has lived a good life, devoted to study, instruction, +and works of benevolence. He has been a teacher of the young, a helper +of the poor, and he has gained respect, affection, and honourable +repute. He is safe in the security of silence and in the calm self-poise +of his adamantine will. His awful secret sleeps in his bosom and is at +rest forever. He has suffered much and he still suffers; yet, lulled +into a false security by the uneventful lapse of years and by that +drifting, desolate, apathetic recklessness which is sequent on the +subsiding storm of passionate sorrow, he has allowed himself to accept a +woman's love and to love her in return, and half to believe that his +long misery has expiated his sin and that even for him there may be a +little happiness yet possible on earth. Eugene Aram, the village +school-master, and Ruth Meadows, the vicar's daughter, are betrothed +lovers; and now, on the eve of their wedding morning, they stand +together among the roses, while the sun is going down and the sweet +summer wind plays softly in the leaves, and from the little gray church +close by a solemn strain of music—the vesper hymn—floats<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> out upon the +stillness of the darkening day. The woman is all happiness, confidence, +and hope; the man, seared and blighted by conscious sin and subdued by +long years of patient submission to the sense of his own unworthiness, +is all gentleness, solicitude, reverence, and sorrow. At this supreme +moment, when now it seems that everything is surely well, the one man in +the world who knows Eugene Aram's secret has become, by seeming chance, +a guest in the vicarage; and even while Ruth places her hand upon her +lover's heart and softly whispers, "If guilt were there, it still should +be my pillow," the shadow of the gathering night that darkens around +them is deepened by the blacker shadow of impending doom. The first act +of the play is simply a picture. It involves no action. It only +introduces the several persons who are implicated in the experience to +be displayed, denotes their relationship to one another, and reveals a +condition of feeling and circumstance which is alike romantic, pathetic, +and perilous, and which is soon to be shattered by the disclosure of a +fatal secret. The act is a preparation for a catastrophe.</p> + +<p>In the second act the opposed charac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>ters clash: the movement begins, +and the catastrophe is precipitated. The story opens at nightfall, +proceeds the same evening, and ends at the dawn of the ensuing day. The +scene of act second is a room in the vicarage. Aram and Parson Meadows +are playing chess, and Ruth is hovering about them and roguishly +impeding their play. The purpose accomplished here is the exhibition of +domestic comfort and content, and this is further emphasised by Ruth's +recital of a written tribute that Aram's pupils have sent to him, on the +eve of his marriage. Wounded by this praise the conscience-stricken +wretch breaks off abruptly from his pastime and rushes from the room—an +act of desperate grief which is attributed to his modesty. The parson +soon follows, and Ruth is left alone. Houseman, their casual guest, +having accepted the vicar's hospitable offer of a shelter for the night, +has now a talk with Ruth, and he is startled to hear the name of Eugene +Aram, and thus to know that he has found the man whose fatal secret he +possesses, and upon whose assumed dread of exposure his cupidity now +purposes to feed. In a coarsely jocular way this brutish creature +provokes the indignant resentment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> of Ruth, by insinuations as to her +betrothed lover's past life; and when, a little later, Ruth and Aram +again meet, she wooingly begs him to tell her of any secret trouble that +may be weighing upon his mind. At this moment Houseman comes upon them, +and utters Aram's name. From that point to the end of the act there is a +sustained and sinewy exposition, strong in spirit and thrilling in +suspense,—of keen intellect and resolute will standing at bay and +making their last battle for life, against the overwhelming odds of +heaven's appointed doom. Aram defies Houseman and is denounced by him; +but the ready adroitness and iron composure of the suffering wretch +still give him supremacy over his foe—till, suddenly, the discovery is +announced of the bones of Daniel Clarke in St. Robert's Cave, and the +vicar commands Aram and Houseman to join him in their inspection. Here +the murderer suffers a collapse. There has been a greater strain than +even he can bear; and, left alone upon the scene, he stands petrified +with horror, seeming, in an ecstasy of nameless fear, to look upon the +spectre of his victim. Henry Irving's management of the apparition +effect was such as is possible only to a man of genius, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> such as +words may record but never can describe.</p> + +<p>The third act passes in the churchyard. Aram has fled from the sight of +the skeleton, and has fallen among the graves. It is almost morning. The +ghastly place is silent and dark. The spirit of the murderer is broken, +and his enfeebled body, long since undermined by the grief of remorse +and now chilled by the night dews, is in the throes of death. The +incidents of the closing scene are simple, but they are heart-breaking +in their pathos and awful in their desolation. The fugitive Houseman +finds Aram here, and spurns him as a whimpering lunatic. Then, in this +midnight hour and this appalling place, alone in the presence of God, +the murderer lifts his hands toward heaven, confesses his crime, and +falls at the foot of the cross. Here Ruth finds him, and to her, with +dying lips, he tells the story of the murder and of all that he has +since endured. And just as his voice falters into silence and his heart +ceases to beat, the diamond light of morning gleams in the eastern sky +and the glad music of an anthem floats softly from the neighbouring +church. Upon that beautifully significant picture the final curtain +fell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span></p> + +<p>Wills's literary framework for the display of character and experience +is scarcely to be considered a perfect play. It begins by assuming on +the part of its auditor a knowledge of the mystery upon which it is +based. Such a knowledge the auditor ought certainly to have, but in +presence of an exact drama he derives it from what he sees and not from +remembrance of what he has read. The piece is, perhaps, somewhat +irrational in making Aram a resident, under his own name, of the actual +neighbourhood of his crime. It lowers the assumed nobility of his +character, furthermore, by making this remorseful and constantly +apprehensive murderer willing to yoke a sweet, innocent, and idolised +woman to misery and shame by making her his wife. And it mars its most +pathetic scene—the awful scene of the midnight confession in the +churchyard—by making Eugene Aram declare, to the woman of his love, the +one human being who comforts and sustains him on the brink of eternity, +that he has loved another woman for whose sake he did the murder. Since +the whole story was to be treated in a fanciful manner, a still wider +license in the play of fancy would, perhaps, have had a more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> entirely +gracious and satisfying effect. The language is partly blank verse and +partly prose; and, while its tissue is rightly and skilfully diversified +by judicious allowance for the effect of each character upon the garment +of individual diction, and while its strain, here and there, rises to +eloquence of feeling and beauty of imagery, there is a certain lack of +firmness in its verbal fibre. The confession speech that has to be +spoken by Aram comprises upward of ninety lines—and that is a severe +and perilous strain upon an actor's power of holding the public +interest. The beauties of the play, however, are many and strong. Its +crowning excellence is that it gives dramatic permanence to a strangely +interesting character.</p> + +<p>The knowledge of human nature that Henry Irving revealed in this part +and the manner in which he revealed it were nothing less than wonderful. +The moment he walked upon the scene you saw the blighted figure of a man +who has endured, and is enduring, spiritual torment. The whole +personality was suffused with a mournful strangeness. The man was +isolated and alone. It was a purely ideal view of the character that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> +the actor denoted; for he made Eugene Aram a noble, tender, gentle +person, whom ungovernable passion, under circumstances of overwhelming +provocation, had once impelled to an act of half-justifiable homicide, +and who had for years been slowly dying with remorse. He touched no +chord of terror, but only the chord of pity. Like his portrayal of +Mathias, the picture showed the reactionary effect of hidden sin in the +human soul; but the personality of the sufferer was entirely different. +Each of those men has had experience of crime and of resultant misery, +but no two embodiments could possibly be more dissimilar, alike in +spiritual quality and in circumstances. Mathias is dominated by paternal +love and characterised by a half-defiant, ever-vigilant, and often +self-approbative pride of intellect, in being able to guard and keep a +terrible and dangerous secret. Eugene Aram is dominated by a saint-like +tenderness toward a sweet woman who loves him, and characterised by a +profound, fitful melancholy, now humble and submissive, now actively +apprehensive and almost frenzied. Only once does he stand at bay and +front his destiny with a defiance of desperate will; and even then it is +for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> the woman's sake rather than for his own. Henry Irving's acting +made clear and beautiful that condition of temperament. A noble and +affectionate nature, shipwrecked, going to pieces, doomed, but making +one last tremendous though futile effort to avert the final and +inevitable ruin—this ideal was made actual in his performance. The +intellectual or spiritual value of such a presentment must depend upon +the auditor's capacity to absorb from a tragedy its lessons of insight +into the relations of the human soul to the moral government of the +world. Many spectators would find it merely morbid and gloomy; others +would find it superlatively illuminative and eloquent. Its artistic +value the actor himself made evident to every comprehension. There is a +moment of the performance when the originally massive and passionate +character of Eugene Aram is suddenly asserted above his meekness, +contrition, and sorrow; when, at the sound of his enemy's voice, he +first becomes petrified with the sense of peril, and then calmly gathers +all his powers to meet and conquer the danger. The splendid +concentration, the perfect poise, the sustained intensity, the copious +and amazing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> variety and force of emotion, and the positive, unerring, +and brilliant art with which Henry Irving met that emergency and +displayed that frightful and piteous aspect of assailed humanity, +desperate and fighting for life, made up such an image of genius as +seldom is seen and never will be forgotten. Rapid transition has ever +been one of the commonest and most effective expedients used in +histrionic art. This, on the contrary, was an example of sustained, +prolonged, cumulative, artistic expression of the most harrowing and +awful emotions with which the human soul can be convulsed; and it was a +wonder of consummate acting. The same thoroughness of identification and +the same astonishing adequacy of feeling pervaded the scene in the +churchyard. At first, in the dusky starlight, only a shapeless figure, +covered with a black cloak, was seen among the gravestones, crouched +upon a tomb; but the man that rose, as if out of the grave, pallid, +emaciated, ghastly, the spectre of himself, was the authentic image of +majestic despair, not less sublime than pitiable, and fraught with a +power that happiness could never attain. Not in our time upon the stage +has such a lesson been taught,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> with such overwhelming pathos, of the +utter helplessness of even the strongest human will, when once the soul +has been vitiated by sin and the eternal law of right defied by mortal +passion. In the supplication to his astonished accomplice the actor +seemed like one transfigured, and there the haunted effect was extremely +awful.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span></p> +<h2>XXV.</h2> + +<h3>CHARLES FISHER.</h3> + + +<p>In old times Charles Fisher often figured in the old comedies, and he +was one of the last of the thin and rapidly lessening group of actors +capable of presenting those pieces—wherein, although the substance be +human nature, the manner is that of elaborate and diversified artifice. +When he played Lieutenant Worthington, in <i>The Poor Gentleman</i>, he was a +gentleman indeed—refined, delicate, sensitive, simply courageous, +sustained by native integrity, and impressive with a dignity of manner +that reflected the essential nobility of his mind; so that when he +mistook Sir Robert Bramble for a bailiff, and roused that benevolent +baronet's astonishment and rage, he brought forth all the comic humour +of a delightful situation with the greatest ease and nature. He played +Littleton Coke, Sir Harcourt Courtly, old Laroque—in which he gave a +wonderful picture of the working<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> of remorse in the frail and failing +brain of age—and Nicholas Rue, in <i>Secrets worth Knowing</i>, a sinister +and thrilling embodiment of avarice and dotage. He played Dr. Bland, the +elegant medical cynic of <i>Nos Intimes</i>; De la Tour, the formidable, +jealous husband of Henriette, in <i>Le Patte de Mouche</i>; Horace, in <i>The +Country Squire</i>; Goldfinch, in which he was airy, sagacious, dashing, +and superb, in <i>The Road to Ruin</i>; and Captain Cozzens, the nonchalant +rascal of <i>The Knights of the Round Table</i>, which he embodied in a style +of easy magnificence, gay, gallant, courageous, alert, imperturbable, +and immensely comic. He was the original Matthew Leigh in Lester +Wallack's romantic play of <i>Rosedale</i> (1863). He acted Joseph Surface in +the days when Lester Wallack used to play Charles, and he always held +his own in that superior part. He was equally fine in Sir Peter and Sir +Oliver. When the good old play of <i>The Wife's Secret</i> was revived in New +York, in 1864, he gave a dignified and impetuous performance of Sir +Walter Amyott. I remember him in those parts, with equal wonder at his +comprehensive variety of talent and admiration for his always adequate +skill. I saw him as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> volatile Ferment, in <i>The School of Reform</i>, +and nothing could be more comic than his unwitting abuse of General +Tarragon, in that blustering officer's presence, or his equally +ludicrous scene of cross purposes with Bob Tyke. He was a perfect type, +as Don Manuel Velasco, in <i>The Compact</i>, of the gallant, stately Spanish +aristocrat. He excelled competition when, in a company that included +George Holland, W. Holston, A.W. Young, Mark Smith, Frederick C.P. +Robinson, and John Gilbert, he enacted the convict in <i>Never Too Late to +Mend</i>. He was equally at home whether as the King in <i>Don Cæsar de +Bazan</i> or as Tom Stylus the literary hack, in <i>Society</i>. He passed +easily from the correct and sentimental Sir Thomas Clifford, of <i>The +Hunchback</i>, to the frivolous Mr. Willowear, of <i>To Marry or Not to +Marry</i>. No one could better express than he did, when playing Wellborn, +both pride of birth and pride of character. One of his most +characteristic works was Hyssop, in <i>The Rent Day</i>. His scope and the +rich resources of his experience are denoted in those citations. It is +no common artist who can create and sustain a perfect illusion, and +please an audience equally well, whether in such a part<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> as Gilbert +Featherstone, the villain, in <i>Lost in London</i>, or old Baptista, in <i>The +Taming of the Shrew</i>. The playgoer who never saw Charles Fisher as +Triplet can scarcely claim that he ever saw the part at all. The quaint +figure, the well-saved but threadbare dress, the forlorn air of poverty +and suffering commingled with a certain jauntiness and pluck, the +profound feeling, the unconscious sweetness and humour, the spirit of +mind, gentility, and refinement struggling through the confirmed +wretchedness of the almost heart-broken hack—who that ever laughed and +wept at sight of him in the garret scene, sitting down, "all joy and +hilarity," to write his comedy, can ever forget those details of a true +and touching embodiment? His fine skill in playing the violin was +touchingly displayed in that part, and gave it an additional tone of +reality. I once saw him acting Mercutio, and very admirable he was in +the guise of that noble, brave, frolicsome, impetuous young gentleman. +The intense vitality, the glancing glee, the intrepid spirit—all were +preserved; and the brilliant text was spoken with faultless fluency. It +is difficult to realise that the same actor who set before us that +perfect image of comic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> perplexity, the bland and benevolent Dean, in +<i>Dandy Dick</i>, could ever have been the bantering companion of Romeo and +truculent adversary of fiery Tybalt. Yet this contrast but faintly +indicates the versatile character of his mind. Fisher was upon the +American stage for thirty-eight years, from August 30, 1852, when he +came forth at Burton's theatre as Ferment. Later he went to Wallack's, +and in 1872 he joined Daly's company, in which he remained till 1890. It +may be conjectured that in some respects he resembled that fine comedian +Thomas Dogget, to whom Sir Godfrey Kneller, the painter, said, "I can +only copy Nature from the originals before me, while you vary them at +pleasure and yet preserve the likeness." Like Dogget he played, in a +vein of rich, hearty, jocose humour, and with great breadth of effect +and excellent colour, the sailor Ben, in <i>Love for Love</i>. The +resemblance was in mental characteristics, not physique—for Dogget was +a slight and sprightly man, whereas Fisher could represent majesty as +well as frolic. After he went to Daly's theatre he manifested a +surprising range of faculty. He first appeared there on October 28, +1872, as Mr. Dorn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>ton, in <i>The Road to Ruin</i>, and on November 19, +following, he acted Falstaff for the first time. He presented there the +other Shakespearean parts of Leonatus, Armado, and Malvolio—the last of +these being a model of fidelity to the poet, and now a classic in +reputation. He also assumed Adam and Jaques. He presented the living +image of Shakespeare himself, in <i>Yorick</i>, and his large, broad, stately +style gave weight to Don Manuel, in <i>She Would and She Wouldn't</i>; to +that apt type of the refined British aristocrat, Sir Geoffrey Champneys, +in <i>Our Boys</i>; and to many a noble father or benevolent uncle of the +adapted French society drama. Just as Dogget was supreme in such parts +as Fondlewife, so was Fisher superb in the uxorious husband whom the +demure child-wife bamboozles, in the comedies of Molière. No man has +ever better depicted than he did a sweet nature shocked by calamity and +bowed down with grief, or, as in Joe Chirrup, in <i>Elfie</i>, manliness +chastened by affliction and ennobled by true love: yet his impersonation +of Fagin was only second to that of J.W. Wallack, Jr.; his Moody, in +<i>The Country Girl</i>, was almost tragic in its grim and grizzled +wretchedness and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> snarling wrath; and I have seen him assume to +perfection the gaunt figure and crazy mood of Noah Learoyd, in <i>The Long +Strike</i>, and make that personality a terrible embodiment of menace. From +the time he first acted the comic Major Vavasour, in <i>Henry Dunbar</i>, no +actor of equal quaintness has trod our stage. He died on June 11, 1891, +and was buried at Woodlawn.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span></p> +<h2>XXVI.</h2> + +<h3>MRS. G.H. GILBERT.</h3> + + +<p>Students of the English stage find in books on that subject abundant +information about the tragedy queens of the early drama, and much +likewise, though naturally somewhat less (because comedy is more +difficult to discuss than tragedy), about the comedy queens. Mrs. Cibber +still discomfits the melting Mrs. Porter by a tenderness even greater +than the best of Belvideras could dispense. Mrs. Bracegirdle and Mrs. +Oldfield still stand confronted on the historic page, and still their +battle continues year after year. All readers know the sleepy voice and +horrid sigh of Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth's awful scene of haunted +somnambulism; the unexampled and unexcelled grandeur of Mrs. Yates in +Medea; the infinite pathos of Mrs. Dancer (she that became in succession +Mrs. Spranger Barry and Mrs. Crawford) and her memorable scream, as Lady +Ran<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>dolph, at "Was he alive?"; the comparative discomfiture of both +those ladies by Mrs. Siddons, with her wonderful, wailing cry, as +Isabella, "O, my Biron, my Biron," her overwhelming Lady Macbeth and her +imperial Queen Katharine. The brilliant story of Peg Woffington and the +sad fate of Mrs. Robinson, the triumphant career of Mrs. Abington and +the melancholy collapse of Mrs. Jordan—all those things, and many more, +are duly set down in the chronicles. But the books are comparatively +silent about the Old Women of the stage—an artistic line no less +delightful than useful, of which Mrs. G.H. Gilbert is a sterling and +brilliant representative. Mrs. Jefferson, the great-grandmother of the +comedian Joseph Jefferson, who died of laughter, on the stage (1766-68), +might fitly be mentioned as the dramatic ancestor of such actresses as +Mrs. Gilbert. She was a woman of great loveliness of character and of +great talent for the portrayal of "old women," and likewise of certain +"old men" in comedy. "She had," says Tate Wilkinson, "one of the best +dispositions that ever harboured in a human breast"; and he adds that +"she was one of the most elegant women ever beheld." Mrs. Gilbert<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> has +always suggested that image of grace, goodness, and piquant ability. +Mrs. Vernon was the best in this line until Mrs. Gilbert came; and the +period which has seen Mrs. Judah, Mrs. Vincent, Mrs. Germon, Mary Carr, +Mrs. Chippendale, Mrs. Stirling, Mrs. Billington, Mrs. Drew, Mrs. +Phillips, and Madam Ponisi, has seen no superior to Mrs. Gilbert in her +special walk. She was in youth a beautiful dancer, and all her motions +have spontaneous ease and grace. She can assume the fine lady, without +for an instant suggesting the parvenu. She is equally good, whether as +the formal and severe matron of starched domestic life, or the genial +dame of the pantry. She could play Temperance in <i>The Country Squire</i>, +and equally she could play Mrs. Jellaby. All varieties of the +eccentricity of elderly women, whether serious or comic, are easily +within her grasp. Betsy Trotwood, embodied by her, becomes a living +reality; while on the other hand she suffused with a sinister horror her +stealthy, gliding, uncanny personation of the dumb, half-insane Hester +Dethridge. That was the first great success that Mrs. Gilbert gained, +under Augustin Daly's management. She has been associated with Daly's +company<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> since his opening night as a manager, August 16, 1869, when, at +the Fifth Avenue theatre, then in Twenty-fourth Street, she took part in +Robertson's comedy of <i>Play</i>. The first time I ever saw her she was +acting the Marquise de St. Maur, in <i>Caste</i>, on the night of its first +production in America, August 5, 1867, at the Broadway theatre, the +house near the southwest corner of Broadway and Broome Street, that had +been Wallack's but now was managed by Barney Williams. The assumption of +that character, perfect in every particular, was instinct with pure +aristocracy; but while brilliant with serious ability it gave not the +least hint of those rich resources of humour that since have diffused so +much innocent pleasure. Most of her successes have been gained as the +formidable lady who typifies in comedy the domestic proprieties and the +Nemesis of respectability. It was her refined and severely correct +demeanour that gave soul and wings to the wild fun of <i>A Night Off</i>. +From Miss Garth to Mrs. Laburnum is a far stretch of imitative talent +for the interpretation of the woman nature that everybody, from +Shakespeare down, has found it so difficult to treat. This actress has +never failed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> impress the spectator by her clear-cut, brilliant +identification with every type of character that she has assumed; and, +back of this, she has denoted a kind heart and a sweet and gentle yet +never insipid temperament—the condition of goodness, sympathy, +graciousness, and cheer that is the flower of a fine nature and a good +life. Scenes in which Mrs. Gilbert and Charles Fisher or James Lewis +have participated, as old married people, on Daly's stage, will long be +remembered for their intrinsic beauty—suggestive of the touching lines:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And when with envy Time, transported,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shall think to rob us of our joys,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You'll in your girls again be courted,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And I'll go wooing with my boys."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p> +<h2>XXVII.</h2> + +<h3>JAMES LEWIS.</h3> + + +<p>A prominent representative type of character is "the humorous man," and +that is Shakespeare's phrase to describe him. Wit is a faculty; humour +an attribute. Joseph Addison, Laurence Sterne, Washington +Irving—whatever else they might have been they were humourists. Sir +Roger de Coverley, Tristram Shandy, Uncle Toby, Diedrich Knickerbocker, +Ichabod Crane—these and other creations of their genius stand forth +upon their pages to exemplify that aspect of their minds. But the +humourist of the pen may, personally, be no humourist at all. Addison's +character was austere. Irving, though sometimes gently playful, was +essentially grave and decorous.</p> + +<p>Comical quality in the humorous man whom nature destines for the stage +must be personal. His coming brings with it a sense of comfort. His +presence warms the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> heart and cheers the mind. The sound of his voice, +"speaking oft," before he emerges upon the scene, will set the theatre +in a roar. This was notably true of Burton and of William Warren. The +glance, motion, carriage, manner, and the pause and stillness of such a +man, instil merriment. Cibber says that Robert Nokes had a palpable +simplicity of nature which was often as unaccountably diverting in his +common speech as on the stage, John E. Owens, describing the conduct of +a big bee in an empty molasses barrel, once threw a circle of his +hearers, of whom I was one, almost into convulsions of laughter. Artemas +Ward made people laugh the moment they beheld him, by his wooden +composure and indescribable sapience of demeanour. The lamented Daniel +E. Setchell, a comedian who would have been as famous as he was funny +had he but lived longer, presented a delightful example of spontaneous +humour. It is ludicrous to recall the simple gravity, not demure but +perfectly solemn, with which, on the deck of a Hudson River steamboat, +as we were passing West Point, he indicated to me the Kosciuszko +monument, saying briefly, "That's the place where Freedom shrieked." It +was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> the quality of his temperament that made his playfulness delicious. +Setchell was the mental descendant of Burton, as Burton was of Reeve and +as Reeve was of Liston. Actors illustrate a kind of heredity. Each +species is distinct and discernible. Lester Wallack maintained the +lineage of Charles Kemble, William Lewis, Elliston, and Mountfort—a +line in which John Drew has gained auspicious distinction. John +Gilbert's artistic ancestry could be traced back through Farren and +Munden to King and Quin, and perhaps still further, to Lowin and Kempe.</p> + +<p>The comedian intrinsically comical, while in his characteristic quality +eccentric and dry, has been exemplified by Fawcett, Blisset, Finn, and +Barnes, and is conspicuously presented by James Lewis. No one ever saw +him without laughter—and it is kindly laughter, with a warm heart +behind it. The moment he comes upon the stage an eager gladness diffuses +itself throughout the house. His refined quaintness and unconscious +drollery capture all hearts. His whimsical individuality never varies; +yet every character of the many that he has portrayed stands clearly +forth among its companions, a distinct, unique embodiment. The graceful +urbanity, the elaborate yet natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> manner, the brisk vitality, the +humorous sapience of Sir Patrick Lundy—how completely and admirably he +expressed them! How distinct that fine old figure is in the remembrance +of all who saw it! But he has never played a part that he did not make +equally distinct. A painter might fill a gallery with odd, +characteristic creations by merely copying his compositions of +"make-up." The amiable professor in <i>A Night Off</i>, the senile Gunnion in +<i>The Squire</i>, Lissardo in <i>The Wonder</i>, Grumio in <i>The Shrew</i>—those and +many more he has made his own; while in the actor's province of making +comic characters really comical to others there is no artist who better +fulfils the sagacious, comprehensive injunction of Munden (imparted to a +youthful actor who spoke of being "natural" in order to amuse), "Nature +be d——d! Make the people laugh!" That, aside from all subtleties, is +not a bad test of the comic faculty, and that test has been met and +borne by the acting of James Lewis.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span></p> +<h2>XXVIII.</h2> + +<h3>A LEAF FROM MY JOURNAL.</h3> + + +<p class="center">[November 23, 1867.]</p> + +<p>Thirty years hereafter many who are now active and honoured in dramatic +life will be at rest—their work concluded, their achievements a fading +tradition. But they will not be wholly forgotten. The same talisman of +memory that has preserved to our time the names and the deeds of the +actors of old will preserve to future times the names and the deeds that +are distinguished now in the mimic world of the stage. Legend, speaking +in the voice of the veteran devotee of the drama, will say, for example, +that of all the actors of this period there was no light comedian +comparable with Lester Wallack; that he could thoroughly identify +himself with character,—though it did not always please him to do so; +that his acting was so imaginative and so earnest as to make reality of +the most gossamer fiction; and that his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> vivacity—the essential element +and the crown of comedy-acting—was like the dew on the opening rose. +And therewithal the veteran may quaff his glass to the memory of another +member of the Wallack family, and speak of James Wallack as Cassius, and +Fagin, and the Man-in-the-Iron-Mask, and the King of the Commons, and +may say, with truth, that a more winning embodiment of bluff manliness +and humour was never known to our stage than the versatile actor who +made himself foremost in those characters. It will be impossible to +remember him without recalling his intimate professional associate, +Edwin L. Davenport. He was the only Brutus of his time, our old friend +will say, and in his prime the best Macbeth on the American stage; and +he could play almost any part in the drama, from the loftiest tragedy to +mere trash; and he was an admirable artist in all that he did. There +will be plenty of evidence to fortify that statement; and if the veteran +shall also say that Wallack's company contained, at the same time, the +best "old men" in the profession, no dissentient voice, surely, will +challenge the names of George Holland, John Gilbert, James H. Stoddart, +and Mark Smith.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> Cibber could play Lord Foppington at seventy-three; but +George Holland played Tony Lumpkin at seventy-seven. A young part,—but +the old man was as joyous as a boy and filled it with a boisterous, +mischievous humour at once delightful and indescribable. You saw him to +the best advantage, though, in Mr. Sulky, Humphrey Dobbin, and kindred +parts, wherein the fineness of his temperament was veiled under a +crabbed exterior and some scope was allowed for his superb skill in +painting character. So the discourse will run; and, when it touches upon +John Gilbert, what else than this will be its burden?—that he was +perfection as the old fop; that his Lord Ogleby had no peer; that he was +the oddest conceivable compound of dry humour, quaint manners, +frolicsome love of mischief, honest, hearty mirth, manly dignity, and +tender pathos. To Mark Smith it will render a kindred tribute. Squire +Broadlands, Old Rapid, Sir Oliver Surface—they cannot be forgotten. +Extraordinary truthfulness to nature, extraordinary precision of method, +large humanity, strong intellect, and refined and delicate humour that +always charmed and never offended—those were the qualities that +enrolled him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> among the best actors of his time. And it will not be +strange if Old Mortality passes then into the warmest mood of eulogium, +as he strives to recall the admirable, the incomparable "old woman" Mrs. +Vernon. She was a worthy mate of those worthies, he will exclaim. She +could be the sweet and loving mother, gentle and affectionate; the +stately lady, representative of rank and proud of it and true to it; and +the most eccentric of ludicrous old fools. She was the ideal Mrs. +Malaprop, and she surpassed all competitors in the character of Mrs. +Hardcastle. Mary Gannon was her stage-companion and her foil, he will +add—the merriest, most mischievous, most bewitching player of her time, +in her peculiar line of art. As Hester, in <i>To Marry or Not to Marry</i>, +and as Sophia, in <i>The Road to Ruin</i>, she was the incarnation of girlish +grace and delicious ingenuousness, and also of crisp, well-flavoured +mirth. No taint of tameness marred her acting in those kindred +characters, and no air of effort made it artificial. Nor was Fanny +Morant less remarkable for the glitter of comedy and for an almost +matchless precision of method. So will our friend of the future prose +on, in a vein that will be tedious enough to mat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span>ter-of-fact people; but +not tedious to gentle spirits who love the stage, and sympathise with +its votaries, and keep alive its traditions—knowing that this mimic +world is as real and earnest as the strife that roars and surges around +it; that there as everywhere else humanity plays out its drama, whereof +the moral is always the same—that whether on the stage or in the mart, +on the monarch's throne or in the peasant's cot,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"We are such stuff<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As dreams are made on, and our little life<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is rounded with a sleep."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5>THE END.</h5> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg (1)]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE WORKS OF</h2> + +<h1><span class="smcap">William Winter.</span></h1> + + +<p><b>SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND.</b> <span class="smcap">18mo, Cloth, 75 Cents.</span></p> + +<p><b>GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.</b> <span class="smcap">18mo, Cloth, 75 Cents.</span></p> + +<p><b>SHADOWS OF THE STAGE.</b> <span class="smcap">18mo, Cloth, 75 Cents.</span></p> + +<p><b>SHADOWS OF THE STAGE.</b> Second Series. <span class="smcap">18mo, Cloth, 75 Cents.</span></p> + +<p><b>OLD SHRINES AND IVY.</b> <span class="smcap">18mo, Cloth, 75 Cents.</span></p> + +<p>Also a Small Limited <span class="smcap">Large Paper Edition.</span> 4 Vols. Uniform. $8.00.</p> + +<p><b>WANDERERS: A Collection of Poems.</b> <span class="smcap">New Edition. With a Portrait. 18mo, +Cloth, 75 Cents.</span></p> + +<p>"The supreme need of this age in America is a practical conviction that +progress does not consist in material prosperity, but in spiritual +advancement. Utility has long been exclusively worshipped. The welfare +of the future lies in the worship of beauty. To that worship these pages +are devoted, with all that implies of sympathy with the higher +instincts, and faith in the divine destiny of the human race."—<i>From +the Preface to Gray Days and Gold</i>.</p> + + +<p class="center">MACMILLAN & CO.,</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">66 Fifth Avenue</span>, NEW YORK</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg (2)]</a></span></p> +<h2>WANDERERS;</h2> + +<h4>BEING</h4> + +<h3>A Collection of the Poems of William Winter.</h3> + +<p class="center">New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. With a Portrait of the Author.</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">18mo, Cloth, 75 Cents.</span></p> + +<p class="center">Also a Limited <span class="smcap">Large Paper Edition</span>, printed on English Hand-made Paper. +Price $2.50.</p> + + +<p>"But it has seemed to the author of these poems—which of course are +offered as absolutely impersonal—that they are the expression of +various representative moods of human feeling and various representative +aspects of human experience, and that therefore they may possibly +possess the inherent right to exist."—<i>From the Preface</i>.</p> + +<p>"The verse of Mr. Winter is dedicated mainly to love and wine, to +flowers and birds and dreams, to the hackneyed and never-to-be-exhausted +repertory of the old singers. His instincts are strongly conservative; +his confessed aim is to belong to 'that old school of English Lyrical +Poetry, of which gentleness is the soul, and simplicity the +garment.'"—<i>Saturday Review</i>.</p> + +<p>"The poems have a singular charm in their graceful spontaneity."—<i>Scots +Observer</i>.</p> + +<p>"Free from cant and rant—clear cut as a cameo, pellucid as a mountain +brook. It may be derided as trite, <i>borné</i>, unimpassioned; but in its +own modest sphere it is, to our thinking, extraordinarily successful, +and satisfies us far more than the pretentious mouthing which receives +the seal of over-hasty approbation."—<i>Athenæum</i>.</p> + + +<p class="center">MACMILLAN & CO.,</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">66 Fifth Avenue</span>, NEW YORK.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg (3)]</a></span></p> +<h2><span class="smcap">Shadows of the Stage.</span></h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">18mo, Cloth, 75 Cents.</span></p> + + +<p>"The fame of the actor more than that of any other artist is an +evanescent one—a 'bubble reputation'—indeed, and necessarily so from +the conditions under which his genius is exercised. While the impression +it makes is often more vivid and inspiring for the moment than that of +the poet and the painter, it vanishes almost with the occasion which +gave it birth, and lives only as a tradition in the memory of those to +whom it had immediately appealed. 'Shadows they are, and shadows they +pursue.'</p> + +<p>"The writer, therefore, who, gifted with insight and a poetic enthusiasm +which enables him to discern on the one hand the beauties in a dramatic +work not perceived by the many, and on the other the qualities in the +actor which have made him a true interpreter of the poet's thought, at +the same time possessing the faculty of revealing to us felicitously the +one, and the other is certainly entitled to our grateful recognition.</p> + +<p>"Such a writer is Mr. William Winter, easily the first,—for we know of +none other living in this country, or in the England he loves so much, +in whose nature the critic's vision is united with that of the poet so +harmoniously....</p> + +<p>"Over and above all this, there is in these writings the same charm of +style, poetic glamour and flavor of personality which distinguish +whatever comes to us from Mr. Winter's pen, and which make them unique +in our literature."—<i>Home Journal</i>, New York</p> + + +<p class="center">MACMILLAN & CO.,</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">66 Fifth Avenue</span>, NEW YORK.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg (4)]</a></span></p> +<h2>OLD SHRINES AND IVY.</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">18mo, Cloth, 75 Cents.</span></p> + + +<h4>CONTENTS.</h4> + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr> + <td align='left'></td> + <td align='center'><i>SHRINES OF HISTORY.</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>I.</td> + <td align='left'>Storied Southampton.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>II.</td> + <td align='left'>Pageantry and Relics.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>III.</td> + <td align='left'>The Shakespeare Church.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>IV.</td> + <td align='left'>A Stratford Chronicle.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>V.</td> + <td align='left'>From London to Dover.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>VI.</td> + <td align='left'>Beauties of France.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>VII.</td> + <td align='left'>Ely and its Cathedral.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>VIII.</td> + <td align='left'>From Edinburgh to Inverness.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>IX.</td> + <td align='left'>The Field of Culloden.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>X.</td> + <td align='left'>Stormbound Iona.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'></td> + <td align='center'><i>SHRINES OF LITERATURE.</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XI.</td> + <td align='left'>The Forest of Arden: As You Like It.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XII.</td> + <td align='left'>Fairy Land: A Midsummer Night's Dream.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XIII.</td> + <td align='left'>Will o' the Wisp: Love's Labour Lost.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XIV.</td> + <td align='left'>Shakespeare's Shrew.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XV.</td> + <td align='left'>A Mad World: Anthony and Cleopatra.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XVI.</td> + <td align='left'>Sheridan, and the School for Scandal.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XVII.</td> + <td align='left'>Farquhar, and the Inconstant.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XVIII.</td> + <td align='left'>Longfellow.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XIX.</td> + <td align='left'>A Thought on Cooper's Novels.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='right'>XX.</td> + <td align='left'>A Man of Letters: John R.G. Hassard.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>"Whatever William Winter writes is marked by felicity of diction and by +refinement of style, as well as by the evidence of culture and wide +reading. 'Old Shrines and Ivy' is an excellent example of the charm of +his work."—<i>Boston Courier</i>.</p> + + +<p class="center">MACMILLAN & CO.,</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">66 Fifth Avenue</span>, NEW YORK.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg (5)]</a></span></p> +<h2>SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND.</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">18mo, Cloth, 75 Cents.</span></p> + + +<p>"... It was the author's wish, in dwelling thus upon the rural +loveliness, and the literary and historical associations of that +delightful realm, to afford sympathetic guidance and useful suggestion +to other American travellers who, like himself, might be attracted to +roam among the shrines of the mother-land. Temperament is the +explanation of style; and he has written thus of England because she has +filled his mind with beauty and his heart with mingled joy and sadness; +and surely some memory of her venerable ruins, her ancient shrines, her +rustic glens, her gleaming rivers, and her flower-spangled meadows will +mingle with the last thoughts that glimmer through his brain when the +shadows of the eternal night are falling and the ramble of life is +done."—<i>From the Preface</i>.</p> + +<p>"He offers something more than guidance to the American traveller. He is +a convincing and eloquent interpreter of the august memories and +venerable sanctities of the old country."—<i>Saturday Review</i>.</p> + +<p>"The book is delightful reading."—<i>Scribner's Monthly</i>.</p> + +<p>"Enthusiastic and yet keenly critical notes and comments on English life +and scenery."—<i>Scotsman</i>.</p> + + +<p class="center">MACMILLAN & CO.,</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">66 Fifth Avenue</span>, NEW YORK.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg (6)]</a></span></p> +<h2>GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">18mo, Cloth, 75 Cents.</span></p> + + +<h4>CONTENTS.</h4> + +<div style="margin-left: 15em;"> +Classic Shrines.<br /> + <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Haunted Glens and Houses.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 4em;">Old York.</span><br /> +The Haunts of Moore.<br /> + <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Beautiful Bath.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 4em;">The Lakes and Fells of Wordsworth.</span><br /> +Shakespeare Relics at Worcester.<br /> + <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Byron and Hucknall Torkard.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 4em;">Historic Nooks and Corners.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 6em;">Shakespeare's Town.</span><br /> +Up and Down the Avon.<br /> + <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rambles in Arden.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 4em;">The Stratford Fountain.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 6em;">Bosworth Field.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 8em;">The Home of Dr. Johnson.</span><br /> +From London to Edinburgh.<br /> + <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Into the Highlands.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 4em;">Highland Beauties.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 6em;">The Heart of Scotland.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 8em;">Sir Walter Scott.</span><br /> +Elegiac Memorials.<br /> + <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Scottish Pictures.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 4em;">Imperial Ruins.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 6em;">The Land of Marmion.</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 8em;">At Vesper Time.</span> +</div> + +<p>This book, which is intended as a companion to <i>Shakespeare's England</i>, +relates to the gray days of an American wanderer in the British Isles, +and to the gold of thought and fancy that can be found there.</p> + + +<p class="center">MACMILLAN & CO.,</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">66 Fifth Avenue</span>, NEW YORK.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg (7)]</a></span></p> +<h2>GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">18mo, Cloth, 75 Cents.</span></p> + + +<h4>PRESS NOTICES.</h4> + +<p>"Mr. Winter's graceful and meditative style in his English sketches has +recommended his earlier volume upon (Shakespeare's) England to many +readers, who will not need urging to make the acquaintance of this +companion book, in which the traveller guides us through the quiet and +romantic scenery of the mother-country with a mingled affection and +sentiment of which we have had no example since Irving's day."—<i>The +Nation</i>.</p> + +<p>"As friendly and good-humoured a book on English scenes as any American +has written since Washington Irving."—<i>Daily News</i>, <i>London</i>.</p> + +<p>"Much that is bright and best in our literature is brought once more to +our dulled memories. Indeed, we know of but few volumes containing so +much of observation, kindly comment, philosophy, and artistic weight as +this unpretentious little book."—<i>Chicago Herald</i>.</p> + +<p>"They who have never visited the scenes which Mr. Winter so charmingly +describes will be eager to do so in order to realize his fine +descriptions of them, and they who have already visited them will be +incited by his eloquent recital of their attractions to repeat their +former pleasant experiences."—<i>Public Ledger</i>, <i>Philadelphia</i>.</p> + + +<p class="center">MACMILLAN & CO.,</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">66 Fifth Avenue</span>, NEW YORK.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE NOVEL: WHAT IT IS.</h2> + + +<h3>By F. MARION CRAWFORD,</h3> + +<p class="center">AUTHOR OF "CHILDREN OF THE KING," "A ROMAN SINGER," "SARACINESCA," ETC.</p> + +<p class="center">With Photogravure Portrait of the Author.</p> + +<p class="center"><i>18mo. Cloth. 75 cents.</i></p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<h2>THE CHOICE OF BOOKS, AND OTHER LITERARY PIECES.</h2> + +<h3>By FREDERIC HARRISON,</h3> + +<p class="center">AUTHOR OF "OLIVER CROMWELL," ETC.</p> + +<p class="center"><i>18mo. Cloth. 75 cents.</i></p> + + +<p>"Mr. Harrison is an able and conscientious critic, a good logician, and +a clever man; his faults are superficial, and his book will not fail to +be valuable."—<i>N.Y. Times</i>.</p> + +<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">John Morley</span>, in his speech on the study of literature at the Mansion +House, 26th February, 1887, said:</p> + +<p>"Those who are curious as to what they should read in the region of pure +literature will do well to peruse my friend Frederic Harrison's volume +called <i>The Choice of Books</i>. You will find there as much wise thought, +eloquently and brilliantly put, as in any volume of its size."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Harrison furnishes a valuable contribution to the subject. It is +full of suggestiveness and shrewd analytical criticism. It contains the +fruits of wide reading and rich research."—<i>London Times</i>.</p> + + +<p class="center">MACMILLAN & CO., Publishers,</p> + +<p class="center">NEW YORK.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This paper was written in 1888, and now, in 1892, Mr. +Jefferson, Mr. Stoddart, Mrs. Drew, and Mrs. Gilbert are the only +survivors of that noble group.</p></div> + +</div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Shadows of the Stage, by William Winter + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHADOWS OF THE STAGE *** + +***** This file should be named 18860-h.htm or 18860-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/8/6/18860/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Shadows of the Stage + +Author: William Winter + +Release Date: July 18, 2006 [EBook #18860] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHADOWS OF THE STAGE *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + +SHADOWS OF THE +STAGE + +BY +WILLIAM WINTER + + + _"The best in this kind are but shadows"_ + +SHAKESPEARE + + +NEW YORK +MACMILLAN AND COMPANY +AND LONDON +1893 + + +COPYRIGHT, 1892, +BY MACMILLAN & CO. + +Set up and electrotyped May, 1892. Large Paper Edition printed May. +Ordinary Edition reprinted June, August, November, 1892; January, June, +October, November, 1893. + +Norwood Press: +J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith. +Boston, Mass., U.S.A. + + + + +TO + +Henry Irving + +IN MEMORY AND IN HONOUR +OF ALL THAT HE HAS DONE +TO DIGNIFY AND ADORN THE STAGE +AND TO ENNOBLE SOCIETY +THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED + + _"Cui laurus aeternos honores + Delmatico peperit triumpho"_ + + + + +PREFACE. + + +_The papers contained in this volume, chosen out of hundreds that the +author has written on dramatic subjects, are assembled with the hope +that they may be accepted, in their present form, as a part of the +permanent record of our theatrical times. For at least thirty years it +has been a considerable part of the constant occupation of the author to +observe and to record the life of the contemporary stage. Since 1860 he +has written intermittently in various periodicals, and since the summer +of 1865 he has written continuously in the New York Tribune, upon actors +and their art; and in that way he has accumulated a great mass of +historical commentary upon the drama. In preparing this book he has been +permitted to draw from his contributions to the Tribune, and also from +his writings in Harper's Magazine and Weekly, in the London Theatre, and +in Augustin Daly's Portfolio of Players. The choice of these papers has +been determined partly by consideration of space and partly with the +design of supplementing the author's earlier dramatic books, namely: +Edwin Booth in Twelve Dramatic Characters; The Jeffersons; Henry Irving; +The Stage Life of Mary Anderson; Brief Chronicles, containing eighty-six +dramatic biographies; In Memory of McCullough; The Life of John Gilbert; +The Life and Works of John Brougham; The Press and the Stage; The Actor +and Other Speeches; and A Daughter of Comedy, being the life of Ada +Rehan. The impulse of all those writings, and of the present volume, is +commemorative. Let us save what we can._ + + _"Sed omnes una manet nox, + Et calcanda semel via leti."_ + +W.W. +APRIL 18, 1892. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + CHAP. PAGE + + I. THE GOOD OLD TIMES 13 + + II. IRVING IN FAUST 30 + + III. ADELAIDE NEILSON 47 + + IV. EDWIN BOOTH 63 + + V. MARY ANDERSON 90 + + VI. OLIVIA 119 + + VII. ON JEFFERSON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 130 + + VIII. ON JEFFERSON'S ACTING 151 + + IX. JEFFERSON AND FLORENCE 159 + + X. ON THE DEATH OF FLORENCE 169 + + XI. SHYLOCK AND PORTIA 178 + + XII. JOHN McCULLOUGH 185 + + XIII. CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 206 + + XIV. LAWRENCE BARRETT 215 + + XV. IRVING IN RAVENSWOOD 226 + + XVI. MERRY WIVES AND FALSTAFF 243 + + XVII. ADA REHAN 258 + + XVIII. TENNYSON'S FORESTERS 269 + + XIX. ELLEN TERRY: MERCHANT OF VENICE 286 + + XX. RICHARD MANSFIELD 301 + + XXI. GENEVIEVE WARD 315 + + XXII. EDWARD S. WILLARD 322 + + XXIII. SALVINI 339 + + XXIV. IRVING AS EUGENE ARAM 348 + + XXV. CHARLES FISHER 367 + + XXVI. MRS. GILBERT 374 + + XXVII. JAMES LEWIS 379 + +XXVIII. A LEAF FROM MY JOURNAL 383 + + + + + _"--It so fell out that certain players + We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him; + And there did seem in him a kind of joy + To hear of it."_ + +HAMLET. + + _"Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world--though + the cant of hypocrites may be the worst--the cant of criticism is + the most tormenting. I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not + a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man who will give + up the reins of his imagination into his author's hands,--be + pleased he knows not why and cares not wherefore."_ + +TRISTRAM SHANDY. + + + + +SHADOWS OF THE STAGE. + + + + +I. + +THE GOOD OLD TIMES. + + +It is recorded of John Lowin, an actor contemporary with Shakespeare and +associated with several of Shakespeare's greater characters (his range +was so wide, indeed, that it included Falstaff, Henry the Eighth, and +Hamlet), that, having survived the halcyon days of "Eliza and our James" +and lingered into the drab and russet period of the Puritans, when all +the theatres in the British islands were suppressed, he became poor and +presently kept a tavern, at Brentford, called The Three Pigeons. Lowin +was born in 1576 and he died in 1654--his grave being in London, in the +churchyard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields--so that, obviously, he was one +of the veterans of the stage. He was in his seventy-eighth year when he +passed away--wherefore in his last days he must have been "a mine of +memories." He could talk of the stirring times of Leicester, Drake, +Essex, and Raleigh. He could remember, as an event of his boyhood, the +execution of Queen Mary Stuart, and possibly he could describe, as an +eye-witness, the splendid funeral procession of Sir Philip Sidney. He +could recall the death of Queen Elizabeth; the advent of Scottish James; +the ruffling, brilliant, dissolute, audacious Duke of Buckingham; the +impeachment and disgrace of Francis Bacon; the production of the great +plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; the meetings of the wits and poets +at the Apollo and the Mermaid. He might have personally known Robert +Herrick--that loveliest of the wild song-birds of that golden age. He +might have been present at the burial of Edmund Spenser, in Westminster +Abbey--when the poet brothers of the author of _The Faerie Queene_ cast +into his grave their manuscript elegies and the pens with which those +laments had been written. He had acted Hamlet,--perhaps in the author's +presence. He had seen the burning of the old Globe Theatre. He had been, +in the early days of Charles the First, the chief and distinguished +Falstaff of the time. He had lived under the rule of three successive +princes; had deplored the sanguinary fate of the martyr-king (for the +actors were almost always royalists); had seen the rise of the +Parliament and the downfall of the theatre; and now, under the +Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, he had become the keeper of an humble +wayside inn. It is easy to fancy the old actor sitting in his chair of +state, the monarch of his tap-room, with a flagon of beer, and a +church-warden pipe of tobacco, and holding forth, to a select circle of +cronies, upon the vanished glories of the Elizabethan stage--upon the +days when there were persons in existence really worthy to be called +actors. He could talk of Richard Burbage, the first Romeo; of Armin, +famous in Shakespeare's clowns and fools; of Heminge and Condell, who +edited the First Folio of Shakespeare, which possibly he himself +purchased, fresh from the press; of Joseph Taylor, whom it is said +Shakespeare personally instructed how to play Hamlet, and the +recollection of whose performance enabled Sir William Davenant to impart +to Betterton the example and tradition established by the author--a +model that has lasted to the present day; of Kempe, the original +Dogberry, and of the exuberant, merry Richard Tarleton, after whom that +comic genius had fashioned his artistic method; of Alleyne, who kept the +bear-garden, and who founded the College and Home at Dulwich--where they +still flourish; of Gabriel Spencer, and his duel with Ben Jonson, +wherein he lost his life at the hands of that burly antagonist; of +Marlowe "of the mighty line," and his awful and lamentable +death--stabbed at Deptford by a drunken drawer in a tavern brawl. Very +rich and fine, there can be no doubt, were that veteran actor's +remembrances of "the good old times," and most explicit and downright, +it may surely be believed, was his opinion, freely communicated to the +gossips of The Three Pigeons, that--in the felicitous satirical phrase +of Joseph Jefferson--all the good actors are dead. + +It was ever thus. Each successive epoch of theatrical history presents +the same picturesque image of storied regret--memory incarnated in the +veteran, ruefully vaunting the vanished glories of the past. There has +always been a time when the stage was finer than it is now. Cibber and +Macklin, surviving in the best days of Garrick, Peg Woffington, and +Kitty Clive, were always praising the better days of Wilks, Betterton, +and Elizabeth Barry. Aged play-goers of the period of Edmund Kean and +John Philip Kemble were firmly persuaded that the drama had been buried, +never to rise again, with the dust of Garrick and Henderson, beneath the +pavement of Westminster Abbey. Less than fifty years ago an American +historian of the stage (James Rees, 1845) described it as a wreck, +overwhelmed with "gloom and eternal night," above which the genius of +the drama was mournfully presiding, in the likeness of an owl. The New +York veteran of to-day, although his sad gaze may not penetrate backward +quite to the effulgent splendours of the old Park, will sigh for +Burton's and the Olympic, and the luminous period of Mrs. Richardson, +Mary Taylor, and Tom Hamblin. The Philadelphia veteran gazes back to the +golden era of the old Chestnut Street theatre, the epoch of tie-wigs and +shoe-buckles, the illustrious times of Wood and Warren, when Fennell, +Cooke, Cooper, Wallack, and J.B. Booth were shining names in tragedy, +and Jefferson and William Twaits were great comedians, and the beautiful +Anne Brunton was the queen of the stage. The Boston veteran speaks +proudly of the old Federal and the old Tremont, of Mary Duff, Julia +Pelby, Charles Eaton, and Clara Fisher, and is even beginning to gild +with reminiscent splendour the first days of the Boston Theatre, when +Thomas Barry was manager and Julia Bennett Barrow and Mrs. John Wood +contended for the public favour. In a word, the age that has seen +Rachel, Seebach, Ristori, Charlotte Cushman, and Adelaide Neilson, the +age that sees Ellen Terry, Mary Anderson, Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, +Henry Irving, Salvini, Coquelin, Lawrence Barrett, John Gilbert, John S. +Clarke, Ada Rehan, James Lewis, Clara Morris, and Richard Mansfield, is +a comparatively sterile period--"Too long shut in strait and few, thinly +dieted on dew"--which ought to have felt the spell of Cooper and Mary +Buff, and known what acting was when Cooke's long forefinger pointed the +way, and Dunlap bore the banner, and pretty Mrs. Marshall bewitched the +father of his country, and Dowton raised the laugh, and lovely Mrs. +Barrett melted the heart, and the roses were "bright by the calm +Bendemeer." The present writer, who began theatre-going in earnest over +thirty years ago, finds himself full often musing over a dramatic time +that still seems brighter than this--when he could exult in the fairy +splendour and comic humour of _Aladdin_ and weep over the sorrows of +_The Drunkard_, when he was thrilled and frightened by J.B. Booth in +_The Apostate_, and could find an ecstasy of pleasure in the loves of +Alonzo and Cora and the sublime self-sacrifice of Rolla. Thoughts of +such actors as Henry Wallack, George Jordan, John Brougham, John E. +Owens, Mary Carr, Mrs. Barrow, and Charlotte Thompson, together in the +same theatre, are thoughts of brilliant people and of more than commonly +happy displays of talent and beauty. The figures that used to be seen on +Wallack's stage, at the house he established upon the wreck of John +Brougham's Lyceum, often rise in memory, crowned with a peculiar light. +Lester Wallack, in his peerless elegance; Laura Keene, in her spiritual +beauty; the quaint, eccentric Walcot; the richly humorous Blake, so +noble in his dignity, so firm and fine and easy in his method, so +copious in his natural humour; Mary Gannon, sweet, playful, bewitching, +irresistible; Mrs. Vernon, as full of character as the tulip is of +colour or the hyacinth of grace, and as delicate and refined as an +exquisite bit of old china--those actors made a group, the like of +which it would be hard to find now. Shall we ever see again such an +Othello as Edwin Forrest, or such a Lord Duberly and Cap'n Cuttle as +Burton, or such a Dazzle as John Brougham, or such an Affable Hawk as +Charles Mathews? Certainly there was a superiority of manner, a tinge of +intellectual character, a tone of grace and romance about the old +actors, such as is not common in the present; and, making all needful +allowance for the illusive glamour that memory casts over the distant +and the dim, it yet remains true that the veterans of our day have a +certain measure of right upon their side of the question. + +In the earlier periods of our theatrical history the strength of the +stage was concentrated in a few theatres. The old Park, for example, was +called simply The Theatre, and when the New York playgoer spoke of going +to the play he meant that he was going there. One theatre, or perhaps +two, might flourish, in a considerable town, during a part of the year, +but the field was limited, and therefore the actors were brought +together in two or three groups. The star system, at least till the time +of Cooper, seems to have been innocuous. Garrick's prodigious success +in London, more than a hundred years ago, had enabled him to engross the +control of the stage in that centre, where he was but little opposed, +and practically to exile many players of the first ability, whose lustre +he dimmed or whose services he did not require; and those players +dispersed themselves to distant places--to York, Dublin, Edinburgh, +etc.--or crossed the sea to America. With that beginning the way was +opened for the growth of superb stock-companies, in the early days of +the American theatre. The English, next to the Italians, were the first +among modern peoples to create a dramatic literature and to establish +the acted drama, and they have always led in this field--antedating, +historically, and surpassing in essential things the French stage which +nowadays it is fashionable to extol. English influence, at all times +stern and exacting, stamped the character of our early theatre. The tone +of society, alike in the mother country, in the colonies, and in the +first years of our Republic, was, as to these matters, formal and +severe. Success upon the stage was exceedingly difficult to obtain, and +it could not be obtained without substantial merit. The youths who +sought it were often persons of liberal education. In Philadelphia, New +York, and Boston the stock-companies were composed of select and +thoroughly trained actors, many of whom were well-grounded classical +scholars. Furthermore, the epoch was one of far greater leisure and +repose than are possible now--- when the civilised world is at the +summit of sixty years of scientific development such as it had not +experienced in all its recorded centuries of previous progress. +Naturally enough the dramatic art of our ancestors was marked by +scholar-like and thorough elaboration, mellow richness of colour, +absolute simplicity of character, and great solidity of merit. Such +actors as Wignell, Hodgkinson, Jefferson, Francis, and Blissett offered +no work that was not perfect of its kind. The tradition had been +established and accepted, and it was transmitted and preserved. +Everything was concentrated, and the public grew to be entirely familiar +with it. Men, accordingly, who obtained their ideas of acting at a time +when they were under influences surviving from those ancient days are +confused, bewildered, and distressed by much that is offered in the +theatres now. I have listened to the talk of an aged American +acquaintance (Thurlow Weed), who had seen and known Edmund Kean, and +who said that all modern tragedians were insignificant in comparison +with him. I have listened to the talk of an aged English acquaintance +(Fladgate), who had seen and known John Philip Kemble, and who said that +his equal has never since been revealed. The present day knows what the +old school was,[1] when it sees William Warren, Joseph Jefferson, +Charles Fisher, Mrs. John Drew, John Gilbert, J.H. Stoddart, Mrs. G.H. +Gilbert, William Davidge, and Lester Wallack--the results and the +remains of it. The old touch survives in them and is under their +control, and no one, seeing their ripe and finished art, can feel +surprise that the veteran moralist should be wedded to his idols of the +past, and should often be heard sadly to declare that all the good +actors--except these--are dead. He forgets that scores of theatres now +exist where once there were but two or three; that the population of the +United States has been increased by about fifty millions within ninety +years; that the field has been enormously broadened; that the character +of, the audience has become one of illimitable diversity; that the +prodigious growth of the star-system, together with all sorts of +experimental catch-penny theatrical management, is one of the inevitable +necessities of the changed condition of civilisation; that the feverish +tone of this great struggling and seething mass of humanity is +necessarily reflected in the state of the theatre; and that the forces +of the stage have become very widely diffused. Such a moralist would +necessarily be shocked by the changes that have come upon our theatre +within even the last twenty-five years--by the advent of "the sensation +drama," invented and named by Dion Boucicault; by the resuscitation of +the spectacle play, with its lavish tinsel and calcium glare and its +multitudinous nymphs; by the opera bouffe, with its frequent licentious +ribaldry; by the music-hall comedian, with his vulgar realism; and by +the idiotic burlesque; with its futile babble and its big-limbed, +half-naked girls. Nevertheless there are just as good actors now living +as have ever lived, and there is just as fine a sense of dramatic art in +the community as ever existed in any of "the palmy days"; only, what was +formerly concentrated is now scattered. + +The stage is keeping step with the progress of human thought in every +direction, and it will continue to advance. Evil influences impressed +upon it there certainly are, in liberal abundance--not the least of +these being that of the speculative shop-keeper, whose nature it is to +seize any means of turning a penny, and who deals in dramatic art +precisely as he would deal in groceries: but when we speak of "our +stage" we do not mean an aggregation of shows or of the schemes of +showmen. The stage is an institution that has grown out of a necessity +in human nature. It was as inevitable that man should evolve the theatre +as it was that he should evolve the church, the judiciary tribunal, the +parliament, or any other essential component of the State. Almost all +human beings possess the dramatic perception; a few possess the dramatic +faculty. These few are born for the stage, and each and every generation +contributes its number to the service of this art. The problem is one of +selection and embarkation. Of the true actor it may be said, as Ben +Jonson says of the true poet, that he is made as well as born. The +finest natural faculties have never yet been known to avail without +training and culture. But this is a problem which, in a great measure, +takes care of itself and in time works out and submits its own solution. +The anomaly, every day presented, of the young person who, knowing +nothing, feeling nothing, and having nothing to communicate except the +desire of communication, nevertheless rushes upon the stage, is felt to +be absurd. Where the faculty as well as the instinct exists, however, +impulse soon recognises the curb of common sense, and the aspirant finds +his level. In this way the dramatic profession is recruited. In this way +the several types of dramatic artist--each type being distinct and each +being expressive of a sequence from mental and spiritual ancestry--are +maintained. It is not too much to say that a natural law operates +silently and surely behind each seemingly capricious chance, in this +field of the conduct of life. A thoroughly adequate dramatic +stock-company may almost be said to be a thing of natural accretion. It +is made up, like every other group, of the old, the middle-aged, and the +young; but, unlike every other group, it must contain the capacity to +present, in a concrete image, each elemental type of human nature, and +to reproduce, with the delicate exaggeration essential to dramatic art, +every species of person; in order that all human life--whether of the +street, the dwelling, the court, the camp, man in his common joys and +sorrows, his vices, crimes, miseries, his loftiest aspirations and most +ideal state--may be so copied that the picture will express all its +beauty and sweetness, all its happiness and mirth, all its dignity, and +all its moral admonition and significance, for the benefit of the world. +Such a dramatic stock-company, for example (and this is but one of the +commendable products of the modern stage), has grown up and crystallised +into a form of refined power and symmetry, for the purpose to which it +is devoted, under the management of Augustin Daly. That purpose is the +acting of comedy. Mr. Daly began management in 1869, and he has remained +in it, almost continually, from that time to this. Many players, first +and last, have served under his direction. His company has known +vicissitudes. But the organisation has not lost its comprehensive form, +its competent force, and its attractive quality of essential grace. No +thoughtful observer of its career can have failed to perceive how prompt +the manager has been to profit by every lesson of experience; what keen +perception he has shown as to the essential constituents of a theatrical +troop; with what fine judgment he has used the forces at his disposal; +with what intrepid resolution and expeditious energy he has animated +their spirit and guided their art; and how naturally those players have +glided into their several stations and assimilated in one artistic +family. How well balanced, how finely equipped, how distinctively able +that company is, and what resources of poetry, thought, taste, +character, humour, and general capacity it contains, may not, perhaps, +be fully appreciated in the passing hour. "_Non, si male nunc, et olim +sic erit._" Fifty years from now, when perchance some veteran, still +bright and cheery "in the chimney-nook of age," shall sit in his +armchair and prose about the past, with what complacent exultation will +he speak of the beautiful Ada Rehan, so bewitching as Peggy in _The +Country Girl_, so radiant, vehement, and stormily passionate as +Katherine; of manly John Drew, with his nonchalant ease, incisive tone, +and crisp and graceful method; of noble Charles Fisher, and sprightly +and sparkling James Lewis, and genial, piquant, quaint Mrs. Gilbert! I +mark the gentle triumph in that aged reminiscent voice, and can respect +an old man's kindly and natural sympathy with the glories and delights +of his vanished youth. But I think it is not necessary to wait till you +are old before you begin to praise anything, and then to praise only the +dead. Let us recognise what is good in our own time, and honour and +admire it with grateful hearts. + + * * * * * + +NOTE.--At the Garrick club, London, June 26, 1885, it was my fortune to +meet Mr. Fladgate, "father of the Garrick," who was then aged 86. The +veteran displayed astonishing resources of memory and talked most +instructively about the actors of the Kemble period. He declared John +Philip Kemble to have been the greatest of actors, and said that his +best impersonations were Penruddock, Zanga, and Coriolanus. Mrs. +Siddons, he said, was incomparable, and the elder Mathews a great +genius,--the precursor of Dickens. For Edmund Kean he had no enthusiasm. +Kean, he said, was at his best in Sir Edward Mortimer, and after that in +Shylock. Miss O'Neill he remembered as the perfect Juliet: a beautiful, +blue-eyed woman, who could easily weep, and who retained her beauty to +the last, dying at 85, as Lady Wrixon Becher. + +[Footnote 1: This paper was written in 1888, and now, in 1892, Mr. +Jefferson, Mr. Stoddart, Mrs. Drew, and Mrs. Gilbert are the only +survivors of that noble group.] + + + + +II. + +HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN FAUST. + + +It is not surprising that the votaries of Goethe's colossal poem--a work +which, although somewhat deformed and degraded with the pettiness of +provincialism, is yet a grand and immortal creation of genius--should +find themselves dissatisfied with theatrical expositions of it. Although +dramatic in form the poem is not continuously, directly, and compactly +dramatic in movement. It cannot be converted into a play without being +radically changed in structure and in the form of its diction. More +disastrous still, in the eyes of those votaries, it cannot be and it +never has been converted into a play without a considerable sacrifice of +its contents, its comprehensive scope, its poetry, and its ethical +significance. In the poem it is the Man who predominates; it is not the +Fiend. Mephistopheles, indeed, might, for the purpose of philosophical +apprehension, be viewed as an embodied projection of the mind of Faust; +for the power of the one is dependent absolutely upon the weakness and +surrender of the other. The object of the poem was the portrayal of +universal humanity in a typical form at its highest point of development +and in its representative spiritual experience. Faust, an aged scholar, +the epitome of human faculties and virtues, grand, venerable, +beneficent, blameless, is passing miserably into the evening of life. He +has done no outward and visible wrong, and yet he is wretched. The utter +emptiness of his life--its lack of fulfilment, its lack of +sensation--wearies, annoys, disgusts, and torments him. He is divided +between an apathy, which heavily weighs him down into the dust, and a +passionate, spiritual longing, intense, unsatisfied, insatiable, which +almost drives him to frenzy. Once, at sunset, standing on a hillside, +and looking down upon a peaceful valley, he utters, in a poetic strain +of exquisite tenderness and beauty, the final wish of his forlorn and +weary soul. It is no longer now the god-like aspiration and imperious +desire of his prime, but it is the sufficient alternative. All he asks +now is that he may see the world always as in that sunset vision, in +the perfection of happy rest; that he may be permitted, soaring on the +wings of the spirit, to follow the sun in its setting ("The day before +me and the night behind"), and thus to circle forever round and round +this globe, the ecstatic spectator of happiness and peace. He has had +enough and more than enough of study, of struggle, of unfulfilled +aspiration. Lonely dignity, arid renown, satiety, sorrow, knowledge +without hope, and age without comfort,--these are his present portion; +and a little way onward, waiting for him, is death. Too old to play with +passion, too young not to feel desire, he has endured a long struggle +between the two souls in his breast--one longing for heaven and the +other for the world; but he is beaten at last, and in the abject +surrender of despair he determines to die by his own act. A childlike +feeling, responsive in his heart to the divine prompting of sacred +music, saves him from self-murder; but in a subsequent bitter revulsion +he utters a curse upon everything in the state of man, and most of all +upon that celestial attribute of patience whereby man is able to endure +and to advance in the eternal process of evolution from darkness into +light. And now it is, when the soul of the human being, utterly baffled +by the mystery of creation, crushed by its own hopeless sorrow, and +enraged by the everlasting command to renounce and refrain, has become +one delirium of revolt against God and destiny, that the spirit of +perpetual denial, incarnated in Mephistopheles, steps forth to proffer +guidance and help. It is as if his rejection and defiance had suddenly +become embodied, to aid him in his ruin. More in recklessness than in +trust, with no fear, almost with scorn and contempt, he yet agrees to +accept this assistance. If happiness be really possible, if the true +way, after all, should lie in the life of the senses, and not in +knowledge and reason; if, under the ministrations of this fiend, one +hour of life, even one moment of it, shall ever (which is an idle and +futile supposition) be so sweet that his heart shall desire it to +linger, then, indeed, he will surrender himself eternally to this at +present preposterous Mephistopheles, whom his mood, his magic, and the +revulsion of his moral nature have evoked:-- + + "Then let the death-bell chime the token! + Then art thou from thy service free! + The clock may stop, the hand be broken, + And time be finished unto me." + +Such an hour, it is destined, shall arrive, after many long and +miserable years, when, aware of the beneficence of living for others and +in the imagined prospect of leading, guiding, and guarding a free people +upon a free land, Faust shall be willing to say to the moment: "Stay, +thou art so fair"; and Mephistopheles shall harshly cry out: "The clock +stands still"; and the graybeard shall sink in the dust; and the holy +angels shall fly away with his soul, leaving the Fiend baffled and +morose, to gibe at himself over the failure of all his infernal arts. +But, meanwhile, it remains true of the man that no pleasure satisfies +him and no happiness contents, and "death is desired, and life a thing +unblest." + +The man who puts out his eyes must become blind. The sin of Faust is a +spiritual sin, and the meaning of all his subsequent terrible experience +is that spiritual sin must be--and will be--expiated. No human soul can +ever be lost. In every human soul the contest between good and evil must +continue until the good has conquered and the evil is defeated and +eradicated. Then, when the man's spirit is adjusted to its environment +in the spiritual world, it will be at peace--and not till then. And if +this conflict is not waged and completed now and here, it must be and it +will be fought out and finished hereafter and somewhere else. It is the +greatest of all delusions to suppose that you can escape from yourself. +Judgment and retribution proceed within the soul and not from sources +outside of it. That is the philosophic drift of the poet's thought +expressed and implied in his poem. It was Man, in his mortal ordeal--the +motive, cause, and necessity of which remain a mystery--whom he desired +and aimed to portray; it was not merely the triumph of a mocking devil, +temporarily victorious through ministration to animal lust and +intellectual revolt, over the weakness of the carnal creature and the +embittered bewilderment of the baffled mind. Mr. Irving may well say, as +he is reported to have said, that he will consider himself to have +accomplished a good work if his production of Faust should have the +effect of invigorating popular interest in Goethe's immortal poem and +bringing closer home to the mind of his public a true sense of its +sublime and far-reaching signification. + +The full metaphysical drift of thought and meaning in Goethe's poem, +however, can be but faintly indicated in a play. It is more distinctly +indicated in Mr. Wills's play, which is used by Mr. Irving, than in any +other play upon this subject that has been presented. This result, an +approximate fidelity to the original, is due in part to the preservation +of the witch scenes, in part to Mr. Irving's subtle and significant +impersonation of Mephistopheles, and in part to a weird investiture of +spiritual mystery with which he has artfully environed the whole +production. The substance of the piece is the love story of Faust and +Margaret, yet beyond this is a background of infinity, and over and +around this is a poetic atmosphere charged with suggestiveness of +supernatural agency in the fate of man. If the gaze of the observer be +concentrated upon the mere structure of the piece, the love story is +what he will find; and that is all he will find. Faust makes his compact +with the Fiend. He is rejuvenated and he begins a new life. In "the +Witch's Kitchen" his passions are intensified, and then they are +ignited, so that he may be made the slave of desire and afterward if +possible imbruted by sensuality. He is artfully brought into contact +with Margaret, whom he instantly loves, who presently loves him, whom +he wins, and upon whom, since she becomes a mother out of wedlock, his +inordinate and reckless love imposes the burden of pious contrition and +worldly shame. Then, through the puissant wickedness and treachery of +Mephistopheles, he is made to predominate over her vengeful brother, +Valentine, whom he kills in a street fray. Thus his desire to experience +in his own person the most exquisite bliss that humanity can enjoy and +equally the most exquisite torture that it can suffer, becomes +fulfilled. He is now the agonised victim of love and of remorse. Orestes +pursued by the Furies was long ago selected as the typical image of +supreme anguish and immitigable suffering; but Orestes is less a +lamentable figure than Faust--fortified though he is, and because he is, +with the awful but malign, treacherous, and now impotent sovereignty of +hell. To deaden his sensibility, destroy his conscience, and harden him +in evil the Fiend leads him into a mad revel of boundless profligacy and +bestial riot--denoted by the beautiful and terrible scene upon the +Brocken--and poor Margaret is abandoned to her shame, her wandering, her +despair, her frenzy, her crime, and her punishment. This desertion, +though, is procured by a stratagem of the Fiend and does not proceed +from the design of her lover. The expedient of Mephistopheles, to lull +his prey by dissipations, is a failure. Faust finds them "tasteless," +and he must return to Margaret. He finds her in prison, crazed and +dying, and he strives in vain to set her free. There is a climax, +whereat, while her soul is borne upward by angels he--whose destiny must +yet be fulfilled--is summoned by the terrible voice of Satan. This is +the substance of what is shown; but if the gaze of the observer pierces +beyond this, if he is able to comprehend that terrific but woeful image +of the fallen angel, if he perceives what is by no means obscurely +intimated, that Margaret, redeemed and beatified, cannot be happy unless +her lover also is saved, and that the soul of Faust can only be lost +through the impossible contingency of being converted into the likeness +of the Fiend, he will understand that a spectacle has been set before +him more august, momentous, and sublime than any episode of tragical +human love could ever be. + +Henry Irving, in his embodiment of Mephistopheles, fulfilled the +conception of the poet in one essential respect and transcended it in +another. His performance, superb in ideal and perfect in execution, was +a great work--and precisely here was the greatness of it. Mephistopheles +as delineated by Goethe is magnificently intellectual and sardonic, but +nowhere does he convey even a faint suggestion of the god-head of glory +from which he has lapsed. His own frank and clear avowal of himself +leaves no room for doubt as to the limitation intended to be established +for him by the poet. I am, he declares, the spirit that perpetually +denies. I am a part of that part which once was all--a part of that +darkness out of which came the light. I repudiate all things--because +everything that has been made is unworthy to exist and ought to be +destroyed, and therefore it is better that nothing should ever have been +made. God dwells in splendour, alone and eternal, but his spirits he +thrusts into darkness, and man, a poor creature fashioned to poke his +nose into filth, he sportively dowers with day and night. My province is +evil; my existence is mockery; my pleasure and my purpose are +destruction. In a word, this Fiend, towering to the loftiest summit of +cold intellect, is the embodiment of cruelty, malice, and scorn, +pervaded and interfused with grim humour. That ideal Mr. Irving made +actual. The omniscient craft and deadly malignity of his impersonation, +swathed in a most specious humour at some moments (as, for example, in +Margaret's bedroom, in the garden scene with Martha, and in the duel +scene with Valentine) made the blood creep and curdle with horror, even +while they impressed the sense of intellectual power and stirred the +springs of laughter. But if you rightly saw his face, in the fantastic, +symbolical scene of the Witch's Kitchen; in that lurid moment of sunset +over the quaint gables and haunted spires of Nuremburg, when the +sinister presence of the arch-fiend deepened the red glare of the +setting sun and seemed to bathe this world in the ominous splendour of +hell; and, above all, if you perceived the soul that shone through his +eyes in that supremely awful moment of his predominance over the hellish +revel upon the Brocken, when all the hideous malignities of nature and +all those baleful "spirits which tend on mortal consequence" are loosed +into the aerial abyss, and only this imperial horror can curb and subdue +them, you knew that this Mephistopheles was a sufferer not less than a +mocker; that his colossal malignity was the delirium of an angelic +spirit thwarted, baffled, shattered, yet defiant; never to be +vanquished; never through all eternity to be at peace with itself. The +infinite sadness of that face, the pathos, beyond words, of that +isolated and lonely figure--those are the qualities that irradiated all +its diversified attributes of mind, humour, duplicity, sarcasm, force, +horror, and infernal beauty, and invested it with the authentic quality +of greatness. There is no warrant for this treatment of the part to be +derived from Goethe's poem. There is every warrant for it in the +apprehension of this tremendous subject by the imagination of a great +actor. You cannot mount above the earth, you cannot transcend the +ordinary line of the commonplace, as a mere sardonic image of +self-satisfied, chuckling obliquity. Mr. Irving embodied Mephistopheles +not as a man but as a spirit, with all that the word implies, and in +doing that he not only heeded the fine instinct of the true actor but +the splendid teaching of the highest poetry--the ray of supernal light +that flashes from the old Hebrew Bible; the blaze that streams from the +_Paradise Lost_; the awful glory through which, in the pages of Byron, +the typical figure of agonised but unconquerable revolt towers over a +realm of ruin:-- + + "On his brow + The thunder-scars are graven; from his eye + Glares forth the immortality of hell." + +Ellen Terry, in her assumption of Margaret, once more displayed that +profound, comprehensive, and particular knowledge of human love--that +knowledge of it through the soul and not simply the mind--which is the +source of her exceptional and irresistible power. This Margaret was a +woman who essentially loves, who exists only for love, who has the +courage of her love, who gives all for love--not knowing that it is a +sacrifice--and whose love, at last, triumphant over death, is not only +her own salvation but that also of her lover. The point of strict +conformity to the conception of the poet, in physique and in spiritual +state, may be waived. Goethe's Margaret is a handsome, hardy girl, of +humble rank, who sometimes uses bad grammar and who reveals no essential +mind. She is just a delicious woman, and there is nothing about her +either metaphysical or mysterious. The wise Fiend, who knows that with +such a man as Faust the love of such a woman must outweigh all the +world, wisely tempts him with her, and infernally lures him to the +accomplishment of her ruin. But it will be observed that, aside from the +infraction of the law of man, the loves of Faust and Margaret are not +only innocent but sacred. This sanctity Mephistopheles can neither +pollute nor control, and through this he loses his victims. Ellen +Terry's Margaret was a delicious woman, and not metaphysical nor +mysterious; but it was Margaret imbued with the temperament of Ellen +Terry,--who, if ever an exceptional creature lived, is exceptional in +every particular. In her embodiment she transfigured the character: she +maintained it in an ideal world, and she was the living epitome of all +that is fascinating in essential womanhood--glorified by genius. It did +not seem like acting but like the revelation of a hallowed personal +experience upon which no chill worldly gaze should venture to intrude. + +In that suggestive book in which Lady Pollock records her recollections +of Macready it is said that once, after his retirement, on reading a +London newspaper account of the production of a Shakespearean play, he +remarked that "evidently the accessories swallow up the poetry and the +action": and he proceeded, in a reminiscent and regretful mood, to speak +as follows: "In my endeavour to give to Shakespeare all his attributes, +to enrich his poetry with scenes worthy of its interpretation, to give +to his tragedies their due magnificence and to his comedies their entire +brilliancy, I have set an example which is accompanied with great peril, +for the public is willing to have the magnificence without the tragedy, +and the poet is swallowed up in display." Mr. Irving is the legitimate +successor to Macready and he has encountered that same peril. There are +persons--many of them--who think that it is a sign of weakness to praise +cordially and to utter admiration with a free heart. They are mistaken, +but no doubt they are sincere. Shakespeare, the wisest of monitors, is +never so eloquent and splendid as when he makes one of his people +express praise of another. Look at those speeches in _Coriolanus_. Such +niggardly persons, in their detraction of Henry Irving, are prompt to +declare that he is a capital stage manager but not a great actor. This +has an impartial air and a sapient sound, but it is gross folly and +injustice. Henry Irving is one of the greatest actors that have ever +lived, and he has shown it over and over again. His acting is all the +more effective because associated with unmatched ability to insist and +insure that every play shall be perfectly well set, in every particular, +and that every part in it shall be competently acted. But his genius and +his ability are no more discredited than those of Macready were by his +attention to technical detail and his insistence upon total excellence +of result. It should be observed, however, that he has carried stage +garniture to an extreme limit. His investiture of _Faust_ was so +magnificent that possibly it may have tended in the minds of many +spectators, to obscure and overwhelm the fine intellectual force, the +beautiful delicacy, and the consummate art with which he embodied +Mephistopheles. It ought not to have produced that effect--because, in +fact, the spectacle presented was, actually and truly, that of a +supernatural being, predominant by force of inherent strength and charm +over the broad expanse of the populous and teeming world; but it might +have produced it: and, for the practical good of the art of acting, +progress in that direction has gone far enough. The supreme beauty of +the production was the poetic atmosphere of it--the irradiation of that +strange sensation of being haunted which sometimes will come upon you, +even at noon-day, in lonely places, on vacant hillside, beneath the dark +boughs of great trees, in the presence of the grim and silent rocks, and +by the solitary margin of the sea. The feeling was that of Goethe's own +weird and suggestive scene of the Open Field, the black horses, and the +raven-stone; or that of the shuddering lines of Coleridge:-- + + "As one that on a lonesome road + Doth walk in fear and dread, + And, having once turned round, walks on + And turns no more his head, + Because he knows a frightful fiend + Doth close behind him tread." + + + + +III. + +ADELAIDE NEILSON AS IMOGEN AND JULIET. + + +Shakespeare's drama of _Cymbeline_ seems not at any time in the history +of the stage to have been a favourite with theatrical audiences. In New +York it has had but five revivals in more than a hundred years, and +those occurred at long intervals and were of brief continuance. The +names of Thomas Barry, Mrs. Shaw-Hamblin (Eliza Marian Trewar), and +Julia Bennett Barrow are best remembered in association with it on the +American stage. It had slept for more than a generation when, in the +autumn of 1876, Adelaide Neilson revived it at Philadelphia; but since +then it has been reproduced by several of her imitators. She first +offered it on the New York stage in May 1877, and it was then seen that +her impersonation of Imogen was one of the best of her works. If it be +the justification of the stage as an institution of public benefit and +social advancement, that it elevates humanity by presenting noble +ideals of human nature and making them exemplars and guides, that +justification was practically accomplished by that beautiful +performance. + +The poetry of _Cymbeline_ is eloquent and lovely. The imagination of its +appreciative reader, gliding lightly over its more sinister incidents, +finds its story romantic, its accessories--both of the court and the +wilderness--picturesque, its historic atmosphere novel and exciting, and +the spirit of it tender and noble. Such a reader, likewise, fashions its +characters into an ideal form which cannot be despoiled by comparison +with a visible standard of reality. It is not, however, an entirely +pleasant play to witness. The acting version, indeed, is considerably +condensed from the original, by the excision of various scenes +explanatory of the conduct of the story, and by the omission of the +cumbersome vision of Leonatus; and the gain of brevity thereby made +helps to commend the work to a more gracious acceptance than it would be +likely to obtain if acted exactly according to Shakespeare. Its movement +also is imbued with additional alacrity by a rearrangement of its +divisions. It is customarily presented in six acts. Yet, +notwithstanding the cutting and editing to which it has been subjected, +_Cymbeline_ remains somewhat inharmonious alike with the needs of the +stage and the apprehension of the public. + +For this there are several causes. One perhaps is its mixed character, +its vague, elusive purpose, and its unreality of effect. From the nature +of his story--a tale of stern facts and airy inventions, respecting +Britain and Rome, two thousand years ago--the poet seems to have been +compelled to make a picture of human life too literal to be viewed +wholly as an ideal, and too romantic to be viewed wholly as literal. In +the unequivocally great plays of Shakespeare the action moves like the +mighty flow of some resistless river. In this one it advances with the +diffusive and straggling movement of a summer cloud. The drift and +meaning of the piece, accordingly, do not stand boldly out. That astute +thinker, Ulrici, for instance, after much brooding upon it, ties his +mental legs in a hard knot and says that Shakespeare intended, in this +piece, to illustrate that man is not the master of his own destiny. +There must be liberal scope for conjecture when a philosopher can make +such a landing as that. + +The persons in _Cymbeline_, moreover--aside from the exceptional +character of Imogen--do not come home to a spectator's realisation, +whether of sympathy or repugnance. It is like the flower that thrives +best under glass but shivers and wilts in the open air. Its poetry seems +marred by the rude touch of the actual. Its delicious mountain scenes +lose their woodland fragrance. Its motive, bluntly disclosed in the +wager scene, seems coarse, unnatural, and offensive. Its plot, really +simple, moves heavily and perplexes attention. It is a piece that lacks +pervasive concentration and enthralling point. It might be defined as +_Othello_ with a difference--the difference being in favour of +_Othello_. Jealousy is the pivot of both: but in _Othello_ jealousy is +treated with profound and searching truth, with terrible intensity of +feeling, and with irresistible momentum of action. A spectator will +honour and pity Othello, and hate and execrate Iago--with some infusion, +perhaps of impatience toward the one and of admiration for the +other--but he is likely to view both Leonatus and Iachimo with +considerable indifference; he will casually recognise the infrequent +Cymbeline as an ill-tempered, sonorous old donkey; he will give a +passing smile of scornful disgust to Cloten--that vague hybrid of +Roderigo and Oswald; and of the proceedings of the Queen and the +fortunes of the royal family--whether as affected by the chemical +experiments of Doctor Cornelius or the bellicose attitude of Augustus +Caesar, in reaching for his British tribute--he will be practically +unconscious. This result comes of commingling stern fact and pastoral +fancy in such a way that an auditor of the composition is dubious +whether to fix his senses steadfastly on the one or yield up his spirit +to poetic reverie on the other. + +Coleridge--whose intuitions as to such matters were usually as good as +recorded truth--thought that Shakespeare wrote _Cymbeline_ in his +youthful period. He certainly does not manifest in it the cogent and +glittering dramatic force that is felt in _Othello_ and _Macbeth_. The +probability is that he wrought upon the old legend of Holinshed in a +mood of intellectual caprice, inclining towards sensuous and fanciful +dalliance with a remote and somewhat intangible subject. Those persons +who explain the immense fecundity of his creative genius by alleging +that he must steadily have kept in view the needs of the contemporary +theatre seem to forget that he went much further in his plays than there +was any need for him to go, in the satisfaction of such a purpose, and +that those plays are, in general, too great for any stage that has +existed. Shakespeare, it is certain, could not have been an exception to +the law that every author must be conscious of a feeling, apart from +intellectual purpose, that carries him onward in his art. The feeling +that shines through _Cymbeline_ is a loving delight in the character of +Imogen. + +The nature of that feeling and the quality of that character, had they +been obscure, would have been made clear by Adelaide Neilson's +embodiment. The personality that she presented was typical and unusual. +It embodied virtue, neither hardened by austerity nor vapid with excess +of goodness, and it embodied seductive womanhood, without one touch of +wantonness or guile. It presented a woman innately good and radiantly +lovely, who amid severest trials spontaneously and unconsciously acted +with the ingenuous grace of childhood, the grandest generosity, the most +constant spirit. The essence of Imogen's nature is fidelity. Faithful to +love, even till death, she is yet more faithful to honour. Her scorn of +falsehood is overwhelming; but she resents no injury, harbours no +resentment, feels no spite, murmurs at no misfortune. From every blow of +evil she recovers with a gentle patience that is infinitely pathetic. +Passionate and acutely sensitive, she yet seems never to think of +antagonising her affliction or to falter in her unconscious fortitude. +She has no reproach--but only a grieved submission--for the husband who +has wronged her by his suspicions and has doomed her to death. She +thinks only of him, not of herself, when she beholds him, as she +supposes, dead at her side; but even then she will submit and +endure--she will but "weep and sigh" and say twice o'er "a century of +prayers." She is only sorry for the woman who was her deadly enemy and +who hated her for her goodness--so often the incitement of mortal +hatred. She loses without a pang the heirship to a kingdom. An ideal +thus poised in goodness and radiant in beauty might well have +sustained--as undoubtedly it did sustain--the inspiration of +Shakespeare. + +Adelaide Neilson, with her uncommon graces of person, found it easy to +make the chamber scene and the cave scenes pictorial and charming. Her +ingenuous trepidation and her pretty wiles, as Fidele, in the cave, +were finely harmonious with the character and arose from it like odour +from a flower. The innocence, the glee, the feminine desire to please, +the pensive grace, the fear, the weakness, and the artless simplicity +made up a state of gracious fascination. It was, however, in the revolt +against Iachimo's perfidy, in the fall before Pisanio's fatal +disclosure, and in the frenzy over the supposed death of Leonatus that +the actress put forth electrical power and showed how strong emotion, +acting through the imagination, can transfigure the being and give to +love or sorrow a monumental semblance and an everlasting voice. The +power was harmonious with the individuality and did not mar its grace. +There was a perfect preservation of sustained identity, and this was +expressed with such a sweet elocution and such an airy freedom of +movement and naturalness of gesture that the observer almost forgot to +notice the method of the mechanism and quite forgot that he was looking +upon a fiction and a shadow. That her personation of Imogen, though more +exalted in its nature than any of her works, excepting Isabella, would +rival in public acceptance her Juliet, Viola, or Rosalind, was not to +be expected: it was too much a passive condition--delicate and +elusive--and too little an active effort. She woke into life the +sleeping spirit of a rather repellant drama, and was "alone the Arabian +bird." + +Shakespeare's Juliet, the beautiful, ill-fated heroine of his consummate +poem of love and sorrow, was the most effective, if not the highest of +Adelaide Neilson's tragic assumptions. It carried to every eye and to +every heart the convincing and thrilling sense equally of her beauty and +her power. The exuberant womanhood, the celestial affection, the +steadfast nobility, and the lovely, childlike innocence of Imogen--shown +through the constrained medium of a diffusive romance--were not to all +minds appreciable on the instant. The gentle sadness of Viola, playing +around her gleeful animation and absorbing it as the cup of the white +lily swallows the sunshine, might well be, for the more blunt senses of +the average auditor, dim, fitful, evanescent, and ineffective. Ideal +heroism and dream-like fragrance--the colours of Murillo or the poems of +Heine--are truly known but to exceptional natures or in exceptional +moods. The reckless, passionate idolatry of Juliet, on the +contrary,--with its attendant sacrifice, its climax of disaster, and its +sequel of anguish and death,--stands forth as clearly as the white line +of the lightning on a black midnight sky, and no observer can possibly +miss its meaning. All that Juliet is, all that she acts and all that she +suffers, is elemental. It springs directly from the heart and it moves +straight onward like a shaft of light. Othello, the perfection of +simplicity, is not simpler than Juliet. In him are embodied passion and +jealousy, swayed by an awful instinct of rude justice. In her is +embodied unmixed and immitigable passion, without law, limit, reason, +patience, or restraint. She is love personified and therefore a fatality +to herself. Presented in that way--and in that way she was presented by +Adelaide Neilson--her nature and her experience come home to the +feelings as well as the imagination, and all that we know, as well as +all that we dream, of beauty and of anguish are centred in one image. In +this we may see all the terrors of the moving hand of fate. In this we +may almost hear a warning voice out of heaven, saying that nowhere +except in duty shall the human heart find refuge and peace--or, if not +peace, submission. + +The question whether Shakespeare's Juliet be correctly interpreted is +not one of public importance. It might be ever so correctly interpreted +without producing the right effect. There have been many Juliets. There +has, in our time, been no Juliet so completely fascinating and +irresistible as that of Adelaide Neilson. Through the medium of that +Shakespearean character the actress poured forth that strange, +thrilling, indescribable power which more than anything else in the +world vindicates by its existence the spiritual grandeur and destiny of +the human soul. Neither the accuracy of her ideals nor the fineness of +her execution would have accomplished the result that attended her +labours and crowned her fame. There was an influence back of these--a +spark of the divine fire--a consecration of the individual life--as +eloquent to inform as it was potent to move. Adelaide Neilson was one of +those strange, exceptional natures that, often building better than they +know, not only interpret "the poet's dream" but give to it an added +emphasis and a higher symbolism. Each element of her personality was +rich and rare. The eyes--now glittering with a mischievous glee that +seemed never to have seen a cloud or felt a sorrow, now steady, frank, +and sweet, with innocence and trust,--could, in one moment, flash with +the wild fire of defiance or the glittering light of imperious command, +or, equally in one moment, could soften with mournful thought and sad +remembrance, or darken with the far-off look of one who hears the waving +wings of angels and talks with the spirits of the dead. The face, just +sufficiently unsymmetrical to be brimful of character, whether piquant +or pensive; the carriage of body,--easy yet quaint in its artless grace, +like that of a pretty child in the unconscious fascination of infancy; +the restless, unceasing play of mood, and the instantaneous and perfect +response of expression and gesture,--all these were the denotements of +genius; and, above all these, and not to be mistaken in its irradiation +of the interior spirit of that extraordinary creature, was a voice of +perfect music--rich, sonorous, flexible, vibrant, copious in volume, yet +delicate as a silver thread--a voice + + "Like the whisper of the woods + In prime of even, when the stars are few." + +It did not surprise that such a woman should truly act Juliet. Much +though there be in a personality that is assumed, there is much more in +the personality that assumes it. Golden fire in a porcelain vase would +not be more luminous than was the soul of that actress as it shone +through her ideal of Juliet. The performance did not stop short at the +interpretation of a poetic fancy. It was amply and completely that--but +it was more than that, being also a living experience. The subtlety of +it was only equalled by its intensity, and neither was surpassed except +by its reality. The moment she came upon the scene all eyes followed +her, and every imaginative mind was vaguely conscious of something +strange and sad--a feeling of perilous suspense--a dark presentiment of +impending sorrow. In that was felt at once the presence of a nature to +which the experience of Juliet would be possible; and thus the conquest +of human sympathy was effected at the outset--by a condition, and +without the exercise of a single effort. Fate no less than art +participated in the result. Though it was the music of Shakespeare that +flowed from the harp, it was the hand of living genius that smote the +strings; it was the soul of a great woman that bore its vital testimony +to the power of the universal passion. + +Never was poet truer to the highest truth of spiritual life than +Shakespeare is when he invests with ineffable mournfulness--shadowy as +twilight, vague as the remembrance of a dream--those creatures of his +fancy who are preordained to suffering and a miserable death. Never was +there sounded a truer note of poetry than that which thrills in +Othello's, "If it were now to die," or sobs in Juliet's "Too early seen +unknown, and known too late." It was the exquisite felicity of Adelaide +Neilson's acting of Juliet that she glided into harmony with that +tragical undertone, and, with seemingly a perfect unconsciousness of +it--whether prattling to the old nurse, or moving, sweetly grave and +softly demure, through the stately figures of the minuet--was already +marked off from among the living, already overshadowed by a terrible +fate, already alone in the bleak loneliness of the broken heart. +Striking the keynote thus, the rest followed in easy sequence. The +ecstasy of the wooing scene, the agony of the final parting from Romeo, +the forlorn tremor and passionate frenzy of the terrible night before +the burial, the fearful awakening, the desperation, the paroxysm, the +death-blow that then is mercy and kindness,--all these were in unison +with the spirit at first denoted, and through these was naturally +accomplished its prefigured doom. If clearly to possess a high purpose, +to follow it directly, to accomplish it thoroughly, to adorn it with +every grace, to conceal every vestige of its art, and to cast over the +art that glamour of poetry which ennobles while it charms, and while it +dazzles also endears,--if this is greatness in acting, then was Adelaide +Neilson's Juliet a great embodiment. It never will be forgotten. Its +soft romance of tone, its splendour of passion, its sustained energy, +its beauty of speech, and its poetic fragrance are such as fancy must +always cherish and memory cannot lose. Placing this embodiment beside +Imogen and Viola, it was easy to understand the secret of her +extraordinary success. She satisfied for all kinds of persons the sense +of the ideal. To youthful fancy she was the radiant vision of love and +pleasure; to grave manhood, the image of all that chivalry should honour +and strength protect; to woman, the type of noble goodness and constant +affection; to the scholar, a relief from thought and care; to the +moralist, a spring of tender pity--that loveliness, however exquisite, +must fade and vanish. Childhood, mindful of her kindness and her frolic, +scattered flowers at her feet; and age, that knows the thorny pathways +of the world, whispered its silent prayer and laid its trembling hands +in blessing on her head. She sleeps beneath a white marble cross in +Brompton cemetery, and all her triumphs and glories have dwindled to a +handful of dust. + + * * * * * + +NOTE ON CYMBELINE.--Genest records productions of Shakespeare's +_Cymbeline_, in London, as follows: Haymarket, November 8, 1744; Covent +Garden, April 7, 1746; Drury Lane, November 28, 1761; Covent Garden, +December 28, 1767; Drury Lane, December 1, 1770; Haymarket, August 9, +1782; Covent Garden, October 18, 1784; Drury Lane, November 21, 1785, +and January 29 and March 20, 1787; Covent Garden, May 13, 1800, January +18, 1806, June 3, 1812, May 29, 1816, and June 2, 1825; and Drury Lane, +February 9, 1829; Imogen was represented, successively, by Mrs. +Pritchard, Miss Bride, Mrs. Yates, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bulkley, Miss +Younge, Mrs. Jordan, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Pope, Miss Smith, Mrs. H. +Johnston Miss Stephens, Miss Foote, and Miss Phillips. Later +representatives of it were Sally Booth, Helen Faucit, and Laura +Addison. + + + + +IV. + +EDWIN BOOTH. + + +There was a great shower of meteors on the night of November 13, 1833, +and on that night, near Baltimore, Maryland, was born the most famous +tragic actor of America in this generation, Edwin Booth. No other +American actor of this century has had a rise so rapid or a career so +early and continuously brilliant as that of Edwin Booth. His father, the +renowned Junius Brutus Booth, had hallowed the family name with +distinction and romantic interest. If ever there was a genius upon the +stage the elder Booth was a genius. His wonderful eyes, his tremendous +vitality, his electrical action, his power to thrill the feelings and +easily and inevitably to awaken pity and terror,--all these made him a +unique being and obtained for him a reputation with old-time audiences +distinct from that of all other men. He was followed as a marvel, and +even now the mention of his name stirs, among those who remember him, +an enthusiasm such as no other theatrical memory can evoke. His sudden +death (alone, aboard a Mississippi river steamboat, November 30, 1852) +was pathetic, and the public thought concerning him thenceforward +commingled tenderness with passionate admiration. When his son Edwin +began to rise as an actor the people everywhere rejoiced and gave him an +eager welcome. With such a prestige he had no difficulty in making +himself heard, and when it was found that he possessed the same strange +power with which his father had conquered and fascinated the dramatic +world the popular exultation was unbounded. + +Edwin Booth went on the stage in 1849 and accompanied his father to +California in 1852, and between 1852 and 1856 he gained his first +brilliant success. The early part of his California life was marked by +hardship and all of it by vicissitude, but his authentic genius speedily +flamed out, and long before he returned to the Atlantic seaboard the +news of his fine exploits had cleared the way for his conquest of all +hearts. He came back in 1856-57, and from that time onward his fame +continually increased. He early identified himself with two of the most +fascinating characters in the drama--the sublime and pathetic Hamlet and +the majestic, romantic, picturesque, tender, and grimly humorous +Richelieu. He first acted Hamlet in 1854; he adopted Richelieu in 1856; +and such was his success with the latter character that for many years +afterward he made it a rule (acting on the sagacious advice of the +veteran New Orleans manager, James H. Caldwell), always to introduce +himself in that part before any new community. The popular sentiment +toward him early took a romantic turn and the growth of that sentiment +has been accelerated and strengthened by every important occurrence of +his private life. In July 1860 he was married to a lovely and +interesting woman, Miss Mary Devlin, of Troy, and in February 1863 she +died. In 1867 he lost the Winter Garden theatre, which was burnt down on +the night of March 22, that year, after a performance of John Howard +Payne's _Brutus_. He had accomplished beautiful revivals of _Hamlet_, +_Othello_, _The Merchant of Venice_, and other plays at the Winter +Garden, and had obtained for that theatre an honourable eminence; but +when in 1869 he built and opened Booth's Theatre in New York, he +proceeded to eclipse all his previous efforts and triumphs. The +productions of _Romeo and Juliet_, _Othello_, _Richelieu_, _Hamlet_, _A +Winter's Tale_, and _Julius Caesar_ were marked by ample scholarship and +magnificence. When the enterprise failed and the theatre passed out of +Edwin Booth's hands (1874) the play-going public endured a calamity. But +the failure of the actor's noble endeavour to establish a great theatre +in the first city of America, like every other conspicuous event in his +career, served but to deepen the public interest in his welfare. He has +more than retrieved his losses since then, and has made more than one +triumphal march throughout the length and breadth of the Republic, +besides acting in London and other cities of Great Britain, and gaining +extraordinary success upon the stage of Germany. To think of Edwin Booth +is immediately to be reminded of those leading events in his career, +while to review them, even in a cursory glance, is to perceive that, +notwithstanding calamities and sorrows, notwithstanding a bitter +experience of personal bereavement and of the persecution of envy and +malice, Edwin Booth has ever been a favourite of fortune. + +The bust of Booth as Brutus and that of John Gilbert as Sir Peter, +standing side by side in the Players' Club, stir many memories and +prompt many reflections. Gilbert was a young man of twenty-three, and +had been six years on the stage, before Edwin Booth was born; and when, +at the age of sixteen, Booth made his first appearance (September 10, +1849, at the Boston Museum, as Tressil to his father's Richard), Gilbert +had become a famous actor. The younger man, however, speedily rose to +the higher level of the best dramatic ability as well as the best +theatrical culture of his time; and it is significant of the splendid +triumph of tragic genius, and of the advantage it possesses over that of +comedy in its immediate effect upon mankind, that when the fine and +exceptional combination was made (May 21, 1888, at the Metropolitan +Opera House, New York), for a performance of _Hamlet_ for the benefit of +Lester Wallack, Edwin Booth acted Hamlet, with John Gilbert for +Polonius, and Joseph Jefferson for the first Grave-digger. Booth has had +his artistic growth in a peculiar period in the history of dramatic art +in America. Just before his time the tragic sceptre was in the hands of +Edwin Forrest, who never succeeded in winning the intellectual part of +the public, but was constantly compelled to dominate a multitude that +never heard any sound short of thunder and never felt anything till it +was hit with a club. The bulk of Forrest's great fortune was gained by +him with _Metamora_, which is rant and fustian. He himself despised it +and deeply despised and energetically cursed the public that forced him +to act in it. Forrest's best powers, indeed, were never really +appreciated by the average mind of his fervent admirers. He lived in a +rough period and he had to use a hard method to subdue and please it. +Edwin Booth was fortunate in coming later, when the culture of the +people had somewhat increased, and when the old sledge-hammer style was +going out, so that he gained almost without an effort the refined and +fastidious classes. As long ago as 1857, with all his natural grace, +refinement, romantic charm, and fine bearing, his impetuosity was such +that even the dullest sensibilities were aroused and thrilled and +astonished by him,--and so it happened that he also gained the +multitude. To think of these things is to realise the steady advance of +the stage in the esteem of the best people, and to feel grateful that we +do not live in "the palmy days"--those raw times that John Brougham +used to call the days of light houses and heavy gas bills. + +Mrs. Asia Booth Clarke, wife of the distinguished and excellent comedian +John S. Clarke, wrote a life of her father, Junius Brutus Booth, in +which she has recounted interesting passages in his career, and +chronicled significant and amusing anecdotes of his peculiarities. He +was on the stage from 1813 to 1852, in which latter year he died, aged +fifty-six. In his youth he served for a while in the British navy, +showed some talent for painting, learned the printer's trade, wrote a +little, and dabbled in sculpture--all before he turned actor. The +powerful hostility of Edmund Kean and his adherents drove him from the +London stage, though not till after he had gained honours there, and he +came to America in 1821, and bought a farm near Baltimore, where he +settled, and where his son Edwin (the seventh of ten children) was born. +That farm remained in the family till 1880, when for the first time it +changed hands. There is a certain old cherry-tree growing upon +it--remarkable among cherry-trees for being large, tall, straight, +clean, and handsome--amid the boughs of which the youthful Edwin might +often have been found in his juvenile days. It is a coincidence that +Edwin L. Davenport and John McCullough, also honoured names in American +stage history, were born on the same day in the same month with Edwin +Booth, though in different years. + +From an early age Edwin Booth was associated with his father in all the +wanderings and strange and often sad adventures of that wayward man of +genius, and no doubt the many sorrowful experiences of his youth +deepened the gloom of his inherited temperament. Those who know him well +are aware that he has great tenderness of heart and abundant playful +humour; that his mind is one of extraordinary liveliness, and that he +sympathises keenly and cordially with the joys and sorrows of others; +and yet that he seems saturated with sadness, isolated from +companionship, lonely and alone. It is this temperament, combined with a +sombre and melancholy aspect of countenance, that has helped to make him +so admirable in the character of Hamlet. Of his fitness for that part +his father was the first to speak, when on a night many years ago, in +Sacramento, they had dressed for Pierre and Jaffier, in _Venice +Preserved_. Edwin, as Jaffier, had put on a close-fitting robe of black +velvet. "You look like Hamlet," the father said. The time was destined +to come when Edwin Booth would be accepted all over America as the +greatest Hamlet of the day. In the season of 1864-65, at the Winter +Garden theatre, New York, he acted that part for a hundred nights in +succession, accomplishing a feat then unprecedented in theatrical +annals. Since then Henry Irving, in London, has acted Hamlet two hundred +consecutive times in one season; but this latter achievement, in the +present day and in the capital city of the world, was less difficult +than Edwin Booth's exploit, performed in turbulent New York in the +closing months of the terrible civil war. + +The elder Booth was a short, spare, muscular man, with a splendid chest, +a symmetrical Greek head, a pale countenance, a voice of wonderful +compass and thrilling power, dark hair, and blue eyes. His son's +resemblance to him is chiefly obvious in the shape of the head and face, +the arch and curve of the heavy eyebrows, the radiant and constantly +shifting light of expression that animates the countenance, the natural +grace of carriage, and the celerity of movement. Booth's eyes are dark +brown, and seem to turn black in moments of excitement, and they are +capable of conveying, with electrical effect, the most diverse +meanings--the solemnity of lofty thought, the tenderness of affection, +the piteousness of forlorn sorrow, the awful sense of spiritual +surroundings, the woful weariness of despair, the mocking glee of wicked +sarcasm, the vindictive menace of sinister purpose, and the lightning +glare of baleful wrath. In range of facial expressiveness his +countenance is thus fully equal to that of his father. The present +writer saw the elder Booth but once, and then in a comparatively +inferior part--Pescara, in Shiel's ferocious tragedy of _The Apostate_. +He was a terrible presence. He was the incarnation of smooth, specious, +malignant, hellish rapacity. His exultant malice seemed to buoy him +above the ground. He floated rather than walked. His glance was deadly. +His clear, high, cutting, measured tone was the exasperating note of +hideous cruelty. He was acting a fiend then, and making the monster not +only possible but actual. He certainly gave a greater impression of +overwhelming power than is given by Edwin Booth, and seemed a more +formidable and tremendous man. But his face was not more brilliant than +that of his renowned son; and in fact it was, if anything, somewhat less +splendid in power of the eye. There is a book about him, called _The +Tragedian_, written by Thomas R. Gould, who also made a noble bust of +him in marble; and those who never saw him can obtain a good idea of +what sort of an actor he was by reading that book. It conveys the image +of a greater actor, but not a more brilliant one, than Edwin Booth. Only +one man of our time has equalled Edwin Booth in this singular splendour +of countenance--the great New England orator Rufus Choate. Had Choate +been an actor upon the stage--as he was before a jury--with those +terrible eyes of his, and that passionate Arab face, he must have +towered fully to the height of the tradition of George Frederick Cooke. + +The lurid flashes of passion and the vehement outbursts in the acting of +Edwin Booth are no doubt the points that most persons who have seen him +will most clearly remember. Through these a spectator naturally discerns +the essential nature of an actor. The image of George Frederick Cooke, +pointing with his long, lean forefinger and uttering Sir Giles's +imprecation upon Marrall, never fades out of theatrical history. +Garrick's awful frenzy in the storm scene of King Lear, Kean's colossal +agony in the farewell speech of Othello, Macready's heartrending yell in +_Werner_, Junius Booth's terrific utterance of Richard's "What do they +i' the north?" Forrest's hyena snarl when, as Jack Cade, he met Lord Say +in the thicket, or his volumed cry of tempestuous fury when, as Lucius +Brutus, he turned upon Tarquin under the black midnight sky--those are +things never to be forgotten. Edwin Booth has provided many such great +moments in acting, and the traditions of the stage will not let them +die. To these no doubt we must look for illuminative manifestations of +hereditary genius. Garrick, Henderson, Cooke, Edmund Kean, Junius Booth, +and Edwin Booth are names that make a natural sequence in one +intellectual family. Could we but see them together, we should +undoubtedly find them, in many particulars, kindred. Henderson +flourished in the school of nature that Garrick had created--to the +discomfiture of Quin and all the classics. Cooke had seen Henderson +act, and was thought to resemble him. Edmund Kean worshipped the memory +of Cooke and repeated many of the elder tragedian's ways. So far, +indeed, did he carry his homage that when he was in New York in 1824 he +caused Cooke's remains to be taken from the vault beneath St. Paul's +church and buried in the church-yard, where a monument, set up by Kean +and restored by his son Charles, by Sothern, and by Edwin Booth, still +marks their place of sepulture. That was the occasion when, as Dr. +Francis records, in his book on old New York, Kean took the index finger +of Cooke's right hand, and he, the doctor, took his skull, as relics. "I +have got Cooke's style in acting," Kean once said, "but the public will +never know it, I am so much smaller." It was not the imitation of a +copyist; it was the spontaneous devotion and direction of a kindred +soul. The elder Booth saw Kean act, and although injured by a rivalry +that Kean did not hesitate to make malicious, admired him with honest +fervour. "I will yield Othello to him," he said, "but neither Richard +nor Sir Giles." Forrest thought Edmund Kean the greatest actor of the +age, and copied him, especially in Othello. Pathos, with all that it +implies, seems to have been Kean's special excellence. Terror was the +elder Booth's. Edwin Booth may be less than either, but he unites +attributes of both. + +In the earlier part of his career Edwin Booth was accustomed to act Sir +Giles Overreach, Sir Edward Mortimer, Pescara, and a number of other +parts of the terrific order, that he has since discarded. He was fine in +every one of them. The first sound of his voice when, as Sir Edward +Mortimer, he was heard speaking off the scene, was eloquent of deep +suffering, concentrated will, and a strange, sombre, formidable +character. The sweet, exquisite, icy, infernal joy with which, as +Pescara, he told his rival that there should be "music" was almost +comical in its effect of terror: it drove the listener across the line +of tragical tension and made him hysterical with the grimness of a +deadly humour. His swift defiance to Lord Lovell, as Sir Giles, and +indeed the whole mighty and terrible action with which he carried that +scene--from "What, are you pale?" down to the grisly and horrid viper +pretence and reptile spasm of death--were simply tremendous. This was in +the days when his acting yet retained the exuberance of a youthful +spirit, before "the philosophic mind" had checked the headlong currents +of the blood or curbed imagination in its lawless flight. And those +parts not only admitted of bold colour and extravagant action but +demanded them. Even his Hamlet was touched with that elemental fire. Not +alone in the great junctures of the tragedy--the encounters with the +ghost, the parting with Ophelia, the climax of the play-scene, the +slaughter of poor old Polonius in delirious mistake for the king, and +the avouchment to Laertes in the graveyard--was he brilliant and +impetuous; but in almost everything that quality of temperament showed +itself, and here, of course, it was in excess. He no longer hurls the +pipe into the flies when saying "Though you may fret me, you can not +play upon me"; but he used to do so then, and the rest of the +performance was kindred with that part of it. He needed, in that period +of his development, the more terrible passions to express. Pathos and +spirituality and the mountain air of great thought were yet to be. His +Hamlet was only dazzling--the glorious possibility of what it has since +become. But his Sir Giles was a consummate work of genius--as good then +as it ever afterward became, and better than any other that has been +seen since, not excepting that of E.L. Davenport. And in all kindred +characters he showed himself a man of genius. His success was great. The +admiration that he inspired partook of zeal that almost amounted to +craziness. When he walked in the streets of Boston in 1857 his shining +face, his compact figure, and his elastic step drew every eye, and +people would pause and turn in groups to look at him. + +The actor is born but the artist must be made, and the actor who is not +an artist only half fulfils his powers. Edwin Booth had not been long +upon the stage before he showed himself to be an actor. During his first +season he played Cassio in _Othello_, Wilford in _The Iron Chest_, and +Titus in _The Fall of Tarquin_, and he played them all auspiciously +well. But his father, not less wise than kind, knew that the youth must +be left to himself to acquire experience, if he was ever to become an +artist, and so left him in California, "to rough it," and there, and in +the Sandwich Islands and Australia, he had four years of the most severe +training that hardship, discipline, labour, sorrow, and stern reality +can furnish. When he came east again, in the autumn of 1856, he was no +longer a novice but an educated, artistic tragedian, still crude in some +things, though on the right road, and in the fresh, exultant vigour, if +not yet the full maturity, of extraordinary powers. He appeared first at +Baltimore, and after that made a tour of the south, and during the +ensuing four years he was seen in many cities all over the country. In +the summer of 1860 he went to England, and acted in London, Liverpool, +and Manchester, but he was back again in New York in 1862, and from +September 21, 1863 to March 23, 1867 he managed what was known as the +Winter Garden theatre, and incidentally devoted himself to the +accomplishment of some of the stateliest revivals of standard plays that +have ever been made in America. On February 3, 1869 he opened Booth's +Theatre and that he managed for five years. In 1876 he made a tour of +the south, which, so great was the enthusiasm his presence aroused, was +nothing less than a triumphal progress. In San Francisco, where he +filled an engagement of eight weeks, the receipts exceeded $96,000, a +result at that time unprecedented on the dramatic stage. + +The circumstances of the stage and of the lives of actors have greatly +changed since the generation went out to which such men as Junius Booth +and Augustus A. Addams belonged. No tragedian would now be so mad as to +put himself in pawn for drink, as Cooke is said to have done, nor be +found scraping the ham from the sandwiches provided for his luncheon, as +Junius Booth was, before going on to play Shylock. Our theatre has no +longer a Richardson to light up a pan of red fire, as that old showman +once did, to signalise the fall of the screen in _The School for +Scandal_. The eccentrics and the taste for them have passed away. It +seems really once to have been thought that the actor who did not often +make a maniac of himself with drink could not be possessed of the divine +fire. That demonstration of genius is not expected now, nor does the +present age exact from its favourite players the performance of all +sorts and varieties of parts. Forrest was the first of the prominent +actors to break away from the old usage in this latter particular. +During the most prosperous years of his life, from 1837 to 1850, he +acted only about a dozen parts, and most of them were old. The only new +parts that he studied were Claude Melnotte, Richelieu, Jack Cade, and +Mordaunt, the latter in the play of _The Patrician's Daughter_, and he +"recovered" Marc Antony, which he particularly liked. Edwin Booth, who +had inherited from his father the insanity of intemperance, conquered +that utterly, many years ago, and nobly and grandly trod it beneath his +feet; and as he matured in his career, through acting every kind of +part, from a dandy negro up to Hamlet, he at last made choice of the +characters that afford scope for his powers and his aspirations, and so +settled upon a definite, restricted repertory. His characters were +Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, Iago, Richard the Second, Richard the +Third, Shylock, Cardinal Wolsey, Benedick, Petruchio, Richelieu, Lucius +Brutus, Bertuccio, Ruy Blas, and Don Caesar de Bazan. These he acted in +customary usage, and to these he occasionally added Marcus Brutus, +Antony, Cassius, Claude Melnotte, and the Stranger. The range thus +indicated is extraordinary; but more extraordinary still was the +evenness of the actor's average excellence throughout the breadth of +that range. + +Booth's tragedy is better than his elegant comedy. There are other +actors who equal or surpass him in Benedick or Don Caesar. The comedy in +which he excels is that of silvery speciousness and bitter sarcasm, as +in portions of Iago and Richard the Third and the simulated madness of +Lucius Brutus, and the comedy of grim drollery, as in portions of +Richelieu--his expression of those veins being wonderfully perfect. But +no other actor who has trod the American stage in our day has equalled +him in certain attributes of tragedy that are essentially poetic. He is +not at his best, indeed, in all the tragic parts that he acts; and, like +his father, he is an uneven actor in the parts to which he is best +suited. No person can be said to know Edwin Booth's acting who has not +seen him play the same part several times. His artistic treatment will +generally be found adequate, but his mood or spirit will continually +vary. He cannot at will command it, and when it is absent his +performance seems cold. This characteristic is, perhaps, inseparable +from the poetic temperament. Each ideal that he presents is poetic; and +the suitable and adequate presentation of it, therefore, needs poetic +warmth and glamour. Booth never goes behind his poet's text to find a +prose image in the pages of historic fact. The spectator who takes the +trouble to look into his art will find it, indeed, invariably accurate +as to historic basis, and will find that all essential points and +questions of scholarship have been considered by the actor. But this is +not the secret of its power upon the soul. That power resides in its +charm, and that charm consists in its poetry. Standing on the lonely +ramparts of Elsinore, and with awe-stricken, preoccupied, involuntary +glances questioning the star-lit midnight air, while he talks with his +attendant friends, Edwin Booth's Hamlet is the simple, absolute +realisation of Shakespeare's haunted prince, and raises no question, and +leaves no room for inquiry, whether the Danes in the Middle Ages wore +velvet robes or had long flaxen hair. It is dark, mysterious, +melancholy, beautiful--a vision of dignity and of grace, made sublime by +suffering, made weird and awful by "thoughts beyond the reaches of our +souls." Sorrow never looked more wofully and ineffably lovely than his +sorrow looks in the parting scene with Ophelia, and frenzy never spoke +with a wilder glee of horrid joy and fearful exultation than is heard +in his tempestuous cry of delirium, "Nay, I know not: is it the king?" + +An actor who is fine only at points is not, of course, a perfect actor. +The remark of Coleridge about the acting of Edmund Kean, that it was +like "reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning," has misled many +persons as to Kean's art. Macready bears a similar testimony. But the +weight of evidence will satisfy the reader that Kean was, in fact, a +careful student and that he never neglected any detail of his art. This +is certainly true of Edwin Booth. In the level plains that lie between +the mountain-peaks of expression he walks with as sure a footstep and as +firm a tread as on the summit of the loftiest crag or the verge of the +steepest abyss. In 1877-78, in association with the present writer, he +prepared for the press an edition of fifteen of the plays in which he +acts, and these were published for the use of actors. There is not a +line in either of those plays that he has not studiously and thoroughly +considered; not a vexed point that he has not scanned; not a +questionable reading that he has not, for his own purposes in acting, +satisfactorily settled. His Shakespearean scholarship is extensive and +sound, and it is no less minute than ample. His stage business has been +arranged, as stage business ought to be, with scientific precision. If, +as king Richard the Third, he is seen to be abstractedly toying with a +ring upon one of his fingers, or unsheathing and sheathing his dagger, +those apparently capricious actions would be found to be done because +they were illustrative parts of that monarch's personality, warranted by +the text and context. Many years ago an accidental impulse led him, as +Hamlet, to hold out his sword, hilt foremost, toward the receding +spectre, as a protective cross--the symbol of that religion to which +Hamlet so frequently recurs. The expedient was found to justify itself +and he made it a custom. In the graveyard scene of this tragedy he +directs that one of the skulls thrown up by the first clown shall have a +tattered and mouldy fool's-cap adhering to it, so that it may attract +attention, and be singled out from the others, as "Yorick's skull, the +king's jester." These are little things; but it is of a thousand little +things that a dramatic performance is composed, and without this care +for detail--which must be precise, logical, profound, vigilant, +unerring, and at the same time always unobtrusive and seemingly +involuntary--there can be neither cohesion, nor symmetry, nor an +illusory image consistently maintained; and all great effects would +become tricks of mechanism and detached exploits of theatrical force. + +The absence of this thoroughness in such acting as that of Edwin Booth +would instantly be felt; its presence is seldom adequately appreciated. +We feel the perfect charm of the illusion in the great fourth act of +_Richelieu_--one of the most thrilling situations, as Booth fills it, +that ever were created upon the stage; but we should not feel this had +not the foreground of character, incident, and experience been prepared +with consummate thoroughness. The character of Richelieu is one that the +elder Booth could never act. He tried it once, upon urgent solicitation, +but he had not proceeded far before he caught Joseph around the waist, +and with that astonished friar in his arms proceeded to dash into a +waltz, over which the curtain was dropped. He had no sympathy with the +moonlight mistiness and lace-like complexity of that weird and +many-fibred nature. It lacked for him the reality of the imagination, +the trumpet blare and tempest rush of active passion. But Edwin Booth, +coming after Forrest, who was its original in America, has made +Richelieu so entirely his own that no actor living can stand a +comparison with him in the character. Macready was the first +representative of the part, as everybody knows, and his performance of +it was deemed magnificent; but when Edwin Booth acted it in London in +1880, old John Ryder, the friend and advocate of Macready, who had +participated with him in all his plays, said to the American tragedian, +with a broken voice and with tears in his eyes, "You have thrown down my +idol." Two at least of those great moments in acting that everybody +remembers were furnished by Booth in this character--the defiance of the +masked assailant, at Rouel, and the threat of excommunication delivered +upon Barradas. No spectator possessed of imagination and sensibility +ever saw, without utter forgetfulness of the stage, the imperial +entrance of that Richelieu into the gardens of the Louvre and into the +sullen presence of hostile majesty. The same spell of genius is felt in +kindred moments of his greater impersonations. His Iago, standing in the +dark street, with sword in hand, above the prostrate bodies of Cassio +and Roderigo, and as the sudden impulse to murder them strikes his +brain, breathing out in a blood-curdling whisper, "How silent is this +town!" his Bertuccio, begging at the door of the banquet-hall, and +breaking down in hysterics of affected glee and maddening agony; his +Lear, at that supreme moment of intolerable torture when he parts away +from Goneril and Regan, with his wild scream of revenges that shall be +the terrors of the earth; his Richard the Third, with the gigantic +effrontery of his "Call him again," and with his whole matchless and +wonderful utterance of the awful remorse speech with which the king +awakens from his last earthly sleep--those, among many others, rank with +the best dramatic images that ever were chronicled, and may well be +cited to illustrate Booth's invincible and splendid adequacy at the +great moments of his art. + +Edwin Booth has been tried by some of the most terrible afflictions that +ever tested the fortitude of a human soul. Over his youth, plainly +visible, impended the lowering cloud of insanity. While he was yet a +boy, and when literally struggling for life in the semi-barbarous wilds +of old California, he lost his beloved father, under circumstances of +singular misery. In early manhood he laid in her grave the woman of his +first love--the wife who had died in absence from him, herself scarcely +past the threshold of youth, lovely as an angel and to all that knew her +precious beyond expression. A little later his heart was well-nigh +broken and his life was well-nigh blasted by the crime of a lunatic +brother that for a moment seemed to darken the hope of the world. +Recovering from that blow, he threw all his resources and powers into +the establishment of the grandest theatre in the metropolis of America, +and he saw his fortune of more than a million dollars, together with the +toil of some of the best years of his life, frittered away. Under all +trials he has borne bravely up, and kept the even, steadfast tenor of +his course; strong, patient, gentle, neither elated by public homage nor +imbittered by private grief. Such a use of high powers in the dramatic +art, and the development and maintenance of such a character behind +them, entitle him to the affection of his countrymen, proud equally of +his goodness and his renown. + + + + +V. + +MARY ANDERSON: HERMIONE: PERDITA. + + +On November 25, 1875 an audience was assembled in one of the theatres of +Louisville, Kentucky, to see "the first appearance upon any stage" of "a +young lady of Louisville," who was announced to play Shakespeare's +Juliet. That young lady was in fact a girl, in her sixteenth year, who +had never received any practical stage training, whose education had +been comprised in five years of ordinary schooling, whose observation of +life had never extended beyond the narrow limits of a provincial city, +who was undeveloped, unheralded, unknown, and poor, and whose only +qualifications for the task she had set herself to accomplish were the +impulse of genius and the force of commanding character. She dashed at +the work with all the vigour of abounding and enthusiastic youth, and +with all the audacity of complete inexperience. A rougher performance of +Juliet probably was never seen, but through all the disproportion and +turbulence of that effort the authentic charm of a beautiful nature was +distinctly revealed. The sweetness, the sincerity, the force, the +exceptional superiority and singular charm of that nature could not be +mistaken. The uncommon stature and sumptuous physical beauty of the girl +were obvious. Above all, her magnificent voice--copious, melodious, +penetrating, loud and clear, yet soft and gentle--delighted every ear +and touched every heart. The impersonation of Juliet was not highly +esteemed by judicious hearers; but some persons who saw that performance +felt and said that a new actress had risen and that a great career had +begun. Those prophetic voices were right. That "young lady of +Louisville" was Mary Anderson. + +It is seldom in stage history that the biographer comes upon such a +character as that of Mary Anderson, or is privileged to muse over the +story of such a career as she has had. In many cases the narrative of +the life of an actress is a narrative of talents perverted, of +opportunity misused, of failure, misfortune, and suffering. For one +story like that of Mrs. Siddons there are many like that of Mrs. +Robinson. For one name like that of Charlotte Cushman or that of Helen +Faucit there are many like that of Lucille Western or that of Matilda +Heron--daughters of sorrow and victims of trouble. The mind lingers, +accordingly, impressed and pleased with a sense of sweet personal worth +as well as of genius and beauty upon the record of a representative +American actress, as noble as she was brilliant, and as lovely in her +domestic life as she was beautiful, fortunate, and renowned in her +public pursuits. The exposition of her nature, as apprehended through +her acting, constitutes the principal part of her biography. + +Mary Anderson, a native of California, was born at Sacramento, July 28, +1859. Her father, Charles Joseph Anderson, who died in 1863, aged +twenty-nine, and was buried in Magnolia cemetery, Mobile, Alabama, was +an officer in the service of the Southern Confederacy at the time of his +death, and he is said to have been a handsome and dashing young man. Her +mother, Marie Antoinette Leugers, was a native of Philadelphia. Her +earlier years were passed in Louisville, whither she was taken in 1860, +and she was there taught in a Roman Catholic school and reared in the +Roman Catholic faith under the guidance of a Franciscan priest, Anthony +Miller, her mother's uncle. She left school before she was fourteen +years old and she went upon the stage before she was sixteen. She had +while a child seen various theatrical performances, notably those given +by Edwin Booth, and her mind had been strongly drawn toward the stage +under the influence of those sights. The dramatic characters that she +first studied were male characters--those of Hamlet, Wolsey, Richelieu, +and Richard III.--and to those she added Schiller's Joan of Arc. She +studied those parts privately, and she knew them all and knew them well. +Professor Noble Butler, of Louisville, gave her instruction in English +literature and elocution, and in 1874, at Cincinnati, Charlotte Cushman +said a few encouraging words to her, and told her to persevere in +following the stage, and to "begin at the top." George Vandenhoff gave +her a few lessons before she came out, and then followed her debut as +Juliet, leading to her first regular engagement, which began at Barney +Macaulay's Theatre, Louisville, January 20, 1876. From that time onward +for thirteen years she was an actress,--never in a stock company but +always as a star,--and her name became famous in Great Britain as well +as America. She had eight seasons of steadily increasing prosperity on +the American stage before she went abroad to act, and she became a +favourite all over the United States. She filled three seasons at the +Lyceum Theatre, London (from September 1, 1883, to April 5, 1884; from +November 1, 1884, to April 25, 1885; and from September 10, 1887, to +March 24, 1888), and her success there surpassed, in profit, that of any +American actor who had appeared in England. She revived _Romeo and +Juliet_ with much splendour at the London Lyceum on November 1, 1884, +and she restored _A Winter's Tale_ to the stage, bringing forward that +comedy on September 10, 1887, and carrying it through the season. She +made several prosperous tours of the English provincial theatres, and +established herself as a favourite actress in fastidious Edinburgh, +critical Manchester, and impulsive but exacting Dublin. The repertory +with which she gained fame and fortune included Juliet, Hermione, +Perdita, Rosalind, Lady Macbeth, Julia, Bianca, Evadne, Parthenia, +Pauline, The Countess, Galatea, Clarice, Ion, Meg Merrilies, Berthe, +and the Duchess de Torrenueva. She incidentally acted a few other parts, +Desdemona being one of them. Her distinctive achievements were in +Shakespearean drama. She adopted into her repertory two plays by +Tennyson, _The Cup_ and _The Falcon_, but never produced them. This +record signifies the resources of mind, the personal charm, the exalted +spirit, and the patient, wisely directed and strenuous zeal that +sustained her achievements and justified her success. + +Aspirants in the field of art are continually coming to the surface. In +poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and in acting--which involves and +utilises those other arts--the line of beginners is endless. Constantly, +as the seasons roll by, these essayists emerge, and as constantly, after +a little time, they disappear. The process is sequent upon an obvious +law of spiritual life,--that all minds which are conscious of the art +impulse must at least make an effort toward expression, but that no mind +can succeed in the effort unless, in addition to the art impulse, it +possesses also the art faculty. For expression is the predominant +necessity of human nature. Out of this proceed forms and influences of +beauty. These react upon mankind, pleasing an instinct for the +beautiful, and developing the faculty of taste. Other and finer forms +and influences of beauty ensue, civilisation is advanced, and thus +finally the way is opened toward that condition of immortal spiritual +happiness which this process of experience prefigures and prophesies. +But the art faculty is of rare occurrence. At long intervals there is a +break in the usual experience of stage failure, and some person hitherto +unknown not only takes the field but keeps it. When Garrick came out, as +the Duke of Gloster, in the autumn of 1741, in London, he had never been +heard of, but within a brief time he was famous. "He at once decided the +public taste," said Macklin; and Pope summed up the victory in the +well-known sentence, "That young man never had an equal, and will never +have a rival." Tennyson's line furnishes the apt and comprehensive +comment--"The many fail, the one succeeds." Mary Anderson in her day +furnished the most conspicuous and striking example, aside from that of +Adelaide Neilson, to which it is possible to refer of this exceptional +experience. And yet, even after years of trial and test, it is doubtful +whether the excellence of that remarkable actress was entirely +comprehended in her own country. The provincial custom of waiting for +foreign authorities to discover our royal minds is one from which many +inhabitants of America have not yet escaped. As an actress, indeed, Mary +Anderson was, probably, more popular than any player on the American +stage excepting Edwin Booth or Joseph Jefferson; but there is a +difference between popularity and just and comprehensive intellectual +recognition. Many actors get the one; few get the other. + +Much of the contemporary criticism that is lavished upon actors in this +exigent period--so bountifully supplied with critical observations, so +poorly furnished with creative art--touches only upon the surface. +Acting is measured with a tape and the chief demand seems to be for +form. This is right, and indeed is imperative, whenever it is certain +that the actor at his best is one who never can rise above the +high-water mark of correct mechanism. There are cases that need a deeper +method of inquiry and a more searching glance. A wise critic, when this +emergency comes, is something more than an expert who gives an opinion +upon a professional exploit. The special piece of work may contain +technical flaws, and yet there may be within it a soul worth all the +"icily regular and splendidly null" achievements that ever were possible +to proficient mediocrity. That soul is visible only to the observer who +can look through the art into the interior spirit of the artist, and +thus can estimate a piece of acting according to its inspirational drift +and the enthralling and ennobling personality out of which it springs. +The acting of Mary Anderson, from the first moment of her career, was of +the kind that needs that deep insight and broad judgment,--aiming to +recognise and rightly estimate its worth. Yet few performers of the day +were so liberally favoured with the monitions of dullness and the +ponderous patronage of self-complacent folly. + +Conventional judgment as to Mary Anderson's acting expressed itself in +one statement--"she is cold." There could not be a greater error. That +quality in Mary Anderson's acting--a reflex from her spiritual +nature--which produced upon the conventional mind the effect of coldness +was in fact distinction, the attribute of being exceptional. The +judgment that she was cold was a resentful judgment, and was given in a +spirit of detraction. It proceeded from an order of mind that can never +be content with the existence of anything above its own level. "He +hath," said Iago, speaking of Cassio, "a daily beauty in his life that +makes me ugly." Those detractors did not understand themselves as well +as the wily Italian understood himself, and they did not state their +attitude with such precision; in fact, they did not state it at all, for +it was unconscious with them and involuntary. They saw a being unlike +themselves, they vaguely apprehended the presence of a superior nature, +and that they resented. The favourite popular notion is that all men are +born free and equal; which is false. Free and equal they all are, +undoubtedly, in the eye of the law. But every man is born subject to +heredity and circumstance, and whoever will investigate his life will +perceive that he never has been able to stray beyond the compelling and +constraining force of his character--which is his fate. All men, +moreover, are unequal. To one human being is given genius; to another, +beauty; to another, strength; to another, exceptional judgment; to +another, exceptional memory; to another, grace and charm; to still +another, physical ugliness and spiritual obliquity, moral taint, and +every sort of disabling weakness. To the majority of persons Nature +imparts mediocrity, and it is from mediocrity that the derogatory denial +emanates as to the superior men and women of our race. A woman of the +average kind is not difficult to comprehend. There is nothing +distinctive about her. She is fond of admiration; rather readily +censorious of other women; charitable toward male rakes; and partial to +fine attire. The poet Wordsworth's formula, "Praise, blame, love, +kisses, tears, and smiles," comprises all that is essential for her +existence, and that bard has himself precisely described her, in a +grandfatherly and excruciating couplet, as + + "A creature not too bright and good + For human nature's daily food." + +Women of that sort are not called "cold." The standard is ordinary and +it is understood. But when a woman appears in art whose life is not +ruled by the love of admiration, whose nature is devoid of vanity, who +looks with indifference upon adulation, whose head is not turned by +renown, whose composure is not disturbed by flattery, whose simplicity +is not marred by wealth, who does not go into theatrical hysterics and +offer that condition of artificial delirium as the mood of genius in +acting, who above all makes it apparent in her personality and her +achievements that the soul can be sufficient to itself and can exist +without taking on a burden of the fever or dulness of other lives, there +is a flutter of vague discontent among the mystified and bothered rank +and file, and we are apprised that she is "cold." That is what happened +in the case of Mary Anderson. + +What are the faculties and attributes essential to great success in +acting? A sumptuous and supple figure that can realise the ideals of +statuary; a mobile countenance that can strongly and unerringly express +the feelings of the heart and the workings of the mind; eyes that can +awe with the majesty or startle with the terror or thrill with the +tenderness of their soul-subduing gaze; a voice, deep, clear, resonant, +flexible, that can range over the wide compass of emotion and carry its +meaning in varying music to every ear and every heart; intellect to +shape the purposes and control the means of mimetic art; deep knowledge +of human nature; delicate intuitions; the skill to listen as well as +the art to speak; imagination to grasp the ideal of a character in all +its conditions of experience; the instinct of the sculptor to give it +form, of the painter to give it colour, and of the poet to give it +movement; and, back of all, the temperament of genius--the genialised +nervous system--to impart to the whole artistic structure the thrill of +spiritual vitality. Mary Anderson's acting revealed those faculties and +attributes, and those observers who realised the poetic spirit, the +moral majesty, and the isolation of mind that she continually suggested +felt that she was an extraordinary woman. Such moments in her acting as +that of Galatea's mute supplication at the last of earthly life, that of +Juliet's desolation after the final midnight parting with the last human +creature whom she may ever behold, and that of Hermione's despair when +she covers her face and falls as if stricken dead, were the eloquent +denotements of power, and in those and such as those--with which her art +abounded--was the fulfilment of every hope that her acting inspired and +the vindication of every encomium that it received. + +Early in her professional career, when considering her acting, the +present essayist quoted as applicable to her those lovely lines by +Wordsworth:-- + + "The stars of midnight shall be dear + To her, and she shall lean her ear + In many a secret place + Where rivulets dance their wayward round, + And beauty born of murmuring sound + Shall pass into her face." + +In the direction of development thus indicated she steadily advanced. +Her affiliations were with grandeur, purity, and loveliness. An inherent +and passionate tendency toward classic stateliness increased in her more +and more. Characters of the statuesque order attracted her +imagination--Ion, Galatea, Hermione--but she did not leave them +soulless. In the interpretation of passion and the presentation of its +results she revealed the striking truth that her perceptions could +discern those consequences that are recorded in the soul and in +comparison with which the dramatic entanglements of visible life are +puny and evanescent. Though living in the rapid stream of the social +world she dwelt aloof from it. She thought deeply, and in mental +direction she took the pathway of intellectual power. It is not +surprising that the true worth of such a nature was not accurately +apprehended. Minds that are self-poised, stately, irresponsive to human +weakness, unconventional and self-liberated from allegiance to the +commonplace are not fully and instantly discernible, and may well +perplex the smiling glance of frivolity; but they are permanent forces +in the education of the human race. Mary Anderson retired from the +stage, under the pressure of extreme fatigue, in the beginning of 1889 +and entered upon a matrimonial life on June 17, 1890. It is believed +that her retirement is permanent. The historical interest attaching to +her dramatic career justifies the preservation of this commemorative +essay. + +There is so much beauty in the comedy of _A Winter's Tale_--so much +thought, character, humour, philosophy, sweetly serene feeling and +loveliness of poetic language--that the public ought to feel obliged to +any one who successfully restores it to the stage, from which it usually +is banished. The piece was written in the maturity of Shakespeare's +marvellous powers, and indeed some of the Shakespearean scholars believe +it to be the last work that fell from his hand. Human life, as depicted +in _A Winter's Tale_, shows itself like what it always seems to be in +the eyes of patient, tolerant, magnanimous experience--the eyes "that +have kept watch o'er man's mortality"--for it is a scene of inexplicable +contrasts and vicissitudes, seemingly the chaos of caprice and chance, +yet always, in fact, beneficently overruled and guided to good ends. +Human beings are shown in it as full of weakness; often as the puppets +of laws that they do not understand and of universal propensities and +impulses into which they never pause to inquire; almost always as +objects of benignant pity. The woful tangle of human existence is here +viewed with half-cheerful, half-sad tolerance, yet with the hope and +belief that all will come right at last. The mood of the comedy is +pensive but radically sweet. The poet is like the forest in Emerson's +subtle vision of the inherent exultation of nature:-- + + "Sober, on a fund of joy, + The woods at heart are glad." + +Mary Anderson doubled the characters of Hermione and Perdita. This had +not been conspicuously done until it was done by her, and her +innovation, in that respect, was met with grave disapproval. The moment +the subject is examined, however, objection to that method of procedure +is dispelled. Hermione, as a dramatic person, disappears in the middle +of the third act of Shakespeare's comedy and comes no more until the end +of the piece, when she emerges as a statue. Her character has been +entirely expressed and her part in the action of the drama has been +substantially fulfilled before she disappears. There is no intermediate +passion to be wrought to a climax, nor is there any intermediate mood, +dramatically speaking, to be sustained. The dramatic environment, the +dramatic necessities, are vastly unlike, for example, those of Lady +Macbeth--one of the hardest of all parts to play well, because exhibited +intermittently, at long intervals, yet steadily constrained by the +necessity of cumulative excitement. The representative of Lady Macbeth +must be identified with that character, whether on the stage or off, +from the beginning of it to the end. Hermione, on the contrary, is at +rest from the moment when she faints upon receiving information of the +death of her boy. A lapse of sixteen years is assumed, and then, +standing forth as a statue, she personifies majestic virtue and +victorious fortitude. When she descends from the pedestal she silently +embraces Leontes, speaks a few pious, maternal and tranquil lines (there +are precisely seven of them in the original, but Mary Anderson added +two, from "All's Well"), and embraces Perdita, whom she has not seen +since the girl's earliest infancy. This is their only meeting, and +little is sacrificed by the use of a substitute for the daughter in that +scene. Perdita's brief apostrophe to the statue has to be cut, but it is +not missed in the representation. The resemblance between mother and +daughter heightens the effect of illusion, in its impress equally upon +fancy and vision; and a more thorough elucidation is given than could be +provided in any other way of the spirit of the comedy. It was a +judicious and felicitous choice that the actress made when she selected +those two characters, and the fact that her impersonation of them +carried a practically disused Shakespearean comedy through a season of +one hundred and fifty nights at the Lyceum Theatre in London furnishes +an indorsement alike of her wisdom and her ability. She played in a +stage version of the piece, in five acts, containing thirteen scenes, +arranged by herself. + +While Mary Anderson was acting those two parts in London the sum of +critical opinion seemed to be that her performance of Perdita was better +than her performance of Hermione; but beneath that judgment there was, +apparently, the impression that Hermione is a character fraught with +superlatively great passions, powers, and qualities, such as are only to +be apprehended by gigantic sagacity and conveyed by herculean talents +and skill. Those vast attributes were not specified, but there was a +mysterious intimation of their existence--as of something vague, +formidable, and mostly elusive. But in truth Hermione, although a +stronger part than Perdita, is neither complex, dubious, nor +inaccessible; and Mary Anderson, although more fascinating in Perdita, +could and did rise, in Hermione, to a noble height of tragic power--an +excellence not possible for her, nor for anybody, in the more juvenile +and slender character. + +Hermione has usually been represented as an elderly woman and by such an +actress as is technically called "heavy." She ought to be represented as +about thirty years of age at the beginning of the piece, and forty-six +at the end of it. Leontes is not more than thirty-four at the opening, +and he would be fifty at the close. He speaks, in his first scene, of +his boyhood as only twenty-three years gone, when his dagger was worn +"muzzled, lest it should bite its master"--at which time he may have +been ten years old; certainly not more, probably less. His words, toward +the end of act third, "so sure as this beard's gray," refer to the beard +of Antigonus, not to his own. He is a young man when the play begins, +and Polixenes is about the same age, and Hermione is a young woman. +Antigonus and Paulina are middle-aged persons in the earlier scenes and +Paulina is an elderly woman in the statue scene--almost an old woman, +though not too old to be given in marriage to old Camillo, the +ever-faithful friend. In Mary Anderson's presentation of _A Winter's +Tale_ those details received thoughtful consideration and correct +treatment. + +In Hermione is seen a type of the celestial nature in woman--infinite +love, infinite charity, infinite patience. Such a nature is rare; but it +is possible, it exists, and Shakespeare, who depicted everything, did +not omit to portray that. To comprehend Hermione the observer must +separate her, absolutely and finally, from association with the +passions. Mrs. Jameson acutely and justly describes her character as +exhibiting "dignity without pride, love without passion, and tenderness +without weakness." That is exactly true. Hermione was not easily won, +and the best thing known about Leontes is that at last she came to love +him and that her love for him survived his cruel and wicked treatment, +chastened him, reinstated him, and ultimately blessed him. Hermione +suffers the utmost affliction that a good woman can suffer. Her boy +dies, heart-broken, at the news of his mother's alleged disgrace. Her +infant daughter is torn from her breast and cast forth to perish. Her +husband becomes her enemy and persecutor. Her chastity is assailed and +vilified. She is subjected to the bitter indignity of a public trial. It +is no wonder that at last her brain reels and she falls as if stricken +dead. The apparent anomaly is her survival for sixteen years, in lonely +seclusion, and her emergence, after that, as anything but a forlorn +shadow of her former self. The poet Shelley has recorded the truth that +all great emotions either kill themselves or kill those who feel them. +It is here, however, that the exceptional temperament of Hermione +supplies an explanatory and needed qualification. Her emotions are never +of a passionate kind. Her mind predominates. Her life is in the +affections and therefore it is one of thought. She sees clearly the +facts of her experience and condition, and she knows exactly how those +facts look in the eyes of others. She is one of those persons who +possess a keen and just prescience of events, who can look far into the +future and discern those resultant consequences of the present which, +under the operation of inexorable moral law, must inevitably ensue. +Self-poised in the right and free from the disturbing force of impulse +and desire, she can await the justice of time, she can live, and she can +live in the tranquil patience of resignation. True majesty of the person +is dependent on repose of the soul, and there can be no repose of the +soul without moral rectitude and a far-reaching, comprehensive, wise +vision of events. Mary Anderson embodied Hermione in accordance with +that ideal. By the expression of her face and the tones of her voice, in +a single speech, the actress placed beyond question her grasp of the +character:-- + + "Good my lords, + I am not prone to weeping, as our sex + Commonly are--the want of which vain dew + Perchance shall dry your pities--but I have + That honourable grief lodged here, which burns + Worse than tears drown." + +The conspicuous, predominant, convincing artistic beauty in Mary +Anderson's impersonation of Hermione was her realisation of the part, in +figure, face, presence, demeanour, and temperament. She did not afflict +her auditor with the painful sense of a person struggling upward toward +an unattainable identity. She made you conscious of the presence of a +queen. This, obviously, is the main thing--that the individuality shall +be imperial, not merely wearing royal attire but being invested with the +royal authenticity of divine endowment and consecration. Much emphasis +has been placed by Shakespeare upon that attribute of innate grandeur. +Leontes, at the opening of the trial scene, describes his accused wife +as "the daughter of a king," and in the same scene her father is +mentioned as the Emperor of Russia. The gentleman who, in act fifth, +recounts to Autolycus the meeting between Leontes and his daughter +Perdita especially notes "the majesty of the creature, in resemblance of +the mother." Hermione herself, in the course of her +vindication--expressed in one of the most noble and pathetic strains of +poetical eloquence in our language--names herself "a great king's +daughter," therein recalling those august and piteous words of +Shakespeare's Katharine:-- + + "We are a Queen, or long have thought so, certain + The daughter of a king." + +Poor old Antigonus, in his final soliloquy, recounting the vision of +Hermione that had come upon him in the night, declares her to be a woman +royal and grand not by descent only but by nature:-- + + "I never saw a vessel of like sorrow, + So filled and so becoming. In pure white robes, + Like very sanctity, she did approach." + +That image Mary Anderson embodied, and therefore the ideal of +Shakespeare was made a living thing--that glorious ideal, in shaping +which the great poet "from all that are took something good, to make a +perfect woman." Toward Polixenes, in the first scene, her manner was +wholly gracious, delicately playful, innocently kind, and purely frail. +Her quiet archness at the question, "Will you go yet?" struck exactly +the right key of Hermione's mood. With the baby prince Mamillius her +frolic and banter, affectionate, free, and gay, were in a happy vein of +feeling and humour. Her simple dignity, restraining both resentment and +grief, in face of the injurious reproaches of Leontes, was entirely +noble and right, and the pathetic words, "I never wished to see you +sorry, now I trust I shall," could not have been spoken with more depth +and intensity of grieved affection than were felt in her composed yet +tremulous voice. The entrance, at the trial scene, was made with the +stateliness natural to a queenly woman, and yet with a touch of +pathos--the cold patience of despair. The delivery of Hermione's +defensive speeches was profoundly earnest and touching. The simple cry +of the mother's breaking heart, and the action of veiling her face and +falling like one dead, upon the announcement of the prince's death, were +perfect denotements of the collapse of a grief-stricken woman. The skill +with which the actress, in the monument scene--which is all repose and +no movement--contrived nevertheless to invest Hermione with steady +vitality of action, and to imbue the crisis with a feverish air of +suspense, was in a high degree significant of the personality of genius. +For such a performance of Hermione Shakespeare himself has provided the +sufficient summary and encomium:-- + + "Women will love her, that she is a woman + More worth than any man; men that she is + The rarest of all women." + +It is one thing to say that Mary Anderson was better in Perdita than in +Hermione, and another thing to say that the performance of Perdita was +preferred. Everybody preferred it--even those who knew that it was not +the better of the two; for everybody loves the sunshine more than the +shade. Hermione means grief and endurance. Perdita means beautiful youth +and happy love. It does not take long for an observer to choose between +them. Suffering is not companionable. By her impersonation of Hermione +the actress revealed her knowledge of the stern truth of life, its +trials, its calamities, and the possible heroism of character under its +sorrowful discipline. Into that identity she passed by the force of her +imagination. The embodiment was majestic, tender, pitiable, +transcendent, but its colour was the sombre colour of pensive melancholy +and sad experience. That performance was the higher and more significant +of the two. But the higher form of art is not always the most +alluring--never the most alluring when youthful beauty smiles and rosy +pleasure beckons another way. All hearts respond to happiness. By her +presentment of Perdita the actress became the glittering image and +incarnation of glorious youthful womanhood and fascinating joy. No +exercise of the imagination was needful to her in that. There was an +instantaneous correspondence between the part and the player. The +embodiment was as natural as a sunbeam. Shakespeare has left no doubt +about his meaning in Perdita. The speeches of all around her continually +depict her fresh and piquant loveliness, her innate superiority, her +superlative charm; while her behaviour and language as constantly show +forth her nobility of soul. One of the subtlest side lights thrown upon +the character is in the description of the manner in which Perdita heard +the story of her mother's death--when "attentiveness wounded" her +"till, from one sign of dolour to another, she did bleed tears." And of +the fibre of her nature there is perhaps no finer indication than may be +felt in her comment on old Camillo's worldly view of prosperity as a +vital essential to the permanence of love:-- + + "I think affliction may subdue the cheek, + But not take in the mind." + +In the thirty-seven plays of Shakespeare there is no strain of the +poetry of sentiment and grace essentially sweeter than that which he has +put into the mouth of Perdita; and poetry could not be more sweetly +spoken than it was by Mary Anderson in that delicious scene of the +distribution of the flowers. The actress evinced comprehension of the +character in every fibre of its being, and she embodied it with the +affluent vitality of splendid health and buoyant temperament--presenting +a creature radiant with goodness and happiness, exquisite in natural +refinement, piquant with archness, soft, innocent, and tender in +confiding artlessness, and, while gleeful and triumphant in beautiful +youth, gently touched with an intuitive pitying sense of the thorny +aspects of this troubled world. The giving of the flowers completely +bewitched her auditors. The startled yet proud endurance of the king's +anger was in an equal degree captivating. Seldom has the stage displayed +that rarest of all combinations, the passionate heart of a woman with +the lovely simplicity of a child. Nothing could be more beautiful than +she was to the eyes that followed her lithe figure through the merry +mazes of her rustic dance--an achievement sharply in contrast with her +usually statuesque manner. It "makes old hearts fresh" to see a +spectacle of grace and joy, and that spectacle they saw then and will +not forget. The value of those impersonations of Hermione and Perdita, +viewing them as embodied interpretations of poetry was great, but they +possessed a greater value and a higher significance as denotements of +the guiding light, the cheering strength, the elevating loveliness of a +noble human soul. They embodied the conception of the poet, but at the +same time they illumined an actual incarnation of the divine spirit. +They were like windows to a sacred temple, and through them you could +look into the soul of a true woman--always a realm where thoughts are +gliding angels, and feelings are the faces of seraphs, and sounds are +the music of the harps of heaven. + + + + +VI. + +HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN OLIVIA. + + +It has sometimes been thought that the acting of Henry Irving is seen at +its best in those impersonations of his that derive their vitality from +the grim, ghastly, and morbid attributes of human nature. That he is a +unique actor, and distinctively a great actor, in Hamlet, Mathias, +Eugene Aram, Louis XI., Lesurque, and Dubosc, few judges will deny. His +performances of those parts have shown him to be a man of weird +imagination, and they have shown that his characteristics, mental and +spiritual, are sombre. Accordingly, when it was announced that he would +play Dr. Primrose--Goldsmith's simple, virtuous, homely, undramatic +village-preacher, the _Vicar of Wakefield_,--a doubt was felt as to his +suitability for the part and as to the success of his endeavour. He +played Dr. Primrose, and he gained in that character some of the +brightest laurels of his professional career. The doubt proved +unwarranted. More than one competent observer of that remarkable +performance has granted it an equal rank with the best of Henry Irving's +achievements; and now, more clearly than before, it is perceived that +the current of his inspiration flows as freely from the silver spring of +goodness as from the dark and troubled fountain of human misery. + +On the first night of _Olivia_, at the Lyceum Theatre (it was May 27, +1885, when the present writer happened to be in London), Henry Irving's +performance of Dr. Primrose was fettered by a curb of constraint. The +actor's nerves had been strained to a high pitch of excitement and he +was obviously anxious. His spirit, accordingly, was not fully liberated +into the character. He advanced with cautious care and he executed each +detail of his design with precise accuracy. To various auditors, for +that reason, the work seemed a little Methodistical; and drab is a +colour at which the voice of the scoffer is apt to scoff. But the +impersonation of Dr. Primrose soon became equally a triumph of +expression and of ideal; not only flowing out of goodness, but flowing +smoothly and producing the effect of nature. It was not absolutely and +identically the Vicar that Goldsmith has drawn, for its personality was +unmarked by either rusticity or strong humour; but it was a kindred and +higher type of the simple truth, the pastoral sweetness, the benignity, +and the human tenderness of that delightful original. To invest goodness +with charm, to make virtue piquant, and to turn common events of +domestic life to exquisite pathos and noble exaltation was the actor's +purpose. It was accomplished; and Dr. Primrose, thitherto an idyllic +figure, existent only in the chambers of fancy, is henceforth as much a +denizen of the stage as Luke Fielding or Jesse Rural; a man not merely +to be read of, as one reads of Uncle Toby and Parson Adams, but to be +known, remembered, and loved. + +Wills's drama of _Olivia_, based upon an episode in Goldsmith's story, +is one of extreme simplicity. It may be described as a series of +pictures displaying the consequences of action rather than action +itself. It contains an abundance of incident, but the incident is mostly +devoid of inherent dramatic force and therefore is such as must derive +its chief effect from the manner in which it is treated by the actors +who represent the piece. Nevertheless, the piece was found to be, +during its first three acts, an expressive, coherent, interesting play. +It tells its story clearly and entirely, not by narrative but by the +display of characters in their relations to each other. Its language, +flavoured here and there with the phraseology of the novel, is +consistently appropriate. The fourth and last act is feeble. Nobody can +sympathise with "the late remorse of love" in a nature so trivial as +that of Thornhill, and the incident of the reconciliation between Olivia +and her husband, therefore, goes for nothing. It is the beautiful +relation between the father and his daughter that animates the play. It +is paternal love that thrills its structure with light, warmth, colour, +sincerity, moral force, and human significance. Opinion may differ as to +the degree of skill with which Wills selected and employed the materials +of Goldsmith's story; but nobody can justly deny that he wrought for the +stage a practical dramatic exposition of the beauty and sanctity of the +holiest relation that is possible in human life; and to have done that +is to have done a noble thing. + +Many persons appear to think that criticism falls short of its duty +unless it wounds and hurts. Goldsmith himself observed that fact. It +was in the story of _The Vicar of Wakefield_ that he made his playful +suggestion that a critic should always take care to say that the picture +would have been better if the painter had taken more pains. Wills +probably heard more than enough for his spiritual welfare about the +faults of his piece; yet there is really nothing weak in the play except +the conclusion. It is not easy to suggest, however, in what way the +fourth act could be strengthened, unless it were by a recasting and +renovation of the character of Squire Thornhill. But the victory was +gained, in spite of a feeble climax. Many persons also appear to think +that it is a sort of sacrilege to lay hands upon the sacred ark of a +classic creation. Dion Boucicault, perceiving this when he made a play +about _Clarissa Harlowe_, felt moved to deprecate anticipated public +resentment of the liberties that he had taken with Richardson's novel. +Yet it is difficult to see why the abundant details of that excellent +though protracted narrative should not be curtailed, in order to +circumscribe its substance within the limits of a practical drama. +Jefferson was blamed for condensing and slightly changing the comedy of +_The Rivals_. Yet the author, who probably knew something about his +work, deemed it a wretchedly defective piece, and expressed the +liveliest regret for having written it. Wills did not reproduce +Goldsmith's Vicar upon the stage: in some particulars he widely diverged +from it--and his work, accordingly, may be censured. Yet _The Vicar of +Wakefield_ is far from being a faultless production, such as a divinity +should be supposed to hedge. Critical students are aware of this. It is +not worth while to traverse the old ground. The reader who will take the +trouble--and pleasure--to refer to that excellent chapter on Goldsmith +in Dr. Craik's _History of English Literature_ will find the structural +defects of the novel specifically enumerated. If the dramatist has +ignored many details he has at least extracted from the narrative the +salient points of a consistent, harmonious story. The spectator can +enjoy the play, whether he has read the original or not. At the end of +its first act he knows the Vicar and his family, their home, their way +of life, their neighbours, the two suitors for the two girls, the +motives of each and every character, and the relations of each to all; +and he sees, what is always touching in the spectacle of actual human +life, the contrasted states of circumstance and experience surrounding +and enmeshing all. After this preparation the story is developed with +few and rapid strokes. Two of the pictures were poems. At the end of act +first the Vicar, who has been apprised of the loss of his property, +imparts this sad news to his family. The time is the gloaming. The +chimes are sounding in the church-tower. It is the hour of evening +prayer. The gray-haired pastor calls his loved ones around him, in his +garden, and simply and reverently tells them of their misfortune, which +is to be accepted submissively, as Heaven's will. The deep religious +feeling of that scene, the grouping, the use of sunset lights and +shadows, the melody of the chimes, the stricken look in the faces of the +women and children, the sweet gravity of the Vicar--instinct with the +nobleness of a sorrow not yet become corrosive and lachrymose, as is the +tendency of settled grief--and, over all, the sense of blighted +happiness and an uncertain future, made up a dramatic as well as a +pictorial effect of impressive poetic significance. In act second--which +is pictorial almost without intermission--there was a companion +picture, when the Vicar reads, at his fireside, a letter announcing the +restitution of his estate; while his wife and children and Mr. Burchell +are assembled around the spinet singing an old song. The repose with +which Henry Irving made that scene tremulous, almost painful, in its +suspense, was observed as one of the happiest strokes of his art. The +face and demeanour of Dr. Primrose, changing from the composure of +resignation to a startled surprise, and then to almost an hysterical +gladness, presented a study not less instructive than affecting of the +resources of acting. Only two contemporary actors have presented +anything kindred with Mr. Irving's acting in that situation and +throughout the scene that is sequent on the discovery of Olivia's +flight--Jefferson in America and Got in France. + +Evil is restless and irresistibly prone to action. Goodness is usually +negative and inert. Dr. Primrose is a type of goodness. In order to +invest him with piquancy and dramatic vigour Henry Irving gave him +passion, and therewithal various attributes of charming eccentricity. +The clergyman thus presented is the fruition of a long life of virtue. +He has the complete repose of innocence, the sweet candour of absolute +purity, the mild demeanour of spontaneous, habitual benevolence, the +supreme grace of unconscious simplicity. But he is human and passionate; +he shows--in his surroundings, in his quick sympathy with natural +beauty, and in his indicated rather than directly stated ideals of +conduct--that he has lived an imaginative and not a prosaic life; he is +vaguely and pathetically superstitious; and while essentially grand in +his religious magnanimity he is both fascinating and morally formidable +as a man. Those denotements point at Henry Irving's ideal. For his +method it is less easy to find the right description. His mechanical +reiteration of the words that are said to him by Sophia, in the moment +when the fond father knows that his idolised Olivia has fled with her +lover; his collapse, when the harmless pistols are taken from his +nerveless hands; his despairing cry, "If she had but died!"; his +abortive effort to rebuke his darling child in the hour of her +abandonment and misery, and the sudden tempest of passionate affection +with which the great tender heart sweeps away that inadequate and paltry +though eminently appropriate morality, and takes its idol to itself as +only true love can do--those were instances of high dramatic achievement +for which epithets are inadequate, but which the memory of the heart +will always treasure. + +It was said by the poet Aaron Hill, in allusion to Barton Booth, that +the blind might have seen him in his voice and the deaf might have heard +him in his visage. Such a statement made concerning an actor now would +be deemed extravagant. But, turning from the Vicar to his cherished +daughter, that felicitous image comes naturally into the mind. To think +of Ellen Terry as Olivia will always be to recall one especial and +remarkable moment of beauty and tenderness. It is not her distribution +of the farewell gifts, on the eve of Olivia's flight--full although that +was of the emotion of a good heart torn and tortured by the conflict +between love and duty--and it is not the desperate resentment with which +Olivia beats back her treacherous betrayer, when, at the climax of his +baseness, he adds insult to heartless perfidy. Those, indeed, were made +great situations by the profound sincerity and the rich, woman-like +passion of the actress. But there was one instant, in the second act of +the play, when the woman's heart has at length yielded to her lover's +will, and he himself, momentarily dismayed by his own conquest, strives +to turn back, that Ellen Terry made pathetic beyond description. The +words she spoke are simply these, "But I said I would come!" What +language could do justice to the voice, to the manner, to the sweet, +confiding, absolute abandonment of the whole nature to the human love by +which it had been conquered? The whole of that performance was +astonishing, was thrilling, with knowledge of the passion of love. That +especial moment was the supreme beauty of it. At such times human nature +is irradiated with a divine fire, and art fulfils its purpose. + + + + +VII. + +ON JEFFERSON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. + + +Joseph Jefferson has led a life of noble endeavour and has had a career +of ample prosperity, culminating in honourable renown and abundant +happiness. He was born in Philadelphia, February 20, 1829. He went on +the stage when he was four years old and he has been on the stage ever +since. His achievements as an actor have been recognised and accepted +with admiration in various parts of the world; in Australia and New +Zealand and in England, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as in the United +States. Among English-speaking actors he is the foremost living +representative of the art of eccentric comedy. He has not, of late +years, played a wide range of parts, but, restricting himself to a few +characters, and those of a representative kind, the manner in which he +has acted them is a perfect manner--and it is this that has gained for +him his distinctive eminence. Jefferson, however, is not simply and +exclusively an actor. His mind is many sided. He has painted landscape +pictures of a high order of merit,--pictures in which elusive moods and +subtle sentiments of nature are grasped with imaginative insight and +denoted and interpreted with a free, delicate, and luminous touch. He +has also addressed the public as an author. He has written an easy, +colloquial account of his own life, and that breezy, off-hand, +expeditious work,--after passing it as a serial through their Century +Magazine,--the Century Company has published in a beautiful volume. It +is a work that, for the sake of the writer, will be welcomed everywhere, +and, for its own sake as well as his, will everywhere be preserved. + +Beginning a theatrical career nearly sixty years ago (1833), roving up +and down the earth ever since, and seldom continuing in one place, +Jefferson has had uncommon opportunities of noting the development of +the United States and of observing, in both hemispheres, the changeful +aspect of one of the most eventful periods in the history of the world. +Actors, as a class, know nothing but the stage and see nothing but the +pursuit in which they are occupied. Whoever has lived much among them +knows that fact, from personal observation. Whoever has read the various +and numerous memoirs that have from time to time been published by +elderly members of that profession must have been amused to perceive +that, while they conventionally agree that "all the world's a stage," +they are enthusiastically convinced that the stage is all the world. +Jefferson's book, although it contains much about the theatre, shows him +to be an exception in this respect, even as he is in many others. He has +seen many countries and many kinds of men and things, and he has long +looked upon life with the thoughtful gaze of a philosopher as well as +the wise smile of a humourist. He can, if he likes, talk of something +besides the shop. His account of his life "lacks form a little," and his +indifference to "accurate statistics"--which he declares to be "somewhat +tedious"--is now and then felt to be an embarrassment. One would like to +know, for instance, while reading about the primitive theatrical times, +when actors sailed the western rivers in flatboats, and shot beasts and +birds on the bank, precisely the extent and limits of that period. Nor +is this the only queer aspect of the dramatic past that might be +illumined. The total environment of a man's life is almost equally +important with the life itself--being, indeed, the scenery amid which +the action passes--and a good method for the writing of a biography is +that which sharply defines the successive periods of childhood, youth, +manhood, and age, and, while depicting the development of the individual +from point to point, depicts also the entire field through which he +moves, and the mutations, affecting his life, that occur in the historic +and social fabric around him. Jefferson, while he has painted vigorously +and often happily, on a large canvas, has left many spaces empty and +others but thinly filled. The reader who accompanies him may, +nevertheless, with a little care, piece out the story so as to perceive +it as a sequent, distinct, harmonious, and rounded narrative. Meanwhile +the companionship of this heedless historian is delightful--for whether +as actor, painter, or writer, Jefferson steadily exerts the charm of a +genial personality. You are as one walking along a country road, on a +golden autumn day, with a kind, merry companion, who knows all about +the trees that fringe your track and the birds that flit through their +branches, and who beguiles the way with many a humorous tale and many a +pleasant remembrance, now impressing your mind by the sagacity of his +reflections, now touching your heart by some sudden trait of sentiment +or pathos, and always pleasing and satisfying you with the consciousness +of a sweet, human, broad, charitable, piquant nature. Although an +autobiographer Jefferson is not egotistical, and although a moralist he +is not a bore. There is a tinge of the Horatian mood in him--for his +reader often becomes aware of that composed, sagacious, half-droll, +quizzical mind that indicates, with grave gentleness, the folly of +ambition, the vanity of riches, the value of the present hour, the +idleness of borrowing trouble, the blessing of the golden medium in +fortune, the absurdity of flatterers, and the comfort of keeping a +steadfast spirit amid the inevitable vicissitudes of this mortal state. + +Jefferson has memories of a boyhood that was passed in Washington, +Baltimore, and New York. He went to Chicago in 1838, when that place was +scarcely more than a village--making the journey from New York to +Buffalo in a canal-boat, and sailing thence, aboard a steamer, through +the lakes of Erie, Huron, and Michigan. He travelled with his parents, +and they gave dramatic performances, in which he assisted, in western +towns. It was a time of poverty and hardship, but those ills were borne +cheerfully--the brighter side of a hard life being kept steadily in +view, and every comic incident of it being seen and appreciated. His +father was a gentleman of the Mark Tapley temperament, who came out +strong amid adverse circumstances, and the early disappearance from the +book of that delightful person (who died in 1842, of yellow fever, at +Mobile), is a positive sorrow. His mother, a refined and gentle lady, of +steadfast character and of uncommon musical and dramatic talents and +accomplishments, survived till 1849, and her ashes rest in Ronaldson's +cemetery, in Philadelphia. Jefferson might have said much more about his +parents, and especially about his famous grandfather, without risk of +becoming tedious--for they were remarkably interesting people; but he +was writing his own life and not theirs, and he has explained that he +likes not to dwell much upon domestic matters. The story of his long +ancestry of actors, which reaches back to the days of Garrick (for there +have been five generations of the Jeffersons upon the stage), he has not +mentioned; and the story of his own young days is hurried rapidly to a +conclusion. He was brought on the stage, when a child, at the theatre in +Washington, D.C., by the negro comedian Thomas D. Rice, who emptied him +out of a bag; and thereupon, being dressed as "a nigger dancer," in +imitation of Rice, he performed the antics of Jim Crow. He adverts to +his first appearance in New York and remembers his stage combat with +Master Titus; and he thinks that Master Titus must remember it +also,--since one of that boy's big toes was nearly cut off in the fray. +That combat occurred at the Franklin theatre, September 30, 1837--a +useful fact that the autobiographer cares not to mention. He speedily +becomes a young man, as the reader follows him through the first three +chapters of his narrative,--of which there are seventeen,--and he is +found to be acting, as a stock player, in support of James W. Wallack, +Junius Brutus Booth, W.C. Macready, and Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Wallack, Jr. +Upon the powers and peculiarities of those actors, and upon the traits +of many others who, like them, are dead and gone (for there is scarcely +a word in the book about any of his living contemporaries), he comments +freely and instructively. He was "barn-storming" in Texas when the +Mexican war began, and he followed in the track of the American army, +and acted in the old Spanish theatre in Matamoras, in the spring of +1846; and, subsequently, finding that this did no good, he opened a +stall there for the sale of coffee and other refreshments, in the corner +of a gambling hell. He calls to mind the way of domestic life and the +every-day aspect of houses, gardens, people, and manners in Matamoras, +and those he describes with especial skill--deftly introducing the +portraiture of a dusky, black-eyed, volatile Mexican girl, to whom he +lost, temporarily, the light heart of youth, and whom he thinks that he +might have married had he not deemed it prudent to journey northward +toward a cooler clime. In New Orleans, at about that time, he first saw +the then young comedian John E. Owens: and he records the fact that his +ambition to excel as an actor was awakened by the spectacle of that +rival's success. Owens has had his career since then,--and a brilliant +one it was,--and now he sleeps in peace. + +After that experience Jefferson repaired to Philadelphia, and during the +next ten years, from 1846 to 1856, he wrought in that city and in New +York, Baltimore, Richmond, and other places, sometimes as a stock actor, +sometimes as a star, and sometimes as a manager. He encountered various +difficulties. He took a few serious steps and many comic ones. He was +brought into contact with some individuals that were eminent and with +some that were ludicrous. He crossed the Allegheny mountains in +mid-winter, from Wheeling to Cumberland, in a cold stage-coach, and +almost perished. He was a member of Burton's company at the Arch Street +theatre, Philadelphia, and was one of the chorus in that great actor's +revival of _Antigone_--which there is little doubt that the chorus +extinguished. He was the low comedian in Joseph Foster's amphitheatre, +where he sang _Captain Kidd_ to fill up the "carpenter scenes," and +where he sported amid the turbulent rhetorical billows of _Timour the +Tartar_ and _The Terror of the Road_. He acted in New York at the +Franklin theatre and also at the Chatham. He managed theatres in Macon +and Savannah, where he brought out the blithe Sir William Don; and one +of the sprightliest episodes of his memoir is the chapter in which he +describes that tall, elegant, nonchalant adventurer. Don was a +Scotchman, born in 1826, who made his first appearance in America in +November 1850 at the Broadway theatre, New York, and afterward drifted +aimlessly through the provincial theatres. Don was married in 1857 to +Miss Emily Sanders, and he died at Tasmania, March 19, 1862, and was +buried at Hobartstown. Jefferson saw the dawn of promise in the career +of Julia Dean,--when that beautiful girl was acting with him, in the +stock--and afterwards he saw the noonday splendour of her prosperity; +and he might have recalled, but that sad touches are excluded from his +biography, her mournful decline. In 1853 he was stage manager of the +Baltimore museum, for Henry C. Jarrett, and in 1854 he was manager of +the Richmond theatre, for John T. Ford. Among the players whom he met, +and who deeply influenced him, were James E. Murdoch, Henry Placide, +Edwin Forrest, Edwin Adams, and Agnes Robertson. But the actor who most +affected the youth of Joseph Jefferson, whose influence sank deepest +into his heart and has remained longest in his memory and upon his +style, was his half-brother, Charles Burke: and certainly, as a +serio-comic actor, it may be doubted whether Charles Burke ever was +surpassed. That comedian was born March 27, 1822, in Philadelphia, and +he died in New York, November 10, 1854. Jefferson's mother, Cornelia +Frances Thomas, born in New York, October 1, 1796, the daughter of +French parents, was married in her girlhood to the Irish comedian Thomas +Burke, who died in 1824; and she contracted her second marriage, with +Jefferson's father, in 1826. Jefferson writes at his best in the +description of scenery, in the analysis of character, and in the +statement of artistic principles. His portraiture of Murdoch, as a +comedian, is particularly clear and fine. His account of Julia Dean's +hit, as Lady Priory, is excellent and will often be cited. His portrayal +of the reciprocal action of Burton and Charles Burke, when they were +associated in the same piece, conveys a valuable lesson. His anecdotes +of Edwin Forrest present that grim figure as yet again the involuntary +cause of mirth. It often was so. Jefferson, however, draws a veil of +gentle charity over those misused powers, that perverse will, that +wasted life. The most striking dramatic portraiture in the book is that +bestowed on Charles Burke, William Warren, George Holland, Tom Glessing, +and Edwin Adams. Those were men who lived in Jefferson's affections, and +when he wrote about them he wrote from the heart. The sketch of +Glessing, whom everybody loved that ever knew him, is in a touching +strain of tender remembrance. + +Jefferson visited England and France in 1856, but not to act. At that +time he saw the famous English comedians Compton, Buckstone, Robson, and +Wright, and that extraordinary actor, fine alike in tragedy and comedy, +the versatile Samuel Phelps. In 1857 he was associated with Laura Keene +at her theatre in New York; and from that date onward his career has +been upon a high and sunlit path, visible to the world. His first part +at Laura Keene's theatre was Dr. Pangloss. Then came _Our American +Cousin_, in which he gained a memorable success as Asa Trenchard, and in +which Edward A. Sothern laid the basis of that fantastic structure of +whim and grotesque humour that afterward became famous as Lord +Dundreary. Sothern, Laura Keene, and William Rufus Blake, of course, +gained much of Jefferson's attention at that time, and he has not +omitted to describe them. His account of Blake, however, does not impart +an adequate idea of the excellence of that comedian. In 1858 he went to +the Winter Garden theatre, and was associated with the late Dion +Boucicault. His characters then were Newman Hoggs, Caleb Plummer, and +Salem Scudder--in _Nicholas Nickleby_, _The Cricket on the Hearth_, and +_The Octoroon_. Mr. Boucicault told him not to make Caleb Plummer a +solemn character at the beginning--a deliverance that Jefferson seems to +have cherished as one of colossal wisdom. He made a brilliant hit in +Salem Scudder, and it was then that he determined finally to assume the +position of a star. "Art has always been my sweetheart," exclaims +Jefferson, "and I have loved her for herself alone." No observer can +doubt that who has followed his career. It was in 1859 that he reverted +to the subject of Rip Van Winkle, as the right theme for his dramatic +purpose. He had seen Charles Burke as Rip, and he knew the several +versions of Washington Irving's story that had been made for the theatre +by Burke, Hackett, and Yates. The first Rip Van Winkle upon the stage, +of whom there is any record in theatrical annals, was Thomas Flynn +(1804-1849). That comedian, the friend of the elder Booth, acted the +part for the first time on May 24, 1828, at Albany. Charles B. Parsons, +who afterward acted in many theatres as Rip, and ultimately became a +preacher, was, on that night, the performer of Derrick. Jefferson's +predecessors as Rip Van Winkle were remarkably clever men--Flynn, +Parsons, Burke, Chapman, Hackett, Yates, and William Isherwood. But it +remained for Jefferson to do with that character what no one else had +ever thought of doing--to lift it above the level of the tipsy rustic +and make it the poetical type of the drifting and dreaming +vagrant--half-haunted, half-inspired, a child of the trees and the +clouds. Jefferson records that he was lying on the hay in a barn in +Paradise Valley, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1859, taking advantage +of a rainy day to read Washington Irving's _Life and Letters_, when that +plan came to him. It proved an inspiration of happiness to thousands of +people all over the world. The comedian made a play for himself, on the +basis of Charles Burke's play, but with one vital improvement--he +arranged the text and business of the supernatural scene so that Rip +only should speak, while the ghosts should remain silent. That stroke of +genius accomplished his object. The man capable of that exploit in +dramatic art could not fail to win the world, because he would at once +fascinate its imagination while touching its heart. + +In 1861 Jefferson went to California and thence to Australia, and in the +latter country he remained four years. He has written a fine description +of the entrance to the harbour at Sydney. His accounts of "the skeleton +dance," as he saw it performed by the black natives of that land; of his +meeting with the haunted hermit in the woods; of the convict audience at +Tasmania, for whom he acted in _The Ticket-of-Leave Man_; and of the +entertainment furnished in a Chinese theatre, are compositions that +would impart to any book the interest of adventure and the zest of +novelty. Such pictures as those have a broad background; they are not +circumscribed within the proscenium frame. The man is seen in those +passages as well as the actor; and he plays his part well, amid +picturesque surroundings of evil and peril, of tragedy and of pathos. In +Australia Jefferson met Charles Kean and his wife (Ellen Tree), of whom +his sketches are boldly drawn and his memories are pleasant. Mr. and +Mrs. Kean afterward made their farewell visit to the United States, +beginning, when they reached New York (from San Francisco, in April +1865), with _Henry VIII._, and closing with _The Jealous Wife_. In 1865 +Jefferson went from Australia to South America and passed some time in +Lima, where he saw much tropical luxury and many beautiful ladies--an +inspiriting spectacle, fittingly described by him in some of the most +felicitous of his fervent words. In June 1865 he reached London, and +presently he came forth, at the Adelphi, as Rip Van Winkle,--having +caused the piece to be rewritten by Mr. Boucicault, who introduced the +colloquy of the children, paraphrased for it the recognition scene +between King Lear and Cordelia, and kept Gretchen alive to be married to +Derrick. Mr. Boucicault, however, had no faith in the piece or the +actor's plan, and down to the last moment prophesied failure. +Jefferson's success was unequivocal. Friends surrounded him and in the +gentle and genial record that he has made of those auspicious days some +of the brightest names of modern English literature sparkle on his page. +Benjamin Webster, Paul Bedford, John Billington, John Brougham, and +Marie Wilton were among the actors who were glad to be his associates. +Robertson, the dramatist, was his constant companion--one of the most +intellectual and one of the wittiest of men. Planche, aged yet hearty +and genial (and no man had more in his nature of the sweet spirit of the +comrade), speedily sought him. Charles Reade and Anthony Trollope became +his cronies; and poor Artemas Ward arrived and joined the party just as +Jefferson was leaving it--as bright a spirit, as kind a heart, and as +fine and quaint a humourist as ever cheered this age--from which he +vanished too soon for the happiness of his friends and for the fruition +of his fame. "I was much impressed," says the comedian, "with Ward's +genial manner; he was not in good health, and I advised him to be +careful lest the kindness of London should kill him." That advice was +not heeded, and the kindness of London speedily ended Ward's days. + +Jefferson came home in 1866 and passed ten years in America--years of +fame and fortune, whereof the record is smooth prosperity. Its most +important personal incident was his second marriage, on December 20, +1867, at Chicago, to Miss Sarah Warren. In July 1873 he made a voyage to +Europe, with his wife and William Warren, the comedian, and remained +there till autumn. From November 1, 1875 to April 29, 1876 and from +Easter 1877 until midsummer he was again acting in London, where he +redoubled his former success. In October 1877 he returned home, and +since then he has remained in America. The chronicle that he has written +glides lightly over these latter years, only now and then touching on +their golden summits. The manifest wish of the writer has been to people +his pages as much as possible with the men and women of his artistic +circle and knowledge who would be likely to interest the reader. Robert +Browning, Charles Kingsley, and George Augustus Sala come into the +picture, and there is a pleasing story of Browning and Longfellow +walking arm in arm in London streets till driven into a cab by a summer +shower, when Longfellow insisted on passing his umbrella through the +hole in the roof, for the protection of the cab-driver. Jefferson lived +for one summer in an old mansion at Morningside, Edinburgh, and he +dwells with natural delight on his recollections of that majestic city. +He had many a talk, at odd times, with the glittering farceur Charles +Mathews, about dramatic art, and some of this is recorded in piquant +anecdotes. "By many," says the amiable annalist, "he was thought to be +cold and selfish; I do not think he was so." There is a kind word for +Charles Fechter, whose imitations of Frederick Lemaitre, in _Belphegor, +the Mountebank_, live in Jefferson's remembrance as wonderfully graphic. +There are glimpses of James Wallack, Walter Montgomery, Peter Richings, +E.A. Sothern, Laura Keene, James G. Burnett, John Gilbert, Tyrone Power, +Lester Wallack, John McCullough, John T. Raymond, Mr. and Mrs. Barney +Williams, John Drew (the elder), F.S. Chanfrau, Charlotte Cushman, Mrs. +Drake, and many others; and the record incorporates two letters, not +before published, from John Howard Payne, the author of _Home, Sweet +Home_--a melody that is the natural accompaniment of Jefferson's life. +There is a pretty picture of that ancient supper-room at No. 2 Bulfinch +Place, Boston--Miss Fisher's kitchen--as it appeared when William Warren +sat behind the mound of lobsters, at the head of the table, while the +polished pewters reflected the cheerful light, and wit and raillery +enlivened the happy throng, and many a face was wreathed with smiles +that now is dark and still forever. In one chapter Jefferson sets forth +his views upon the art of acting; and seldom within so brief a compass +will so many sensible reflections be found so simply and tersely +expressed. The book closes with words of gratitude for many blessings, +and with an emblematic picture of a spirit resigned to whatever +vicissitudes of fortune may yet be decreed. + +Jefferson's memoir is a simple message to simple minds. It will find its +way to thousands of readers to whom a paper by Addison or an essay by +Hume would have no meaning. It will point for them the moral of a good +life. It will impress them with the spectacle of a noble actor, +profoundly and passionately true to the high art by which he lives, +bearing eloquent testimony to its beauty and its worth, and to the fine +powers and sterling virtues of the good men and women with whom he has +been associated in its pursuit. It will display to them--and to all +others who may chance to read it--a type of that absolute humility of +spirit which yet is perfectly compatible with a just pride of intellect. +It will help to preserve interesting traits of famous actors of an +earlier time, together with bright stories that illumine the dry +chronicle of our theatrical history. And, in its simple record of the +motives by which he has been impelled, and the artistic purposes that he +has sought to accomplish, it will remain an eloquent, vital, +indestructible memorial to the art and the character of a great +comedian, when the present reality of his exquisite acting shall have +changed to a dim tradition and a fading memory of the past. + + + + +VIII. + +ON JEFFERSON'S ACTING. + + +Fifty years from now the historian of the American stage, if he should +be asked to name the actor of this period who was most beloved by the +people of this generation, will answer that it was Joseph Jefferson. +Other actors of our time are famous, and they possess in various degrees +the affection of the public. Jefferson is not only renowned but +universally beloved. To state the cause of this effect is at once to +explain his acting and to do it the honour to which it is entitled. That +cause can be stated in a single sentence. Jefferson is at once a poetic +and a human actor, and he is thus able to charm all minds and to win all +hearts. His success, therefore, is especially important not to himself +alone but to the people. + +Public taste is twofold. It has a surface liking, and it has a deep, +instinctive, natural preference. The former is alert, capricious, +incessant, and continually passes from fancy to fancy. It scarcely knows +what it wants, except that it wants excitement and change. Those persons +in the dramatic world who make a point to address it are experimental +speculators, whose one and only object is personal gain, and who are +willing and ready to furnish any sort of entertainment that they think +will please a passing caprice, and thereby will turn a penny for +themselves. To judge the public entirely by this surface liking is to +find the public what Tennyson once called it--a many-headed beast. With +that animal every paltry and noxious thing can be made, for a time, to +flourish; and that fact leads observers who do not carefully look +beneath the surface to conclude that the public is always wrong. But the +deep preference of the public comes into the question, and observers who +are able to see and to consider that fact presently perceive that the +artist, whether actor or otherwise, who gives to the public, not what it +says it wants but what it ought to have, is in the long run the victor. +The deep preference is for the good thing, the real thing, the right. It +is not intelligent. It does not go with thinking and reasoning. It does +not pretend to have grounds of belief. It simply responds. But upon the +stage the actor who is able to reach it is omnipotent. Jefferson +conspicuously is an actor who appeals to the deep, instinctive, natural +preference of humanity, and who reaches it, arouses it, and satisfies +it. Throughout the whole of his mature career he has addressed the +nobler soul of humanity and given to the people what they ought to have; +and the actor who is really able to do that naturally conquers +everything. It is not a matter of artifice and simulation; it is a +matter of being genuine and not a sham. + +Still further, Jefferson has aroused and touched and satisfied the +feelings of the people, not by attempting to interpret literature but by +being an actor. An actor is a man who acts. He may be an uneducated man, +deficient in learning and in mental discipline, and yet a fine actor. +The people care not at all for literature. They do not read it, and they +know nothing about it until it is brought home to their hearts by some +great interpreter of it. What they do know is action. They can see and +they can feel, and the actor who makes them see and feel can do +anything with them that he pleases. It is his privilege and his +responsibility. Jefferson is one of those artists (and they are few) who +depend for their effects not upon what authors have written but upon +impersonation. He takes liberties with the text. It would not perhaps be +saying too much to say that he does not primarily heed the text at all. +He is an actor; and speaking with reference to him and to others like +him it would perhaps be well if those persons who write criticisms upon +the stage would come to a definite conclusion upon this point and +finally understand that an actor must produce his effects on the instant +by something that he does and is, and not by rhetoric and elocution, and +therefore that he should not be expected to repeat every word of every +part, or to be a translator of somebody else, but that he must be +himself. If we want the full, literal text of Shakespeare we can stop at +home and read it. What we want of the actor is that he should give +himself; and the true actor does give himself. The play is the medium. A +man who acts Romeo must embody, impersonate, express, convey, and make +evident what he knows and feels about love. He need not trouble himself +about Shakespeare. That great poet will survive; while if Romeo, being +ever so correct, bores the house, Romeo will be damned. Jefferson is an +actor who invariably produces effect, and he produces it by +impersonation, and by impersonation that is poetic and human. + +Jefferson's performance of Acres conspicuously exemplifies the +principles that have been stated here. He has not hesitated to alter the +comedy of _The Rivals_, and in his alteration of it he has improved it. +Acres has been made a better part for an actor, and a more significant +and sympathetic part for an audience. You could not care particularly +for Acres if he were played exactly as he is written. You might laugh at +him, and probably would, but he would not touch your feelings. Jefferson +embodies him in such a way that he often makes you feel like laughing +and crying at the same moment, and you end with loving the character, +and storing it in your memory with such cherished comrades of the fancy +as Mark Tapley and Uncle Toby. There is but little human nature in Acres +as Sheridan has drawn him, and what there is of human nature is coarse; +but as embodied by Jefferson, while he never ceases to be comically +absurd, he becomes fine and sweet, and wins sympathy and inspires +affection, and every spectator is glad to have seen him and to remember +him. It is not possible to take that sort of liberty with every author. +You can do it but seldom with Shakespeare; never in any but his juvenile +plays. But there are authors who can be improved by that process, and +Sheridan--in _The Rivals_, not in _The School for Scandal_--is one of +them. And anyway, since it ought to be felt, known, understood, and +practically admitted that an actor is something more than a telegraph +wire, that his personal faculty and testimony enter into the matter of +embodiment and expression, Jefferson's rare excellence and great success +as Acres should teach a valuable lesson, correcting that pernicious +habit of the critical mind which measures an actor by the printed text +of a play-book and by the hide-bound traditions of custom on the stage. +Jefferson has had a royal plenitude of success as an actor, chiefly with +the part of Rip Van Winkle, but also with the characters of Caleb +Plummer, Bob Brierly, Dr. Pangloss, Dr. Ollapod, Mr. Golightly, and Hugh +de Brass. The reason of that success cannot be found in conventional +adherence to stage customs and critical standards. + +Jefferson has gained his great power over the people--of which his great +fame is the shadow--- by giving himself in his art--his own rich and +splendid nature and the crystallised conclusions of his experience. As +an artist, when it comes to execution, he leaves nothing to chance. The +most seemingly artless of his proceedings is absolutely defined in +advance, and never is what heedless observers call impulsive and +spontaneous. But his temperament is free, fluent, opulent, and +infinitely tender; and when the whole man is aroused, this flows into +the moulds of literary and dramatic art and glorifies them. When you are +looking at Jefferson as Acres in the duel scene in _The Rivals_, you +laugh at him, but almost you laugh through your tears. When you see +Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle confronting the ghosts on the lonely +mountain-top at midnight, you see a display of imaginative personality +quite as high as that of Hamlet in tremulous sensibility to supernatural +influence, although wholly apart from Hamlet in altitude of intellect +and in anguish of experience. The poetry of the impersonation, though, +is entirely consonant with Hamlet, and that is the secret of Jefferson's +exceptional hold upon the heart and the imagination of his time. The +public taste does not ask Jefferson to trifle with his art. Its deep, +spontaneous, natural preference feels that he is a true actor, and so +yields to his power, and enjoys his charm, and is all the time improved +and made fitter to enjoy it. He has reached as great a height as it is +possible to reach in his profession. He could if he chose play greater +parts than he has ever attempted; he could not give a better +exemplification than he gives, in his chose and customary achievement, +of all that is distinctive, beautiful, and beneficent in the art of the +actor. + + + + +IX. + +JEFFERSON AND FLORENCE IN OLD COMEDY. + + +A revival of _The Heir at Law_ was accomplished in the New York season +of 1890, with Joseph Jefferson in the character of Dr. Pangloss and +William James Florence in that of Zekiel Homespun. That play dates back +to 1797, a period in which a sedulous deference to conventionality +prevailed in the British theatre, as to the treatment of domestic +subjects; and, although the younger Colman wrote in a more flexible +style than was possessed by any other dramatist of the time, excepting +Sheridan, he was influenced to this extent by contemporary usage, that +often when he became serious he also became artificial and stilted. The +sentimental part of _The Heir at Law_ is trite in plan and hard in +expression. Furthermore that portion of it which, in the character of +Dr. Pangloss, satirises the indigent, mercenary, disreputable private +tutors who constituted a distinct and pernicious class of social +humbugs in Colman's day, has lost its direct point for the present age, +through the disappearance of the peculiar type of imposture against +which its irony was directed. Dr. Pangloss, nevertheless, remains +abstractly a humorous personage; and when he is embodied by an actor +like Jefferson, who can elucidate his buoyant animal spirits, his gay +audacity, his inveterate good-nature, his nimble craft, his jocular +sportiveness, his shrewd knowledge of character and of society, and his +scholar-like quaintness, he becomes a delightful presence; for his +mendacity disappears in the sunshine of his humour; his faults seem +venial; and we entertain him much as we do the infinitely greater and +more disreputable character of Falstaff,--knowing him to be a vagabond, +but finding him a charming companion, for all that. This is one great +relief to the hollow and metallic sentimentality of the piece. Persons +like Henry Moreland, Caroline Dormer, and Mr. Steadfast would be +tiresome in actual life; they belong, with Julia and Falkland and +Peregrine and Glenroy, to the noble army of the bores, and they are +insipid on the stage; but the association of the sprightly and jocose +Pangloss with those drab-tinted and preachy people irradiates even their +constitutional platitude with a sparkle of mirth. They shine, in spite +of themselves. + +Colman's humour is infectious and penetrating. In that quality he was +original and affluent. As we look along the line of the British +dramatists for the last hundred years we shall find no parallel to his +felicity in the use of comic inversion and equivoke, till we come to +Gilbert. Though he was tedious while he deferred to that theatrical +sentimentality which was the fashion of his day (and against which +Goldsmith, in _She Stoops to Conquer_, was the first to strike), he +could sometimes escape from it; and when he did escape he was brilliant. +In _The Heir at Law_ he has not only illumined it by the contrast of Dr. +Pangloss but by the unctuous humour and irresistible comic force of the +character of Daniel Dowlas, Lord Duberly. Situations in a play, in order +to be invested with the enduring quality of humour, must result from +such conduct as is the natural and spontaneous expression of comic +character. The idea of the comic parvenue is ancient. It did not +originate with Colman. His application of it, however, was novel and his +treatment of it--taking fast hold of the elemental springs of mirth--is +as fresh to-day as it was a hundred years ago. French minds, indeed, and +such as subscribe to French notions, would object that the means +employed to elicit character and awaken mirth are not scientifically and +photographically correct, and that they are violent. Circumstances, they +would say, do not so fall out that a tallow-chandler is made a lord. The +Christopher Sly expedient, they would add, is a forced expedient. +Perhaps it is. But English art sees with the eyes of the imagination and +in dramatic matters it likes to use colour and emphasis. Daniel Dowlas, +as Lord Duberly, is all the droller for being a retired tallow-chandler, +ignorant, greasy, conventional, blunt, a sturdy, honest, ridiculous +person, who thinks he has observed how lords act and who intends to put +his gained knowledge into practical use. We shall never again see him +acted as he was acted by Burton, or by that fine actor William Rufus +Blake, or even by John Gilbert--who was of rather too choleric a +temperament and too fine a texture for such an oily and stupidly +complacent personage. But whenever and however he is acted he will be +recognised as an elemental type of absurd human nature made ludicrous by +comic circumstances; and he will give rich and deep amusement. + +It is to be observed, in the analysis of this comedy, that according to +Colman's intention the essential persons in it are all, at heart, human. +The pervasive spirit of the piece is kindly. Old Dowlas, restricted to +his proper place in life, is a worthy man. Dick Dowlas, intoxicated by +vanity and prosperity, has no harm in him, and he turns out well at +last. Even Dr. Pangloss--although of the species of rogue that subsists +by artfully playing upon the weakness of human vanity--is genial and +amiable; he is a laughing philosopher; he gives good counsel; he hurts +nobody; he is but a mild type of sinner--and the satirical censure that +is bestowed upon him is neither merciless nor bitter. Pangloss, in Milk +Alley, spinning his brains for a subsistence, might be expected to prove +unscrupulous; but the moraliser can imagine Pangloss, if he were only +made secure by permanent good fortune, leading a life of blameless +indolence and piquant eccentricity. From that point of view Jefferson +formed his ideal of the character; and, indeed, his treatment of the +whole piece denoted an active practical sympathy with that gentle view +of the subject. He placed before his audience a truthful picture of old +English manners; telling them, in rapid and cheery action, Colman's +quaint story--in which there is no malice and no bitterness, but in +which simple virtue proves superior to temptation, and integrity is +strong amid vicissitudes--and leaving in their minds, at the last, an +amused conviction that indeed "Nature hath framed strange fellows in her +time." His own performance was full of nervous vitality and mental +sparkle, and of a humour deliciously quaint and droll. Dr. Panglass, as +embodied by Jefferson, is a man who always sees the comical aspect of +things and can make you see it with him, and all the while can be +completely self-possessed and grave without ever once becoming slow or +heavy. There was an air of candour, of ingenuous simplicity, of demure +propriety, about the embodiment, that made it inexpressibly funny. There +was no effort and no distortion. The structure of the impersonation +tingled with life, and the expression of it--in demeanour, movement, +facial play, intonation and business--was clear and crisp, with that +absolute precision and beautiful finish for which the acting of +Jefferson has always been distinguished. He is probably the only +American comedian now left, excepting John S. Clarke, who knows all the +traditional embellishments that have gone to the making of this part +upon the stage--embellishments fitly typified by the bank-note business +with Zekiel Homespun; a device, however, that perhaps suggests a greater +degree of moral obliquity in Dr. Pangloss than was intended by the +author. It was exceedingly comical, though, and it served its purpose. +Jefferson has had the character of Pangloss in his repertory for almost +forty years. He first acted it in New York as long ago as 1857, at Laura +Keene's theatre, when that beautiful woman played Cicely and when +Duberly was represented by the lamented James G. Burnett. It takes the +playgoer a long way back, to be thinking about this old piece and the +casts that it has had upon the American stage. _The Heir at Law_ was a +great favourite in Boston thirty years ago and more, when William Warren +was in his prime and could play Dr. Pangloss with the best of them, and +when Julia Bennett Barrow was living and acting, who could play Cicely +in a way that no later actress has excelled. John E. Owens as Pangloss +will never be forgotten. It was a favourite part with John Brougham. And +the grotesque fun of John S. Clarke in that droll character has been +recognised on both sides of the Atlantic. + +In Jefferson's impersonation of Dr. Pangloss the predominant beauty was +spontaneous and perfectly graceful identification with the part. The +felicity of the apt quotations seemed to be accidental. The manner was +buoyant, but the alacrity of the mind was more nimble than the celerity +of the body, and those wise and witty comments that Pangloss makes upon +life, character, and manners flowed naturally from a brain that was in +the vigour and repose of intense animation. The actor was completely +merged in the character, which nevertheless his judgment dominated and +his will directed. No other representative of Pangloss has quite +equalled Jefferson in the element of authoritative and convincing +sincerity. His demure sapience was of the most intense order and it +arose out of great mental excitement. No other actor of the part has +equalled him in softness and winning charm of humour. His embodiment of +Dr. Pangloss has left in the memory of his time an image of eccentric +character not less lovable than ludicrous. + +With Zekiel Homespun, an actor who is true to the author's plan will +produce the impression of an affectionate heart, virtuous principles, +and absolute honesty of purpose, combined with rustic simplicity. +Florence easily reached that result. His preservation of a dialect was +admirably exact. The soul of the part is fraternal love, and when Zekiel +finds that his trusted friend has repulsed him and would wrong his +sister, there is a fine flash of noble anger in the pride and scorn with +which he confronts this falsehood and dishonour. Florence in days when +he used to act the Irish Emigrant proved himself the consummate master +of simple pathos. He struck that familiar note again in the lovely +manner of Zekiel toward his sister Cicely, and his denotement of the +struggle between affection and resentment in the heart of the brother +when wounded by the depravity of his friend was not less beautiful in +the grace of art than impressive in simple dignity and touching in +passionate fervour. In point of natural feeling Zekiel Homespun is a +stronger part than Dr. Pangloss, although not nearly so complex nor so +difficult to act. The sentiments by which it is animated awaken instant +sympathy and the principles that impel command universal respect. No +actor who has attempted Zekiel Homespun in this generation on the +American stage has approached the performance that was given by +Florence, in conviction, in artless sweetness, in truth of passion, and +in the heartfelt expression of the heart. + +Purists customarily insist that the old comedies are sacred; that no one +of their celestial commas or holy hyphens can be omitted without sin; +and that the alteration of a sentence in them is sacrilege. The truth +stands, however, without regard to hysterics: and it is a truth that the +old comedies owe their vitality mostly to the actors who now and then +resuscitate them. No play of the past is ever acted with scrupulous +fidelity to the original text. The public that saw the _Heir-at-Law_ and +the _Rivals_, when Jefferson and Florence acted in them, saw condensed +versions, animated by a living soul of to-day, and therefore it was +impressed. The one thing indispensable on the stage is the art of the +actor. + + + + +X. + +ON THE DEATH OF FLORENCE. + + +The melancholy tidings of the death of Florence came suddenly (he died +in Philadelphia, after a brief illness, November 19, 1891), and struck +the hearts of his friends not simply with affliction but with dismay. +Florence was a man of such vigorous and affluent health that the idea of +illness and death was never associated with him. Whoever else might go, +he at least would remain, and for many cheerful years he would please +our fancy and brighten our lives. His spirit was so buoyant and +brilliant that it seemed not possible it could ever be dimmed. Yet now, +in a moment, his light was quenched and there was darkness on his mirth. +We shall hear his pleasant voice no more and see no more the sunshine of +a face that was never seen without joy and can never be remembered +without sorrow. The loss to the public was great. Few actors within the +last forty years have stood upon a level with Florence in versatility +and charm. His gentleness, his simplicity, his modesty, his affectionate +fidelity, his ready sympathy, his inexhaustibly patience, his fine +talents--all those attributes united with his spontaneous drollery to +enshrine him in tender affection. + +William James Florence, whose family name was Conlin, was born in +Albany, July 26, 1831. When a youth he joined the Murdoch Dramatic +Association, and he early gave evidence of extraordinary dramatic +talent. On December 9, 1849 he made his first appearance on the regular +stage, at the Marshall theatre in Richmond, Virginia, where he +impersonated Tobias, in _The Stranger_. After that he met with the usual +vicissitudes of a young player. He was a member of various stock +companies--notably that of W.C. Forbes, of the Providence museum, and +that of the once-popular John Nickinson, of Toronto and Quebec--the +famous Havresack of his period. Later he joined the company at Niblo's +theatre, New York, under the management of Chippendale and John Sefton, +appearing there on May 8, 1850. He also acted at the Broadway, under +Marshall's management, and in 1852 he was a member of the company at +Brougham's Lyceum. On January 1, 1853 he married Malvina Pray, sister of +the wife of Barney Williams; and in that way those two Irish comedians +came to be domestically associated. + +At that time Florence wrote several plays, upon Irish and Yankee +subjects, then very popular, and he began to figure as a star--his wife +standing beside him. They appeared at Purdy's National theatre, June 8, +1853, and then, and for a long time afterward, they had much popularity +and success. Florence had composed many songs of a sprightly character +(one of them, called _Bobbing Around_, had a sale of more than 100,000 +copies), and those songs were sung by his wife, to the delight of the +public. The Irish drama served his purpose for many years, but he varied +that form of art by occasional resort to burlesque and by incursions +into the realm of melodrama. One of his best performances was that of +O'Bryan, in John Brougham's play of _Temptation, or the Irish Emigrant_, +with which he often graced the stage of the Winter Garden. In that he +touched the extremes of gentle humour and melting pathos. He was +delightfully humorous, also, in Handy Andy, and in all that long line of +Irish characters that came to our stage with Tyrone Power and the elder +John Drew. He had exceptional talent for burlesque, and that was often +manifested in his early days. _Fra Diavolo_, _Beppo_, _Lallah Rookh_, +_The Lady of the Lions_, and _The Colleen Bawn_, were among the +burlesques that he produced, and with those he was the pioneer. + +Engagements were filled by Mr. and Mrs. Florence, at the outset of their +starring tour, in many cities of the republic, and everywhere they met +with kindness and honour. Among the plays written by Florence were _The +Irish Princess_, _O'Neil the Great_, _The Sicilian Bride_, _Woman's +Wrongs_, _Eva_, and _The Drunkard's Doom_. On April 2, 1856 Mr. and Mrs. +Florence sailed for England, and presently they appeared at Drury Lane +theatre, where they at once stepped into favour. The performance of the +_Yankee Gal_ by Mrs. Florence aroused positive enthusiasm--for it was +new, and Mrs. Florence was the first American comic actress that had +appeared upon the English stage. More than two hundred representations +of it were given at that time. Florence used to relate that his +fortunes were greatly benefited by his success in London, and he +habitually spoke with earnest gratitude of the kindness that he received +there. From that time onward he enjoyed almost incessant prosperity. A +tour of the English provincial cities followed his London season. He +acted at Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, and Dublin, +and both his wife and himself became favourites--so that their songs +were sung and whistled in the streets, wherever they went. + +Returning to the United States Mr. and Mrs. Florence renewed their +triumphs, all over the land. In 1861 Florence played some of Burton's +characters in Wallack's theatre--among them being Toodle and Cuttle. At +a later period he made it a custom to lease Wallack's theatre during the +summer, and there he produced many burlesques. In 1863, at the Winter +Garden, he offered _The Ticket-of-Leave Man_ and acted Bob Brierly, +which was one of the best exploits of his life. In 1867 Wallack's old +theatre being then called the Broadway and managed by Barney Williams, +he brought to that house the comedy of _Caste_ and presented it with a +distribution of the parts that has not been equalled. The actors were +Mrs. Chanfrau, Mrs. Gilbert, Mrs. Florence, William Davidge, Owen +Marlowe, Edward Lamb, and Florence--who played George D'Alroy. In 1868 +he presented _No Thoroughfare_ and enacted Obenreizer,--a performance +that established his rank among the leading actors of the time. In 1876 +he made a remarkable hit as the Hon. Bardwell Slote in the play of _The +Mighty Dollar_, by Benjamin E. Woolff. That was the last important new +play that he produced. During the last fifteen years of his life he +offered selections from his accepted repertory. For a time he was +associated with Jefferson--to whom he brought a strength that was deeply +valued and appreciated, equally by that famous actor and by the +public--acting Sir Lucius O'Trigger in _The Rivals_ and Zekiel Homespun +in _The Heir-at-Law_. + +The power of Florence was that of impersonation. He was imaginative and +sympathetic; his style was flexible; and he had an unerring instinct of +effect. The secret of his success lay in his profound feeling, guided by +perfect taste and perfect self-control. He was an actor of humanity, and +he diffused an irresistible charm of truth and gentleness. His place +was his own and it can never be filled. + + * * * * * + +An Epitaph. + +_Here Rest the Ashes of_ +WILLIAM JAMES FLORENCE, +_Comedian_. + +_His Copious and Varied Dramatic Powers, together with the Abundant +Graces of his Person, combined with Ample Professional Equipment and a +Temperament of Peculiar Sensibility and Charm, made him one of the Best +and Most Successful Actors of his Time, alike in Comedy and in Serious +Drama. He ranged easily from Handy Andy to Bob Brierly, and from Cuttle +to Obenreizer. In Authorship, alike of Plays, Stories, Music, and Song, +he was Inventive, Versatile, Facile, and Graceful. In Art Admirable; in +Life Gentle; he was widely known, and he was known only to be loved._ + +HE WAS BORN IN ALBANY, N.Y., + JULY 26, 1831. +HE DIED IN PHILADELPHIA PENN., + NOVEMBER 19, 1891. + + * * * * * + + By Virtue cherished, by Affection mourned, + By Honour hallowed and by Fame adorned, + Here FLORENCE sleeps, and o'er his sacred rest + Each word is tender and each thought is blest. + Long, for his loss, shall pensive Mem'ry show, + Through Humour's mask, the visage of her woe, + Day breathe a darkness that no sun dispels, + And Night be full of whispers and farewells; + While patient Kindness, shadow-like and dim, + Droops in its loneliness, bereft of him, + Feels its sad doom and sure decadence nigh,-- + For how should Kindness live, when he could die! + + The eager heart, that felt for every grief, + The bounteous hand, that loved to give relief, + The honest smile, that blessed where'er it lit, + The dew of pathos and the sheen of wit, + The sweet, blue eyes, the voice of melting tone, + That made all hearts as gentle as his own, + The Actor's charm, supreme in royal thrall, + That ranged through every field and shone in all-- + For these must Sorrow make perpetual moan, + Bereaved, benighted, hopeless, and alone? + Ah, no; for Nature does no act amiss, + And Heaven were lonely but for souls like this. + + + + +XI. + +HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. + + +In his beautiful production of _The Merchant of Venice_ Henry Irving +restored the fifth act, the jailer scene, and the casket scenes in full, +and the piece was acted with strict fidelity to Shakespeare. With Ellen +Terry for Portia that achievement became feasible. With an ordinary +actress in that character the comedy might be tedious--notwithstanding +its bold and fine contrasts of character, its fertility of piquant +incident, and its lovely poetry. Radiant with her fine spirit and +beautiful presence, and animated and controlled in every fibre by his +subtle and authoritative intellect, judiciously cast and correctly +dressed and mounted, Henry Irving's revival of _The Merchant of Venice_ +captured the public fancy; and in every quarter it was sincerely felt +and freely proclaimed that here, at last, was the perfection of stage +display. That success has never faded. The performance was round, +symmetrical, and thorough--every detail being kept subordinate to +intelligent general effect, and no effort being made toward overweening +individual display. + +Shakespeare's conception of Shylock has long been in controversy. +Burbage, who acted the part in Shakespeare's presence, wore a red wig +and was frightful in form and aspect. The red wig gives a hint of low +comedy, and it may be that the great actor made use of low comedy +expedients to cloak Shylock's inveterate malignity and sinister purpose. +Dogget, who played the part in Lord Lansdowne's alteration of +Shakespeare's piece, turned Shylock into farce. Macklin, when he +restored the original play to the stage--at Drury Lane, February 14, +1741--- wore a red hat, a peaked beard, and a loose black gown, playing +Shylock as a serious, almost a tragic part, and laying great emphasis +upon a display of revengeful passion and hateful malignity. So terrible +was he, indeed, that persons who saw him on the stage in that character +not infrequently drew the inference and kept the belief that he was +personally a monster. His look was iron-visaged; the cast of his +manners was relentless and savage. Quin said that his face contained not +lines but cordage. In portraying the contrasted passions of joy for +Antonio's losses and grief for Jessica's elopement he poured forth all +his fire. When he whetted his knife, in the trial scene, he was silent, +grisly, ominous, and fatal. No human touch, no hint of race-majesty or +of religious fanaticism, tempered the implacable wickedness of that +hateful ideal. Pope, who saw that Shylock, hailed it as "the Jew that +Shakespeare drew"--and Pope, among other things, was one of the editors +of Shakespeare. Cooke, who had seen Macklin's Shylock, and also those of +Henderson, King, Kemble, and Yates, adopted, maintained, and transmitted +the legend of Macklin. Edmund Kean, who worshipped Cooke, was +unquestionably his imitator in Shylock; but it seems to have been Edmund +Kean who, for the first time, gave prominence to the Hebraic majesty and +fanatical self-consecration of that hateful but colossal character. +Jerrold said that Kean's Shylock was like a chapter of Genesis. +Macready--whose utterance of "Nearest his heart" was the blood-curdling +keynote of his whole infernal ideal--declared the part to be "composed +of harshness," and he saw no humanity in the lament for the loss of +Leah's ring, but only a lacerated sense of the value of that jewel. +Brooke, a great Shylock, concurred with Kean's ideal and made the Jew +orientally royal, the avenger of his race, having "an oath in heaven," +and standing on the law of "an eye for an eye." Edwin Forrest, the elder +Wallack, E.L. Davenport, Edwin Booth, Bogumil Davison, and Charles Kean +steadily kept Shylock upon the stage,--some walking in the religious +track and some leaving it. But the weight of opinion and the spirit and +drift of the text would justify a presentment of the Jew as the +incarnation not alone of avarice and hate, but of the stern, terrible +Mosaic law of justice. That is the high view of the part, and in +studying Shakespeare it is safe to prefer the high view. + +There must be imagination, or pathos, or weirdness, or some form of +humour, or a personal charm in the character that awakens the soul of +Henry Irving and calls forth his best and finest powers. There is little +of that quality in Shylock. But Henry Irving took the high view of him. +This Jew "feeds fat the ancient grudge" against Antonio--until the law +of Portia, more subtle than equitable, interferes to thwart him; but +also he avenges the wrongs that his "sacred nation" has suffered. His +ideal was right, his grasp of it firm, his execution of it flexible with +skill and affluent with intellectual power. If memory carries away a +shuddering thought of his baleful gaze upon the doomed Antonio and of +his horrid cry of the summons "Come, prepare!" it also retains the image +of a father convulsed with grief--momentarily, but sincerely--and of a +man who at least can remember that he once loved. It was a most austere +Shylock, inveterate of purpose, vindictive, malignant, cruel, ruthless; +and yet it was human. No creature was ever more logical and consistent +in his own justification. By purity, sincerity, decorum, fanaticism, the +ideal was aptly suggestive of such men as Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes, +and John Felton--persons who, with prayer on their lips, were +nevertheless capable of hideous cruelty. The street scene demands +utterance, not repression. The Jew raves there, and no violence would +seem excessive. Macklin, Kean, Cooke, and the elder Booth, each must +have been terrific at that point. Henry Irving's method was that of the +intense passion that can hardly speak--the passion that Kean is said to +have used so grandly in giving the curse of Junius Brutus upon Tarquin. +But, there was just as much of Shylock's nature in Henry Irving's +performance as in any performance that is recorded. The lack was +overwhelming physical power--not mentality and not art. At "No tears but +of my shedding" Henry Irving's Shylock took a strong clutch upon the +emotions and created an effect that will never be forgotten. + +Ellen Terry's Portia long ago became a precious memory. The part makes +no appeal to the tragic depths of her nature, but it awakens her fine +sensibility, stimulates the nimble play of her intellect, and cordially +promotes that royal exultation in the affluence of physical vitality and +of spiritual freedom that so often seems to lift her above the common +earth. There have been moments when it seemed not amiss to apply +Shakespeare's own beautiful simile to the image of queen-like +refinement, soft womanhood, and spiritualised intellect that this +wonderful actress presented--"as if an angel dropped down from the +clouds." Her Portia was stately, yet fascinating; a woman to inspire awe +and yet to captivate every heart. Nearer to Shakespeare's meaning than +that no actress can ever go. The large, rich, superb manner never +invalidated the gentle blandishments of her sex. The repressed ardour, +the glowing suspense, the beautiful modesty and candour with which she +awaited the decision of the casket scene, showed her to be indeed all +woman, and worthy of a true man's love. Here was no paltering of a puny +nature with great feelings and a great experience. And never in our day +has the poetry of Shakespeare fallen from human lips in a strain of such +melody--with such teeming freedom of felicitous delivery and such dulcet +purity of diction. + + + + +XII. + +JOHN McCULLOUGH IN SEVERAL CHARACTERS. + + +There is no greater gratification to the intellect than the sense of +power and completeness in itself or the perception of power and +completeness in others. Those attributes were in John McCullough's +acting and were at the heart of its charm. His repertory consisted of +thirty characters, but probably the most imposing and affecting of his +embodiments was Virginius. The massive grandeur of adequacy in that +performance was a great excellence. The rugged, weather-beaten plainness +of it was full of authority and did not in the least detract from its +poetic purity and ideal grace. The simplicity of it was like the lovely +innocence that shines through the ingenuous eyes of childhood, while its +majesty was like the sheen of white marble in the sunlight. It was a +very high, serious, noble work; yet,--although, to his immeasurable +credit, the actor never tried to apply a "natural" treatment to +artificial conditions or to speak blank verse in a colloquial +manner,--it was made sweetly human by a delicate play of humour in the +earlier scenes, and by a deep glow of paternal tenderness that suffused +every part of it and created an almost painful sense of sincerity. +Common life was not made commonplace life by McCullough, nor blank verse +depressed to the level of prose. The intention to be real--the intention +to love, suffer, feel, act, defend, and avenge, as a man of actual life +would do--was obvious enough, through its harmonious fulfilment; yet the +realism was shorn of all triteness, all animal excess, all of those +ordinary attributes which are right in nature, and wrong because +obstructive in the art that is nature's interpretation. + +Just as the true landscape is the harmonious blending of selected +natural effects, so the true dramatic embodiment is the crystallization +of selected attributes in any given type of human nature, shown in +selected phases of natural condition. McCullough did not present +Virginius brushing his hair or paying Virginia's school-bills; yet he +suggested him, clearly and beautifully, in the sweet domestic repose +and paternal benignity of his usual life--making thus a background of +loveliness, on which to throw, in lines of living light, the terrible +image of his agonising sacrifice. And when the inevitable moment came +for his dread act of righteous slaughter it was the moral grandeur, the +heart-breaking paternal agony, and the overwhelming pathos of the deed +that his art diffused--not the "gashed stab," the blood, the physical +convulsion, the revolting animal shock. Neither was there druling, or +dirt, or physical immodesty, or any other attribute of that class of the +natural concomitants of insanity, in the subsequent delirium. + +A perfect and holy love is, in one aspect of it, a sadder thing to see +than the profoundest grief. Misery, at its worst, is at least final: and +for that there is the relief of death. But love, in its sacred +exaltation,--the love of the parent for the child,--is so fair a mark +for affliction that one can hardly view it without a shudder of +apprehensive dread. That sort of love was personified in McCullough's +embodiment of Virginius, and that same nameless thrill of fear was +imparted by its presence,--even before the tragedian, with an exquisite +intuition of art, made Virginius convey his vague presentiment, not +admitted but quickly thrust aside, of some unknown doom of peril and +agony. There was, in fact, more heart in that single piece of acting +than in any hundred of the most pathetic performances of the "natural" +school; and all the time it was maintained at the lofty level of classic +grace. It would be impossible to overstate the excellence of all that +McCullough did and said, in the forum scene--the noble severity of the +poise, the grace of the outlines, the terrible intensity of the mood, +the heartrending play of the emotions, the overwhelming delirium of the +climax. Throughout the subsequent most difficult portraiture of +shattered reason the actor never, for an instant, lost his steadfast +grasp upon sympathy and inspiration. Every heart knew the presence of a +nature that could feel all that Virginius felt and suffer and act all +that Virginius suffered and acted; and, beyond this, in his wonderful +investiture of the mad scenes with the alternate vacancy and lamentable +and forlorn anguish of a special kind of insanity, every judge of the +dramatic art recognised the governing touch of a splendid intellect, +imperial over all its resources and instruments of art. + +Virginius as embodied by McCullough was a man of noble and refined +nature; lovely in life; cruelly driven into madness; victorious over +dishonour, by a deed of terrible heroism; triumphant over crime, even in +forlorn and pitiable dethronement and ruin; and, finally, released by +the celestial mercy of death. And this was shown by a poetic method so +absolute that Virginius, while made an actual man to every human heart, +was kept a hero to the universal imagination, whether of scholar or +peasant, and a white ideal of manly purity and grace to that great +faculty of taste which is the umpire and arbiter of the human mind. + +The sustained poetic exaltation of that embodiment, its unity as a grand +and sympathetic personage, and its exquisite simplicity were the +qualities that gave it vitality in popular interest, and through those +it will have permanence in theatrical history. There were many subtle +beauties in it. The illimitable tenderness, back of the sweet dignity, +in the betrothal of Virginia to Icilius; the dim, transitory, evanescent +touch of presentiment, in the forecasting of the festival joys that are +to succeed the war; the self-abnegation and simple homeliness of grief +for the dead Dentatus; the alternate shock of freezing terror and cry of +joy, in the camp scene--closing with that potent repression and +thrilling outburst, "Prudence, but no patience!"--a situation and words +that call at once for splendid manliness of self-command and an ominous +and savage vehemence; the glad, saving, comforting cry to Virginia, "Is +she here?"--that cry which never failed to precipitate a gush of joyous +tears; the rapt preoccupation and the exquisite music of voice with +which he said, "I never saw thee look so like thy mother, in all my +life"; the majesty of his demeanour in the forum; the look that saw the +knife; the mute parting glance at Servia; the accents of broken reason, +but unbroken and everlasting love, that called upon the name of the poor +murdered Virginia; and then the last low wail of the dying father, +conscious and happy in the great boon of death--those, as McCullough +gave them, were points of impressive beauty, invested with the +ever-varying light and shadow of a delicate artistic treatment, and all +the while animated with passionate sincerity. The perfect finish of the +performance, indeed, was little less than marvellous, when viewed with +reference to the ever-increasing volume of power and the evident reality +of afflicting emotion with which the part was carried. If acting ever +could do good the acting of McCullough did. If ever dramatic art +concerns the public welfare it is when such an ideal of manliness and +heroism is presented in such an image of nobility. + +In Lear and in Othello,--as in Virginius,--the predominant quality of +McCullough's acting was a profound and beautiful sincerity. His +splendidly self-poised nature--a solid rock of truth, which enabled him, +through years of patient toil, to hold a steadfast course over all the +obstacles that oppose and amid all the chatter that assails a man who is +trying to accomplish anything grand and noble in art--bore him bravely +up in those great characters, and made him, in each of them, a stately +type of the nobility of the human soul. As the Moor, his performance was +well-nigh perfect. There was something a little fantastic, indeed, in +the facial style that he used; and that blemish was enhanced by the +display of a wild beast's head on the back of one of Othello's robes. +The tendency of that sort of ornamentation--however consonant it may be +deemed with the barbaric element in the Moor--is to suggest him as +heedful of appearances, and thus to distract regard from his experience +to his accessories. But the spirit was true. Simplicity, urged almost to +the extreme of barrenness, would not be out of place in Othello, and +McCullough, in his treatment of the part, testified to his practical +appreciation of that truth. His ideal of Othello combined manly +tenderness, spontaneous magnanimity, and trusting devotion, yet withal a +volcanic ground-swell of passion, that early and clearly displayed +itself as capable of delirium and ungovernable tempest. His method had +the calm movement of a summer cloud, in every act and word by which this +was shown. For intensity and for immediate, adequate, large, and +overwhelming response of action to emotion, that performance has not +been surpassed. There were points in it, though, at which the massive +serenity of the actor's temperament now and then deadened the glow of +feeling and depressed him to undue calmness; he sometimes recovered too +suddenly and fully from a tempest of emotion--as at the agonising appeal +to Iago, "Give me a living reason she's disloyal"; and he was not +enough delirious in the speech about the sybil and the handkerchief. On +the other hand, once yielded to the spell of desecrated feeling, his +mood and his expression of it were immeasurably pathetic and noble. +Those two great ebullitions of despair, "O, now forever," and "Had it +pleased heaven," could not be spoken in a manner more absolutely +heart-broken or more beautifully simple than the manner that was used by +him. In his obvious though silent suffering at the disgrace and +dismissal of Cassio; in the dazed, forlorn agony that blended with his +more active passion throughout the scene of Iago's wicked conquest of +his credulity; in his occasional quick relapses into blind and sweet +fidelity to the old belief in Desdemona; in his unquenchable tenderness +for her, through the delirium and the sacrifice; and in the tone of +soft, romantic affection--always spiritualised, never sensual--that his +deep and loving sincerity diffused throughout the work, was shown the +grand unity of the embodiment; a unity based on the simple passion of +love. To hear that actor say the one supreme line to Iago, "I am bound +to thee forever," was to know that he understood and felt the meaning +of the character, to its minutest fibre and its profoundest depth. + +There were touches of fresh and aptly illustrative "business" in the +encounter of Othello and Iago, in the great scene of the third act. The +gasping struggles of Iago heightened the effect of the Moor's fury, and +the quickly suppressed impulse and yell of rage with which he finally +bounded away made an admirable effect of nature. In the last scene +McCullough rounded his performance with a solemn act of sacrifice. There +was nothing animal, nothing barbaric, nothing insane, in the slaughter +of Desdemona. It was done in an ecstasy of justice, and the atmosphere +that surrounded the deed was that of awe and not of horror. + +For the character of King Lear McCullough possessed the imposing +stature, the natural majesty, the great reach of voice, and the human +tenderness that are its basis and equipment. No actor of Lear can ever +satisfy a sympathetic lover of the part unless he possesses a greatly +affectionate heart, a fiery spirit, and,--albeit the intellect must be +shown in ruins,--a regal mind. Within that grand and lamentable image of +shattered royalty the man must be noble and lovable. Nothing that is +puny or artificial can ever wear the investiture of that colossal +sorrow. McCullough embodied Lear as, from the first, stricken in +mind--already the unconscious victim of incipient decay and dissolution; +not mad but ready to become so. There is a subtle apprehensiveness all +about the presence of the king, in all the earlier scenes. He diffuses +disquietude and vaguely presages disaster, and the observer looks on him +with solicitude and pain. He is not yet decrepit but he will soon break; +and the spectator loves him and is sorry for him and would avert the +destiny of woe that is darkly foreshadowed in his condition. McCullough +gave the invectives--as they ought to be given--with the impetuous rush +and wild fury of the avalanche; and yet they were felt to come out of +agony as well as out of passion. The pathos of those tremendous passages +is in their chaotic disproportion; in their lawlessness and lack of +government; in the evident helplessness of the poor old man who hurls +them forth from a breaking heart and a distracted mind. He loves, and he +loathes himself for loving: every fibre of his nature is in horrified +revolt against such lack of reverence, gratitude, and affection toward +such a monarch and such a father as he knows himself to have been. The +feeling that McCullough poured through those moments of splendid yet +pitiable frenzy was overwhelming in its intense glow and in its towering +and incessant volume. There was remarkable subtlety, also, in the manner +in which that feeling was tempered. In Lear's meeting with Goneril after +the curse you saw at once the broken condition of an aged, infirm, and +mentally disordered man, who had already forgotten his own terrible +words. "We'll no more meet, no more see one another" is a line to which +McCullough gave its full eloquence of abject mournfulness and forlorn +desolation. Other denotements of subtlety were seen in his sad +preoccupation with memories of the lost Cordelia, while talking with the +Fool. "I did her wrong" was never more tenderly spoken than by him. They +are only four little words; but they carry the crushing weight of +eternal and hopeless remorse. It was in this region of delicate, +imaginative touch that McCullough's dramatic art was especially +puissant. He was the first actor of Lear to discriminate between the +agony of a man while going mad and the careless, volatile, fantastic +condition--afflicting to witness, but no longer agonising to the lunatic +himself--of a man who has actually lapsed into madness. Edwin +Forrest--whose Lear is much extolled, often by persons who, evidently, +never saw it--much as he did with the part, never even faintly suggested +such a discrimination as that. + +To one altitude of Lear's condition it is probably impossible for +dramatic art to rise--the mood of divine philosophy, warmed with human +tenderness, in which the dazed but semi-conscious vicegerent of heaven +moralises over human life. There is a grandeur in that conception so +vast that nothing short of the rarest inspiration of genius can rise to +it. The deficiences of McCullough's Lear were found in the analysis of +that part of the performance. He had the heart of Lear, the royalty, the +breadth; but not all of either the exalted intellect, the sorrow-laden +experience, or the imagination--so gorgeous in its disorder, so +infinitely pathetic in its misery. + +His performance of Lear signally exemplified, through every phase of +passion, that temperance which should give it smoothness. The treatment +of the curse scene, in particular, was extraordinarily beautiful for the +low, sweet, and tender melody of the voice, broken only now and +then--and rightly broken--with the harsh accents of wrath. Gentleness +never accomplished more, as to taste and pathos, than in McCullough's +utterance of "I gave you all," and "I'll go with you." The rallying of +the broken spirit after that, and the terrific outburst, "I'll not +weep," had an appalling effect. The recognition of Cordelia was simply +tender, and the death scene lovely in pathos and solemn and affecting in +tragic climax. + +Throughout _Othello_ and _King Lear_ McCullough's powers were seen to be +curbed and guided, not by a cold and formal design but by a grave and +sweet gentleness of mind, always a part of his nature, but more and more +developed by the stress of experience, by the reactionary subduing +influence of noble success, and by the definite consciousness of power. +He found no difficulty in portraying the misery of Othello and of Lear, +because this is a form of misery that flows out of laceration of the +heart, and not from the more subtle wounds that are inflicted upon the +spirit through the imagination. There was no brooding over the awful +mysteries of the universe, nor any of that corroding, haunted gloom that +comes of an over-spiritualised state of suffering, longing, questioning, +doubting humanity. Above all things else Othello and Lear are human; and +the human heart, above all things else, was the domain of that actor. + +The character of Coriolanus, though high and noble, is quite as likely +to inspire resentment as to awaken sympathy. It contains many elements +and all of them are good; but chiefly it typifies the pride of +intellect. This, in itself a natural feeling and a virtuous quality, +practically becomes a vice when it is not tempered with charity for +ignorance, weakness, and the lower orders of mind. In the character of +Coriolanus it is not so tempered, and therefore it vitiates his +greatness and leads to his destruction. Much, of course, can be urged in +his defence. He is a man of spotless honour, unswerving integrity, +dauntless courage, simple mind, straightforward conduct, and magnanimous +disposition. He is always ready to brave the perils of battle for the +service of his country. He constantly does great deeds--and would +continue constantly to do them--for their own sake and in a spirit of +total indifference alike to praises and rewards. He exists in the +consciousness of being great and has no life in the opinions of other +persons. He dwells in "the cedar's top" and "dallies with the wind and +scorns the sun." He knows and he despises with active and immitigable +contempt the shallowness and fickleness of the multitude. He is of an +icy purity, physical as well as mental, and his nerves tingle with +disgust of the personal uncleanliness of the mob. "Bid them wash their +faces," he says--when urged to ask the suffrages of the people--"and +keep their teeth clean." "He rewards his deeds with doing them," says +his fellow-soldier Cominius, "and looks upon things precious as the +common muck of the world." His aristocracy does not sit in a corner, +deedless and meritless, brooding over a transmitted name and sucking the +orange of empty self-conceit: it is the aristocracy of achievement and +of nature--the solid superiority of having done the brightest and best +deeds that could be done in his time and of being the greatest man of +his generation. It is as if a Washington, having made and saved a +nation, were to spurn it from him with his foot, in lofty and by no +means groundless contempt for the ignorance, pettiness, meanness, and +filth of mankind. The story of Coriolanus, as it occurs in Plutarch, is +thought to be fabulous, but it is very far from being fabulous as it +stands transfigured in the stately, eloquent tragedy of Shakespeare. The +character and the experience are indubitably representative. It was some +modified form of the condition thus shown that resulted in the treason +and subsequent ruin of Benedict Arnold. Pride of intellect largely +dominated the career of Aaron Burr. More than one great thinker has +split on that rock, and gone to pieces in the surges of popular +resentment. "No man," said Dr. Chapin, in his discourse over the coffin +of Horace Greeley, "can lift himself above himself." He who repudiates +the humanity of which he is a part will inevitably come to sorrow and +ruin. It is perfectly true that no intellectual person should in the +least depend upon the opinions of others--which, in the nature of +things, exist in all stages of immaturity, mutability, and error--but +should aim to do the greatest deeds and should find reward in doing +them: yet always the right mood toward humanity is gentleness and not +scorn. "Thou, my father," said Matthew Arnold, in his tribute to one of +the best men of the century, "wouldst not be saved alone." To enlighten +the ignorant, to raise the weak, to pity the frail, to disregard the +meanness, ingratitude, misapprehension, dulness, and petty malice of the +lower orders of humanity--that is the wisdom of the wise; and that is +accordant with the moral law of the universe, from the operation of +which no man escapes. To study, in Shakespeare, the story of Coriolanus +is to observe the violation of that law and the consequent retribution. + + "Battles, and the breath + Of stormy war and violent death" + +fill up the first part of the tragedy as it stands in Shakespeare, and +that portion is also much diversified with abrupt changes of scene; so +that it has been found expedient to alter the piece, with a view to its +more practical adaptation to the stage. While however it is not acted in +strict accordance with Shakespeare its essential parts are retained and +represented. Many new lines, though, occur toward the close. McCullough +used the version that was used by Forrest, who followed in the footsteps +of Cooper, the elder Vandenhoff, and James R. Anderson. There is, +perhaps, an excess of foreground--a superfluity of fights and +processions--by way of preparing for the ordeal through which the +character of Coriolanus is to be displayed. Yet when Hecuba at last is +reached the interest of the situation makes itself felt with force. The +massive presence and stalwart declamation of Edwin Forrest made him +superb in this character; but the embodiment of Coriolanus by +McCullough, while equal to its predecessor in physical majesty, was +superior to it in intellectual haughtiness and in refinement. An actor's +treatment of the character must, unavoidably, follow the large, broad +style of the historical painter. There is scant opportunity afforded in +any of the scenes allotted to Coriolanus for fine touches and delicate +shading. During much of the action the spectator is aware only of an +imperial figure that moves with a mountainous grace through the fleeting +rabble of Roman plebeians and Volscians, dreadful in war, loftily calm +in peace, irradiating the conscious superiority of power, dignity, +worth, and honourable renown. McCullough filled that aspect of the part +as if he had been born for it. His movements had the splendid repose +not merely of great strength but of intellectual poise and native mental +supremacy. The "I must be found" air of Othello was again displayed, in +ripe perfection, through the Roman toga. His declamation was as fluent +and as massively graceful as his demeanour. If this actor had not the +sonorous, clarion voice of John Kemble, he yet certainly suggested the +tradition of the stately port and dominating step of that great master +of the dramatic art. He looked Coriolanus, to the life. More of poetic +freedom might have been wished, in the decorative treatment of the +person--a touch of wildness in the hair, a tinge of imaginative +exaltation in the countenance, an air of mischance in the gashes of +combat. Still the embodiment was correct in its superficial +conventionality; and it certainly possessed affecting grandeur. Whenever +there was opportunity for fine treatment, moreover, the actor seized and +filled it, with the easy grace of unerring intuition and spontaneity. +The delicacy of vocalism, the movement, the tone of sentiment, and the +manliness of condition--the royal fibre of a great mind--in the act of +withdrawal from the senate, was right and beautiful. It is difficult not +to over-emphasise the physical symbols of mental condition, in the +street scene with "the voices"; but there again the actor denoted a fine +spiritual instinct. To a situation like that of the banishment he proved +easily equal: indeed, he gave that magnificent outburst of scorn with +tremendous power: but it was in the pathetic scene with Volumnia and +Virgilia that he reached the summit of the Shakespearean conception. The +deep heart as well as the imperial intellect of Coriolanus must then +speak. It is, for the distracted son, a moment of agonised and pathetic +conflict: for McCullough it was a moment of perfect adequacy and +consummate success. The stormy utterance of revolted pride and furious +disgust, in the denial of Volumnia's request--the tempestuous outburst, +"I will not do it"--made as wild, fiery, and fine a moment in tragic +acting as could be imagined; but the climax was attained in the pathetic +cry-- + + "The gods look down, and this unnatural scene + They laugh at." + + + + +XIII. + +CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. + + +Making, one summer day, a pilgrimage to the grave of Charlotte Cushman, +I was guided to the place of her rest by one of the labourers employed +about the cemetery, who incidentally pronounced upon the deceased a +comprehensive and remarkable eulogium. "She was," he said, "considerable +of a woman, for a play-actress." Well--she was. The place of her +sepulture is on the east slope of the principal hill in Mount Auburn. +Hard by, upon the summit of the hill, stands the gray tower that +overlooks the surrounding region and constantly symbolises, to eyes both +far and near, the perpetual peace of which it is at once guardian and +image. All around the spot tall trees give shade and music, as the sun +streams on their branches and the wind murmurs in their leaves. At a +little distance, visible across green meadows and the river +Charles,--full and calm between its verdant banks,--rise the "dreaming +spires" of Cambridge. Further away, crowned with her golden dome, towers +old Boston, the storied city that Charlotte Cushman loved. Upon the spot +where her ashes now rest the great actress stood, and, looking toward +the city of her home and heart, chose that to be the place of her grave; +and there she sleeps, in peace, after many a conflict with her stormy +nature and after many sorrows and pains. What terrific ideals of the +imagination she made to be realities of life! What burning eloquence of +poesy she made to blaze! What moments of pathos she lived! What moods of +holy self-abnegation and of exalted power she brought to many a +sympathetic soul! Standing by her grave, on which the myrtle grows dense +and dark, and over which the small birds swirl and twitter in the breezy +silence, remembrance of the busy scenes of brilliant life wherein she +used to move--the pictured stage, the crowded theatre, the wild plaudits +of a delighted multitude--came strongly on the mind, and asked, in +perplexity and sadness, what was the good of it all. To her but little. +Fame and wealth were her cold rewards, after much privation and labour; +but she found neither love nor happiness, and the fullest years of her +life were blighted with the shadow of fatal disease and impending death. +To the world, however, her career was of great and enduring benefit. She +was a noble interpreter of the noble minds of the past, and thus she +helped to educate the men and women of her time--to ennoble them in +mood, to strengthen them in duty, to lift them up in hope of +immortality. She did not live in vain. It is not likely that the +American people will ever suffer her name to drift quite out of their +remembrance: it is a name that never can be erased from the rolls of +honourable renown. + +Charlotte Cushman was born on July 23, 1816, and she died on February +12, 1876. Boston was the place of her birth and of her death. She lived +till her sixtieth year and she was for forty years an actress. Her youth +was one of poverty and the early years of her professional career were +full of labour, trouble, heart-ache, and conflict. The name of Cushman +signifies "cross-bearer," and certainly Charlotte Cushman did indeed +bear the cross, long before and long after, she wore the crown. At first +she was a vocalist, but, having broken her voice by misusing it, she +was compelled to quit the lyric and adopt the dramatic stage, and when +nineteen years old she came out, at New Orleans, as Lady Macbeth. After +that she removed to New York and for the next seven years she battled +with adverse fortune in the theatres of that city and of Albany and +Philadelphia. From 1837 to 1840 she was under engagement at the old Park +as walking lady and for general utility business. "I became aware," she +wrote, "that one could never sail a ship by entering at the cabin +windows; he must serve and learn his trade before the mast. This was the +way that I would henceforth learn mine." + +Her first remarkable hits were made in Emilia, Meg Merrilies, and +Nancy--the latter in _Oliver Twist_. But it was not till she met with +Macready that the day of her deliverance from drudgery really dawned. +They acted together in New York in 1842 and 1843, and in Boston in 1844, +and in the autumn of the latter year Miss Cushman went to England, +where, after much effort, she obtained an opening in London, at the +Princess's, and in 1845 made her memorable success as Bianca. "Since the +first appearance of Edmund Kean, in 1814," said a London journal of +that time, "never has there been such a _debut_ on the stage of an +English theatre." Her engagement lasted eighty-four nights (it was an +engagement to act with Edwin Forrest), and she recorded its result in a +letter to her mother, saying: "All my successes put together since I +have been upon the stage would not come near my success in London, and I +only wanted some one of you here to enjoy it with me, to make it +complete." She acted Bianca, Emilia, Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Haller, and +Rosalind. A prosperous provincial tour followed, and then, in December, +1845, she came out at the Haymarket, as Romeo, her sister Susan +appearing as Juliet. Her stay abroad lasted till the end of the summer +of 1849, and to that period belongs her great achievement as Queen +Katharine. + +From the fall of 1849 till the spring of 1852 Miss Cushman was in +America, and she was everywhere received with acclamation, gathering +with ease both laurels and riches. When she first reappeared, October 8, +1849, at the old Broadway theatre, New York--as Mrs. Haller--she +introduced Charles W. Couldock to our stage, on which he has ever since +maintained his rank as a powerful and versatile actor. He acted the +Stranger and subsequently was seen in the other leading characters +opposite to her own. Miss Cushman's repertory then included Lady +Macbeth, Queen Katharine, Meg Merrilies, Beatrice, Rosalind, Bianca, +Julia, Mariana, Katharine, the Countess, Pauline, Juliana, Lady Gay +Spanker, and Mrs. Simpson. Her principal male characters then, or later, +were Romeo, Wolsey, Hamlet, and Claude Melnotte. In 1852 she announced +her intention of retiring from the stage, and from that time till the +end of her days she wavered between retirement and professional +occupation. The explanation of this is readily divined, in her +condition. There never was a time, during all those years, when she was +not haunted by dread of the disease that ultimately destroyed her life. +From 1852 to 1857 she lived in England, and in the course of that period +she acted many times, in different cities. In December 1854, when dining +with the Duke of Devonshire, at Brighton, she read _Henry VIII._ to the +Duke and his guests, and in that way began her experience as a reader. +In the autumn of 1857 she acted at Burton's theatre, New York, and was +seen as Cardinal Wolsey, and in the early summer of 1858 she gave a +series of "farewell" performances at Niblo's Garden--after which she +again crossed the Atlantic and established her residence in Rome. In +June 1860 the great actress came home again and passed a year in +America. _Oliver Twist_ was given at the Winter Garden in the spring of +1861, when Miss Cushman acted Nancy, and J.W. Wallack, Jr., J.B. +Studley, William Davidge, and Owen Marlowe were in the company. In 1863, +having come from Rome for that purpose, Miss Cushman acted in four +cities, for the benefit of the United States Sanitary Commission, and +earned for it $8267. The seven ensuing years were passed by her in +Europe, but in October 1870 she returned home for the last time, and the +brief remainder of her life was devoted to public readings, occasional +dramatic performances, and the society of friends. She built a villa at +Newport, which still bears her name. She gave final farewell +performances, in the season of 1874-1875, in New York, Philadelphia, and +Boston. Her final public appearance was made on June 2, 1875, at Easton, +Pennsylvania, where she gave a reading. Her death occurred at the Parker +House, in Boston, February 18, 1876, and she was buried from King's +chapel. + +There is a mournful pleasure in recalling the details of Miss Cushman's +life and meditating upon her energetic, resolute, patient, creative +nature. She was faithful, throughout her career, to high principles of +art and a high standard of duty. Nature gave her great powers but +fettered her also with great impediments. She conquered by the spell of +a strange, weird genius and by hard, persistent labour. In this latter +particular she is an example to every member of the dramatic profession, +present or future. In what she was as a woman she could not be +imitated--for her colossal individuality dwelt apart, in its loneliness, +as well of suffering that no one could share as of an imaginative life +that no one could fathom. Without the stage she would still have been a +great woman, although perhaps she might have lacked an entirely suitable +vehicle for the display of her powers. With the stage she gave a body to +the soul of some of Shakespeare's greatest conceptions, and she gave +soul and body both to many works of inferior origin. There is no +likelihood that we shall ever see again such a creation as her Meg +Merrilies. Her genius could embody the sublime, the beautiful, the +terrible, and with all this the humorous; and it was saturated with +goodness. If the love of beauty was intensified by the influence of her +art, virtue was also strengthened by the force of her example and the +inherent dignity of her nature. + + + + +XIV. + +ON THE DEATH OF LAWRENCE BARRETT. + +[Obiit March 20, 1891.] + + +The death of Lawrence Barrett was the disappearance of one of the +noblest figures of the modern stage. During the whole of his career, in +a public life of thirty-five years, he was steadily and continuously +impelled by a pure and fine ambition and the objects that he sought to +accomplish were always the worthiest and the best. His devotion to the +dramatic art was a passionate devotion, and in an equal degree he was +devoted to a high ideal of personal conduct. Doctrines of expediency +never influenced him and indeed were never considered by him. He had +early fixed his eyes on the dramatic sceptre. He knew that it never +could be gained except by the greatest and brightest of artistic +achievements, and to them accordingly he consecrated his life. Whenever +and wherever he appeared the community was impressed with a sense of +intellectual character, moral worth, and individual dignity. Many other +dramatic efforts might be trivial. Those of Lawrence Barrett were always +felt to be important. Most of the plays with which his name is +identified are among the greatest plays in our language, and the spirit +in which he treated them was that of exalted scholarship, austere +reverence, and perfect refinement. He was profoundly true to all that is +noble and beautiful, and because he was true the world of art everywhere +recognised him as the image of fidelity and gave to him the high tribute +of its unwavering homage. His coming was always a signal to arouse the +mind. His mental vitality, which was very great, impressed even +unsympathetic beholders with a sense of fiery thought struggling in its +fetters of mortality and almost shattering and consuming the frail +temple of its human life. His stately head, silvered with graying hair, +his dark eyes deeply sunken and glowing with intense light, his thin +visage pallid with study and pain, his form of grace and his voice of +sonorous eloquence and solemn music (in compass, variety, and sweetness +one of the few great voices of the current dramatic generation), his +tremendous earnestness, his superb bearing, and his invariable authority +and distinction--all those attributes united to announce a ruler and +leader in the realm of the intellect. The exceeding tumult of his spirit +enhanced the effect of this mordant personality. The same sleepless +energy that inspired Loyola and Lanfranc burned in the bosom of this +modern actor; and it was entirely in keeping with the drift of his +character and the tenor of his life that the last subject that occupied +his thoughts should have been the story of Becket, the great +prelate--whom he intended to represent, and to whom in mental qualities +he was nearly allied. In losing Lawrence Barrett the American stage lost +the one man who served it with an apostle's zeal because he loved it +with an apostle's love. + +The essential attributes that Lawrence Barrett did not possess were +enchantment for the public and adequate and philosophic patience for +himself. He gained, indeed, a great amount of public favour, and,--with +reference to an indisputable lack of universal sympathy and +enthusiasm,--he was learning to regard that as a natural consequence of +his character which formerly he had resented as the injustice of the +world. Men and women of austere mind do not fascinate their +fellow-creatures. They impress by their strangeness. They awe by their +majesty. They predominate by their power. But they do not involuntarily +entice. Lawrence Barrett,--although full of kindness and gentleness, +and, to those who knew him well, one of the most affectionate and +lovable of men,--was essentially a man of austere intellect; and his +experience was according to his nature. To some persons the world gives +everything, without being asked to give at all. To others it gives only +what it must, and that with a kind of icy reluctance that often makes +the gift a bitter one. Lawrence Barrett, who rose from an obscure and +humble position,--without fortune, without friends, without favouring +circumstances, without education, without help save that of his talents +and his will,--was for a long time met with indifference, or frigid +obstruction, or impatient disparagement. He gained nothing without +battle. He had to make his way by his strength. His progress involved +continual effort and his course was attended with continual controversy +and strife. When at last it had to be conceded that he was a great +actor, the concession was, in many quarters, grudgingly made. Even then +detraction steadily followed him, and its voice--though impotent and +immeasurably trivial--has not yet died away. There came a time when his +worth was widely recognised, and from that moment onward he had much +prosperity, and his nature expanded and grew calmer, sweeter, and +brighter under its influence. But the habit of warfare had got into his +acting, and more or less it remained there to the last. The assertive +quality, indeed, had long since begun to die away. The volume of +needless emphasis was growing less and less. Few performances on the +contemporary stage are commensurate with his embodiments of Harebell and +Gringoire, in softness, simplicity, poetic charm, and the gentle +tranquillity that is the repose of a self-centred soul. But his deep and +burning desire to be understood, his anxiety lest his effects should not +be appreciated, his inveterate purpose of conquest,--that overwhelming +solicitude of ambition often led him to insist upon his points, to +over-elaborate and enforce them, and in that way his art to some extent +defeated itself by the excess of its eager zeal. The spirit of beauty +that the human race pursues is the spirit that is typified in Emerson's +poem of _Forerunners_--the elusive spirit that all men feel and no man +understands. This truth, undiscerned by him at first, had become the +conviction of his riper years; and if his life had been prolonged the +autumn of his professional career would have been gentle, serene, and +full of tranquil loveliness. + +The achievement of Lawrence Barrett as an actor was great, but his +influence upon the stage was greater than his achievement. Among the +Shakespearian parts that he played were Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, +Othello, Iago, Shylock, Leontes, Cassius, Wolsey, Richard III., Romeo, +and Benedick. Outside of Shakespeare (to mention only a few of his +impersonations) he acted Richelieu, Evelyn, Aranza, Garrick, Claude +Melnotte, Rienzi, Dan'l Druce, Lanciotto, Hernani, King Arthur, and +Ganelon. The parts in which he was superlatively fine,--and in some +respects incomparable,--are Cassius, Harebell, Yorick, Gringoire, King +Arthur, Ganelon, and James V., King of the Commons. In his time he had +played hundreds of parts, ranging over the whole field of the drama, but +as the years passed and the liberty of choice came more and more within +his reach, he concentrated his powers upon a few works and upon a +specific line of expression. The aspect of human nature and human +experience that especially aroused his sympathy was the loneliness of +beneficent intellectual grandeur, isolated by its supremacy and pathetic +in its isolation. He loved the character of Richelieu, and if he had +acted Becket, as he purposed to do, in Tennyson's tragedy, he would have +presented another and a different type of that same ideal--lonely, +austere, passionate age, defiant of profane authority and protective of +innocent weakness against wicked and cruel strength. His embodiment of +Cassius, with all its intensity of repressed spleen and caustic +malevolence, was softly touched and sweetly ennobled with the majesty of +venerable loneliness,--the bleak light of pathetic sequestration from +human ties, without the forfeiture of human love,--that is the natural +adjunct of intellectual greatness. He loved also the character of +Harebell, because in that he could express his devotion to the +beautiful, the honest impulses of his affectionate heart, and his ideal +of a friendship that is too pure and simple even to dream that such a +thing as guile can exist anywhere in the world. Toward the expression, +under dramatic conditions, of natures such as those, the development of +his acting was steadily directed; and, even if he fell short, in any +degree, of accomplishing all that he purposed, it is certain that his +spirit and his conduct dignified the theatrical profession, strengthened +the stage in the esteem of good men, and cheered the heart and fired the +energy of every sincere artist that came within the reach of his +example. For his own best personal success he required a part in which, +after long repression, the torrent of passion can break loose in a +tumult of frenzy and a wild strain of eloquent words. The terrible +exultation of Cassius, after the fall of Caesar, the ecstasy of Lanciotto +when he first believes himself to be loved by Francesca, the delirium of +Yorick when he can no longer restrain the doubts that madden his jealous +and wounded soul, the rapture of King James over the vindication of his +friend Seyton, whom his suspicions have wronged--those were among his +distinctively great moments, and his image as he was in such moments is +worthy to live among the storied traditions and the bright memories of +the stage. + +Censure seems to be easy to most people, and few men are rated at their +full value while they are yet alive. Just as mountains seem more sublime +in the vague and hazy distance, so a noble mind looms grandly through +the dusk of death. So it will be with him. Lawrence Barrett was a man of +high principle and perfect integrity. He never spoke a false word nor +knowingly harmed a human being, in all his life. Although sometimes he +seemed to be harsh and imperious, he was at heart kind and humble. +Strife with the world, and in past times uncertainty as to his position, +caused in him the assumption of a stern and frigid manner, but beneath +that haughty reserve there was a great longing for human affection and a +sincere humility of spirit. He never nurtured hostility. He had no +memory for injuries; but a kindness he never forgot. His good deeds were +as numerous as his days--for no day rolled over his head without its act +of benevolence in one direction or another. He was as impulsive as a +child. He had much of the woman in his nature, and therefore his views +were impetuous, strong, and often strongly stated; but his sense of +humour kept pace with his sensibility and so maintained the equilibrium +of his mind. In temperament he was sad, pensive, introspective, almost +gloomy; but he opposed to that tendency an incessant mental activity and +the force of a tremendous will. In his lighter moods he was not only +appreciative of mirth but was the cause of it. His humour was elemental +and whatever aspect of life he saw in a comic light he could set in that +light before the eyes of others. He had been a studious reader for many +years and his mind was stored with ample, exact, and diversified +information. He had a scholar's knowledge of Roman history and his +familiar acquaintance with the character and career of the first +Napoleon was extraordinary. In acting he was largely influenced by his +studies of Edmund Kean and by his association with Charlotte Cushman. +For a few years after 1864 his art was especially affected by that of +Edwin Booth; but the style to which he finally gravitated was his own. +He was not so much an impersonator as he was an interpreter of +character, and the elocutionary part of acting was made more conspicuous +and important by him than by any other tragedian since the days of +Forrest and Brooke. + +It was a beautiful life prematurely ended. It was a brave, strong +spirit suddenly called out of the world. To the dramatic profession the +loss is irreparable. In the condition of the contemporary theatre there +are not many hopeful signs. No doubt there will be bright days in the +future, as there have been in the past. They go and they return. The +stage declines and the stage advances. At present its estate is low. Few +men like Lawrence Barrett remain for it to lose. Its main hope is in the +abiding influence of such examples as he has left. The old theatrical +period is fast passing away. The new age rushes on the scene, with +youthful vigour and impetuous tumult. But to some of us,--who perhaps +have not long to stay, and to whom, whatever be their fortune, this +tumult is unsympathetic and insignificant,--the way grows darker and +lonelier as we lay our garlands of eternal farewell upon the coffin of +Lawrence Barrett. + + + + +XV. + +HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN RAVENSWOOD. + + +Merivale's play of _Ravenswood_, written in four acts, was acted in six. +The first act consists of a single scene--an exterior, showing the +environment of the chapel which is the burial place of the House of +Ravenswood. A rockbound coast is visible, at some distance, together +with the ruinous tower of Wolf's Crag--which is Ravenswood's sole +remaining possession. This act presents the interrupted funeral of Alan +Ravenswood, the father of Edgar,--introducing ten of the seventeen +characters that are implicated in the piece, and skilfully laying the +basis of the action by exhibiting the essential personalities of the +story in strong contrast, and denoting their relations to each other. +Each character is clearly and boldly drawn and with a light touch. The +second act consists of three scenes--an antique library in the ancient +manor-house of Ravenswood, a room in a roadside ale-house, and a room in +the dilapidated tower of Wolf's Crag. This act rapidly develops the +well-known story, depicting the climax of antagonism between the Lord +Keeper Ashton and Edgar of Ravenswood and their subsequent +reconciliation. The third act passes in a lovely, romantic, rural scene, +which is called "the Mermaiden's Well,"--a fairy-like place in the +grounds of Ravenswood,--and in this scene Edgar and Lucy Ashton, who +have become lovers, are plighted by themselves and parted by Lucy's +mother, Lady Ashton. The fourth and last act shows a room at Ravenswood, +wherein is portrayed the betrothal of Lucy to Bucklaw, culminating in +Edgar's sudden irruption; and finally, it shows the desolate seaside +place of the quicksand in which, after he has slain Bucklaw, Edgar of +Ravenswood is engulfed. The house that Scott, when he wrote the novel, +had in his mind as that of Sir William Ashton is the house of Winston, +which still is standing, not many miles from Edinburgh. The tower of +Wolf's Crag was probably suggested to him by Fast Castle, the ruin of +which still lures the traveller's eye, upon the iron-ribbed and gloomy +coast of the North Sea, a few miles southeast of Dunbar--a place, +however, that Scott never visited, and never saw except from the ocean. +There is a beach upon that coast, just above Cockburnspath, that might +well have suggested to him the quicksand and the final catastrophe. I +saw it when the morning sun was shining upon it and upon the placid +waters just rippling on its verge; and even in the glad glow of a summer +day it was grim with silent menace and mysterious with an air of +sinister secrecy. In the preparation of this piece for the stage all the +sources and associations of the subject were considered; and the +pictorial setting, framed upon the right artistic principle--that +imagination should transfigure truth and thus produce the essential +result of poetic effect--was elaborate and magnificent. And the play is +the best one that ever has been made upon this subject. + +The basis of fact upon which Sir Walter Scott built his novel of the +_Bride of Lammermoor_ is given in the introduction that he wrote for it +in 1829. Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Lord Stair and of his +wife Margaret Ross, had privately plighted herself to Lord Rutherford. +Those lovers had broken a piece of gold together, and had bound +themselves by vows the most solemn and fervent that passion could +prompt. But Lord Rutherford was objectionable to Miss Dalrymple's +parents, who liked not either his family or his politics. Lady Stair, +furthermore, had selected a husband for her daughter, in the person of +David Dunbar, of Baldoon; and Lady Stair was a woman of formidable +character, set upon having her own way and accustomed to prevail. As +soon as she heard of Janet's private engagement to Lord Rutherford she +declared the vow to be undutiful and unlawful and she commanded that it +should be broken. Lord Rutherford, a man of energy and of spirit, +thereupon insisted that he would take his dismissal only from the lips +of Miss Dalrymple herself, and he demanded and obtained an interview +with her. Lady Stair was present, and such was her ascendency over her +daughter's mind that the young lady remained motionless and mute, +permitting her betrothal to Lord Rutherford to be broken, and, upon her +mother's command, giving back to him the piece of gold that was the +token of her promise. Lord Rutherford was deeply moved, so that he +uttered curses upon Lady Stair, and at the last reproached Janet in +these words: "For you, madam, you will be a world's wonder." After this +sad end of his hopes the unfortunate gentleman went abroad and died in +exile. Janet Dalrymple and David Dunbar meanwhile were married--the lady +"being absolutely passive in everything her mother commanded or +advised." As soon, however, as the wedded pair had retired from the +bridal feast hideous shrieks were heard to resound through the house, +proceeding from the nuptial chamber. The door was thereupon burst open +and persons entering saw the bridegroom stretched upon the floor, +wounded and bleeding, while the bride, dishevelled and stained with +blood, was grinning in a paroxysm of insanity. All she said was, "Take +up your bonny bridegroom." About two weeks later she died. The year of +those events was 1669. The wedding took place on August 24. Janet died +on September 12. Dunbar recovered, but he would never tell what occurred +in that chamber of horror, nor indeed would he permit any allusion to +the subject. He did not long survive the tragic event,--having been +fatally injured, by a fall from his horse, when riding between Leith +and Holyrood. He died on March 28, 1682. The death of Lord Rutherford +is assigned to the year 1685. Such is the melancholy story as it may be +gathered from Scott's preface. In writing his novel that great master of +the art of fiction,--never yet displaced from his throne or deprived of +his sceptre,--adopted fictitious names, invented fresh circumstances, +amplified and elevated the characters, judiciously veiled the +localities, and advanced the period of those tragical incidents to about +the beginning of the eighteenth century. The delicate taste with which +he used his materials has only been surpassed, in that beautiful +composition, by the affluent genius with which he vitalised every part +of his narrative. In no other of his many books has he shown a deeper +knowledge than is revealed in that one of the terrible passion of love +and of the dark and sinuous ways of political and personal craft. When +_The Bride of Lammermoor_ was first published no mention was made in it +of the true story upon which remotely it had been based; but by the time +Scott came to write the preface of 1829 other writers had been less +reticent, and some account of the Dalrymple tragedy had got into print, +so that no reason existed for further silence on that subject. + +Sir Robert H.D. Elphinstone, writing in 1829, gave the tradition as +follows: "When, after the noise and violent screaming in the bridal +chamber comparative stillness succeeded and the door was forced, the +window was found open, and it was supposed by many that the lover, Lord +Rutherford, had, by the connivance of some of the servants, found means, +during the bustle of the marriage feast, to secrete himself within the +apartment, and that soon after the entry of the married pair, or at +least as soon as the parents and others retreated and the door was made +fast, he had come out from his concealment, attacked and desperately +wounded the bridegroom, and then made his escape, by the window, through +the garden. As the unfortunate bride never spoke after having uttered +the words mentioned by Sir Walter, no light could be thrown on the +matter by them. But it was thought that Dunbar's obstinate silence on +the subject favoured the supposition of the chastisement having been +inflicted by his rival. It is but fair to give the unhappy victim (who +was, by all accounts, a most gentle and feminine creature) the benefit +of an explanation on a doubtful point." + +Merivale, in dealing with this story, gave a conspicuous illustration +of the essential dramatic faculty. The first act is the adroit expansion +of a few paragraphs, in the second chapter of the novel, which are +descriptive of the bleak, misty November morning when Alan Ravenswood +was borne to the grave; but by the introduction of the Lord Keeper and +of the village crones into that funeral scene he opened the whole +subject, indicated all the essential antecedents of the story, and +placed his characters in a posture of lively action. That the tone is +sombre must be conceded, and people who think that the chief end of man +is to grin might condemn the piece for that reason; but _Ravenswood_ is +a tragedy and not a farce, and persons who wish that their feelings may +not be affected should avoid tragedies. + +In the second act Ravenswood seeks Ashton at Ravenswood manor, intending +to kill him in a duel, but his hand is stayed when he catches sight of +Lucy Ashton's portrait. The incident of Edgar's rescue of Lucy is used +in this scene. In a later scene Sir William Ashton and his daughter take +refuge in Wolf's Crag, and the bewitchment of Ravenswood is +accomplished. The quarrel between Edgar and Bucklaw is then given, as a +basis for the ensuing rivalry and deadly conflict between them. In the +third act there is a beautiful love-scene between Edgar and Lucy, the +dialogue being especially felicitous in tenderness and grace and fraught +with that reverential quality, that condition of commingled ecstasy and +nobleness, which is always characteristic of the experience of this +passion in pure natures. Lady Ashton's interruption of their happiness +and the subsequent parting have a vigorous dramatic effect. The +character of Lucy has been much strengthened, so that it differs from +that of the original precisely as Desdemona differs from Ophelia; and +the change is an improvement. The fourth act opens with "a song of +choristers heard outside." The letters of Lucy and Edgar have been +intercepted. The lady has been told that her lover is false. The suit of +Bucklaw has been urged. The authority of the stern mother has prevailed +over her daughter's will. It is the old story. "The absent are always +wrong"--and Ravenswood is absent. Lucy Ashton yields to her fate. The +marriage contract between Lucy and Bucklaw has just been signed when +Ravenswood bursts into the group. From that point the action is +animated equally with celerity and passion. The misery of Ravenswood +utters itself in a swift stream of burning words. The grief of Lucy ends +tragically in a broken heart and sudden death. The fight between Bucklaw +and Ravenswood clashes for a moment but is abruptly finished on the +moonlit sands, and Edgar is seen to leap down from a rock and rush away +toward the manor, where, as his dying foe has told him, the faithful and +innocent Lucy lies dead. He disappears and comes no more; but his old +servant takes up from the beach a single black plume--the feather of a +raven--which the tide has washed ashore, and which is the last relic and +emblem of the vanished master of Ravenswood. + +The tragedy is kindred, as to its spirit, with _Romeo and Juliet_, and +like that representative poem of love and death it is intensely +passionate, sombre, and lamentable. The first and second acts of it pass +in almost unrelieved shadow. It begins with a funeral; it incorporates +the ingredients of misery, madness, and death; it culminates in a fatal +duel; and it ends in a picture of mortal desolation, qualified only by a +mute suggestion of spiritual happiness conveyed by the pictorial emblem +of the promise of immortality. It is a poetical tragedy, conceived in +the spirit and written in the manner of the old masters of the poetic +art. The treatment of Scott's novel is marked by scrupulous fidelity, +not indeed to every detail of that noble book, but to its essential +quality and tone. The structure of the play reproduces in action +substantially the structure of the original story. The scene in which +Edgar and Lucy avow their love and pledge themselves to each other is +written with exquisite grace and profound tenderness. The picture +presented upon the stage when the lovers are parted was one of +astonishing animation. The scene of the interrupted wedding and of Lucy +Ashton's agony, distraction, and death was one of intense power and +dramatic effect. The duel of Ravenswood and Bucklaw upon the desolate, +moon-lit sands was invested with the excitement of suspense and with +weird horror. And the final exposition of dramatic contrast,--when upon +the wide, bleak beach, with the waste of vacant sea beyond and the +eastern heaven lit with the first splendour of sunrise, the old man +stooped to take up the raven's feather, the last relic of +Ravenswood--was so entirely beautiful that the best of words can but +poorly indicate its loveliness. For an audience able to look seriously +at a serious subject, and not impatient of the foreground of gloom in +which, necessarily, the story is enveloped at its beginning, this was a +perfect work. The student of drama must go back many years to find a +parallel to it, in interest of subject, in balance, in symmetry, and in +sympathetic interpretation of character. + +There is a quality of Hamlet in the character of Ravenswood. He is by +nature a man of a sad mind, and under the pressure of afflicting +circumstances his sadness has become embittered. He takes life +thoughtfully and with passionate earnestness. He is a noble person, +finely sensitive and absolutely sincere, full of kindness at heart, but +touched with gloom; and his aspect and demeanour are those of pride, +trouble, self-conflict--of an individuality isolated and constrained by +dark thoughts and painful experience. That is the mood in which Henry +Irving conceived and portrayed him. You saw a picturesque figure, dark, +strange, romantic--the gravity engendered by thought and sorrow not yet +marring the bronzed face and the elastic movement of youth--and this +personality, in itself fascinating, was made all the more pictorial by +an investiture of romance, alike in the scenery and the incidents +through which it moved. Around such a figure funereal banners well might +wave, and under dark and lowering skies the chill wind of the sea might +moan through monastic ruins and crumbling battlements. Edgar of +Ravenswood, standing by his lonely hearth, beneath the groined arches of +his seaside tower, revealed by the flickering firelight, looked the +ideal of romantic manhood; the incarnation of poetic fancy and of +predestinate disaster. Above the story of _Ravenswood_ there is steadily +and continuously impending, and ever growing darker and coming nearer, +the vague menace of terrible calamity. This element of mystery and dread +was wrought into the structural fibre of Henry Irving's performance of +the part, and consistently coloured it. The face of Edgar was made to +wear that haunted look which,--as in the countenance of Charles the +First, in Vandyke's portraits,--may be supposed, and often has been +supposed, to foreshadow a violent and dreadful death. His sudden tremor, +when at the first kiss of Lucy Ashton the thunder is heard to break +above his ruined home, was a fine denotement of that subtle quality; and +even through the happiness of the betrothal scene there was a hint of +this black presentiment--just as sometimes on a day of perfect sunshine +there is a chill in the wind that tells of approaching storm. All this +is warranted by the prophetic rhymes which are several times spoken, +beginning--"When the last lord of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride." +A crone, Ailsie Gourlay by name, embodied with grim and grisly vigour by +Alice Marriott,--whose ample voice and exact elocution, together with +her formidable stature and her faculty of identification with the +character that she assumes and with the spirit of the story, made her of +great value to this play--hovered around Ravenswood, and aided to keep +this presage of evil doom fitfully present in the consciousness of its +victim. Henry Irving gave to the part its perfectly distinct +individuality, and in that respect made as fine a showing as he has ever +made of his authority as an actor. There was never the least doubt as to +what Ravenswood is and what he means. The peculiar elocution of Henry +Irving, when he is under the influence of great excitement, is not +effective upon all persons; but those who like it consider it far more +touching than a more level, more sonorous, and more accurate delivery. +He wrought a great effect in the scene of the marriage-contract. Indeed, +so powerful, sincere, and true was the acting upon all sides, at this +point, that not until the curtain began to descend was it remembered +that we were looking upon a fiction and not upon a fact. This points to +the peculiar power that Henry Irving and Ellen Terry conspicuously +possess--of creating and maintaining a perfect illusion. + +During the earlier scenes the character of Lucy Ashton is chiefly marked +by the qualities of sweetness and of glee. No one acquainted with the +acting of Ellen Terry would need to be told how well and with what +charming grace those qualities were expressed by her. In the scene of +the wooing, at the Mermaiden's Well, Lucy Ashton was not a cold woman +trying to make herself loved,--which is what most actresses habitually +proffer upon the stage,--but a loving woman, radiant with the +consciousness of the love that she feels and has inspired. Nothing could +be imagined more delicate, more delicious, more enchanting than the +high-bred distinction and soft womanlike tone of that performance. The +character, at the climax of this scene, is made to manifest decision, +firmness, and force; and the superb manner in which she set the +maternal authority at naught and stood by her lover might seem to denote +a nature that no tyranny could subdue. Subdued, however, she is, and +forced to believe ill of her absent lover, and so the fatal marriage +contract is signed and the crash follows. When Ellen Terry came on for +that scene the glee had all vanished; the face was as white as the +garments that enswathed her; and you saw a creature whom the hand of +death had visibly touched. The stage has not at any time heard from any +lips but her own such tones of pathos as those in which she said the +simple words:-- + + "May God forgive you, then, and pity me-- + If God can pity more than mothers do." + +It is not a long scene, and happily not,--for the strain upon the +emotion of the actress was intense. The momentary wild merriment, the +agony of the breaking heart, the sudden delirium and collapse, were not +for an instant exaggerated. All was nature--or rather the simplicity, +fidelity, and grace of art that make the effect of nature. + +Beautiful scenery, painted by Craven, framed the piece with appropriate +magnificence. The several seaside pictures were admirably +representative of the grandeur, the gaunt loneliness, and the glorious +colour for which Scotland is so much loved. + +The public gain in that production was a revival of interest in one of +the most famous novels in the language; the possession of a scenical +pageant that filled the eye with beauty and strongly moved the +imagination; a play that is successful in the domain of romantic poetry; +a touching exemplification of the great art of acting; and once again +the presentment of that vast subject,--the relation of heart to heart, +under the dominion of love, in human society,--that more absorbs the +attention, affects the character, and controls the destiny of the human +race than anything else that is beneath the sun. + + + + +XVI. + +THE MERRY WIVES AND FALSTAFF. + + +Shakespeare wrote _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ in 1601, and during the +Christmas holidays of that year it was presented upon the stage, before +Queen Elizabeth and her court, at Windsor Castle. In 1602 it was +published in London in quarto form, and in 1619 a reprint of that quarto +was published there. The version that appears in the two quartos is +considered by Shakespeare scholars to be spurious. The authentic text, +no doubt, is that of the comedy as it stands in the first folio (1623). +Shakespeare had written _Henry IV._--both parts of it--and also _Henry +V._, when this comedy was acted, and therefore he had completed his +portrait of Falstaff, whose life is displayed in the former piece and +whose death is described in the latter. _Henry IV._ was first printed in +1598 (we know not when it was first acted), and it passed through five +quarto editions prior to the publication of it in the folio of 1623. In +the epilogue to the second part of that play a promise is made that the +story shall be continued, "with Sir John in it," but it is gravely +doubted whether that epilogue was written by Shakespeare. The +continuation of the story occurs in _Henry V._, in which Falstaff does +not figure, although he is mentioned in it. Various efforts have been +made to show a continuity between the several plays in which Falstaff is +implicated, but the attempt always fails. The histories contain the real +Falstaff. The Falstaff of the comedy is another and less important man. +If there really were a sequence of story and of time in the portraiture +of this character plays would stand in the following order: 1, _Henry +IV., Part First_; 2, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_; 3, _Henry IV., Part +Second_; 4, _Henry V._ As no such sequence exists, or apparently was +intended, the comedy should be viewed by itself. Its texture is +radically different from that of the histories. One of the best +Shakespeare editors, Charles Knight, ventures the conjecture that _The +Merry Wives of Windsor_ was written first. Shakespeare invented the +chief part of the plot, taking, however, a few things from Tarlton's +_Newes out of Purgatorie_, which in turn was founded on a story called +The _Lovers of Pisa_. It is possible also that he may have derived +suggestions from a German play by Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick--a +contemporary, who died in 1611--to which _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ +bears some resemblance, and of which he may have received an account +from English actors who had visited Germany, as the actors of his time +occasionally did. + +Tradition declares that he wrote this comedy at the command of Queen +Elizabeth, who had expressed a wish to see Falstaff in love. This was +first stated by John Dennis, in the preface to an alteration of _The +Merry Wives of Windsor_ which was made by him, under the name of _The +Comical Gallant, or the Amours of Sir John Falstaff_, and was +successfully acted at Drury Lane theatre. That piece, which is paltry +and superfluous, appeared in 1702. No authority was given by Dennis for +his statement about Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare's play. The +tradition rests exclusively on his word. Rowe, Pope, Theobald, and other +Shakespeare editors, have transmitted it to the present day, but it +rests on nothing but supposition and it is dubious. Those scholars who +accept the story of Dennis, and believe that Shakespeare wrote the piece +"to order" and within a few days, usually fortify their belief by the +allegation that the comedy falls short of Shakespeare's poetical +standard, being written mostly in prose; that it degrades his great +creation of Falstaff; that it is, for him, a trivial production; and +that it must have been written in haste and without spontaneous impulse. +If judgment were to be given on the quarto version of _The Merry Wives_, +that reasoning would commend itself as at least plausible; but it is +foolish as applied to the version in the folio, where the piece is found +to be remarkable for nimbleness of invention, strength and variety of +natural character, affluent prodigality of animal spirits, delicious +quaintness, exhilarating merriment, a lovely pastoral tone, and many +touches of the transcendent poetry of Shakespeare. Dennis probably +repeated a piece of idle gossip that he had heard, the same sort of +chatter that in the present day constantly follows the doings of +theatrical people,--and is not accurate more than once in a thousand +times. _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ is a brilliant and delightful +comedy, quite worthy of its great author (though not in his most +exalted mood), who probably wrote it because his mind was naturally +impelled to write it, and no doubt laboured over it exactly as he did +over his other writings: for we know, upon the testimony of Ben Jonson, +who personally knew him and was acquainted with his custom as a writer, +that he was not content with the first draught of anything, but wrote it +a second time, and a third time, before he became satisfied with it. Dr. +Johnson, who had studied Shakespeare as carefully as any man ever +studied him, speaking of _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, says that "its +general power--that power by which all works of genius should finally be +tried--is such that perhaps it never yet had reader or spectator who did +not think it too soon at an end." A comedy that deserves such praise as +this--which assuredly is not misplaced--need not be dismissed as a +pot-boiler. + +Knight's conjecture that _The Merry Wives_ was written before the +histories were written is a plausible conjecture, and perhaps worthy of +some consideration. It is not easy to believe that Shakespeare, after he +had created Falstaff and thoroughly drawn him, was capable of lessening +the character and making it almost despicable with paltriness--as +certainly it becomes in _The Merry Wives_. That is not the natural way +of an artistic mind. But it is easier to credit the idea that the +Falstaff of _The Merry Wives_ was the first study of the character, +although not first shown, which subsequently expanded into the +magnificent humorous creation of the histories. Falstaff in the comedy +is a fat man with absurd amorous propensities, who is befooled, +victimised, and made a laughing-stock by a couple of frolicsome women, +who are so much amused by his preposterous folly that they scarcely +bestow the serious consideration of contempt and scorn upon his +sensuality and insolence. No creature was ever set in a more ludicrous +light or made more contemptible,--in a kindly, good-humoured way. The +hysterical note of offended virtue is never sounded, nor is anywhere +seen the averted face of shocked propriety. The two wives are bent on a +frolic, and they will merrily punish this presumptuous sensualist--this +silly, conceited, gross fellow, "old, cold, withered, and of intolerable +entrails." If we knew no more of Falstaff than the comedy tells us of +him we should by no means treasure him as we do now; but it is through +the histories that we learn to know and appreciate him, and it is of the +man portrayed there that we always unconsciously think when, in his +humiliating discomfiture, we hear him declare that "wit may be made a +Jack-a-lent when 'tis upon ill employment." For the Falstaff of the +histories is a man of intellect, wisdom, and humour, thoroughly +experienced in the ways of the world, fascinating in his drollery, +human, companionable, infinitely amusing, and capable of turning all +life to the favour of enjoyment and laughter--a man who is passionate in +the sentiment of comradeship, and who, with all his faults (and perhaps +because of some of them, for faultless persons are too good for this +world), inspires affection. "Would I were with him," cries the wretched +Bardolph, "wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell." It is not +Bardolph only whose heart has a warm corner for the memory of the poor +old jovial sinner, wounded to death by the falling off of +friendship--the implacable hardness of new-born virtue in the +regenerated royal mind. + +A comprehensive view of Falstaff--a view that includes the afflicting +circumstances of his humiliation and of his forlorn and pathetic death +not less than the roistering frolics and jocund mendacity of his life +and character--is essential to a right appreciation of the meaning of +him. Shakespeare is never a prosy moralist, but he constantly teaches +you, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, that the moral law of the +universe, working continually for goodness and not for evil, operates in +an inexorable manner. Yet it is not of any moral consideration that the +spectator of Falstaff upon the stage ever pauses to think. It is the +humour of the fat knight that is perceived, and that alone. The +thoughtful friends of Falstaff, however, see more in him than this, and +especially they like not to think of him in a deplorable predicament. +The Falstaff of _The Merry Wives_ is a man to laugh at; but he is not a +man to inspire the comrade feeling, and still less is he a man to +impress the intellect with the sense of a stalwart character and of +illimitable jocund humour. Falstaff's friends--whose hearts are full of +kindness for the old reprobate--have sat with him "in my Dolphin +chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire," and "have heard the +chimes at midnight" in his society, and they know what a jovial +companion he is--how abundant in knowledge of the world; how radiant +with animal spirits; how completely inexhaustible in cheerfulness; how +copious in comic invective; how incessantly nimble and ludicrous in wit +and in waggery; how strange a compound of mind and sensuality, +shrewdness and folly, fidelity and roguery, brazen mendacity, and comic +selfishness! They do not like to think of him as merely a fat old fool, +bamboozled by a pair of sprightly, not over-delicate women, far inferior +to him in mental calibre, and made a laughing-stock for Fenton and sweet +Anne Page, and the lads and lassies of Windsor, and the chattering Welsh +parson. "Have I lived," cried Falstaff, in the moment of his +discomfiture, "to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of +English?" He is a hard case, an inveterate sinner, as worthless as any +man well could be, in the eyes of decorum and respectability; but those +who know him well grow to be fond of him, even if they feel that they +ought to be ashamed of it, and they do not quite forgive the poet for +making him contemptible. + +You can find many other figures that will make you laugh, but you can +find no other figure that makes you laugh with such good reason. It +seems incredible that Shakespeare, with his all-embracing mind and his +perfect instinct of art, should deliberately have chosen to lessen his +own masterpiece of humour. For Shakespeare rejoiced in Falstaff, even +while he respected and recorded the inexorable justice of the moral law +that decrees and eventually accomplishes his destruction. There is no +one of his characters whose history he has traced with such minute +elaboration. The conception is singularly ample. You may see Falstaff, +as Shallow saw him, when he was a boy and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke +of Norfolk; you may see him all along the current of his mature years; +his highway robberies on Gadshill; his bragging narrative to Prince +Henry; his frolicsome, paternal, self-defensive lecture to the prince; +his serio-comic association with the ragamuffin recruits at Coventry; +his adroit escape from the sword of Hotspur; his mendacious +self-glorification over the body of Harry Percy; his mishaps as a +suitor to Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page; his wonderfully humorous interviews +with the Chief-Justice and with Prince John of Lancaster; his junketings +with Justice Shallow in Gloucestershire, and his rebuff and +consternation at his first and last meeting with King Henry V.; and +finally you may see him, as Mrs. Quickly saw him, on his death-bed, when +"'a cried out God! God! God! three or four times," and when "his nose +was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled o' green fields." + +A good and faithful study of _King Henry IV._, and especially of the +second part of that play, is essential for a right appreciation of +Falstaff. Those scenes with the Chief-Justice are unmatched in +literature. The knight stands royally forth in them, clothed with his +entire panoply of agile intellect, robust humour, and boundless comic +effrontery. But the arrogant and expeditious Falstaff of _The Merry +Wives_--so richly freighted with rubicund sensuality, so abundant in +comic loquacity, and so ludicrous in his sorry plights--is a much less +complex person, and therefore he stands more level than the real +Falstaff does with the average comprehension of mankind. The American +stage, accordingly, by which more than by the printed book he has +become known to our people, has usually given its preference to the +Falstaff of the comedy. _The Merry Wives_ was first acted in New York on +October 5, 1788 at the John Street theatre, with Harper as Falstaff. On +April 1, 1807 it was produced at the old Park, and the Falstaff then was +John E. Harwood. The same stage offered it again on January 16, 1829, +with Hilson as Falstaff. A little later, about 1832, James H. Hackett +took up the character of Falstaff, and from that time onward +performances of _The Merry Wives_ occurred more frequently in different +cities of America. Nor was the historical play neglected. On August 7, +1848 a remarkably fine production of the comedy was accomplished at the +Astor Place Operahouse, New York, with Hackett as Falstaff, who never in +his time was equalled in that character, and has not been equalled +since. Another Falstaff, however, and a remarkably good one, appeared at +Burton's theatre on August 24, 1850, in the person of Charles Bass. On +March 14, 1853 _The Merry Wives_ was again given at Burton's theatre, +and Burton himself played Falstaff, with characteristic humour; but +Burton never acted the part as it stands in _Henry IV._ Hackett, who +used both the history (Part I.) and the comedy, continued to act +Falstaff almost to the end of his life and Hackett did not die till +1871. A distinguished representative of Falstaff in the early days of +the American theatre--the days of the renowned Chestnut in +Philadelphia--was William Warren (1767-1832), who came from England in +1796. In recent years the part has been acted by Benedict De Bar and by +John Jack. The latest Falstaff in America was that embodied by Charles +Fisher, who first assumed the character on November 19, 1872, at Daly's +theatre, and whose performance was picturesque and humorous. + +On the English stage the historical play of _Henry IV._ was exceedingly +popular in Shakespeare's time. The first Falstaff, according to Malone, +whom everybody has followed as to this point, was John Heminge +(1555-1630). After him came John Lowin (1572-1654), who is thought to +have acted the part in the presence of Charles I. His successor seems to +have been Lacy, who died in 1681. Next came Cartwright, and in 1699 or +1700 the great Betterton (1635-1710) assumed the fat knight, acting him +in both parts of the history and in the comedy. Genest records +twenty-two revivals of the first part of _Henry IV._ upon the London +stage, at five different theatres, between 1667 and 1826; fifteen +revivals of the second part between 1720 and 1821; and sixteen revivals +of _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ between 1667 and 1811. Many English +actors have played Falstaff since Betterton's time, an incomplete though +sufficiently ample list of them comprising Estcourt, 1704; F. Bullock, +1713; J. Evans and J. Hall, 1715; Mills, 1716; Quin, "dignity and +declamation," 1738; Berry, 1747; Love (whose true name was James Dance), +1762; Shuter, 1774; John Henderson, one of the greatest actors that ever +lived, 1774; Mrs. Webb (once only), 1776; Ryder, 1786; Palmer, 1788; +King, 1792; Fawcett, 1795; Stephen Kemble, who was so fat that he could +play it without stuffing or bladder, 1802; Blissett, 1803; George +Frederick Cooke, 1804; Bartley, 1812; Charles Kemble, 1824; Dowton, +1824; Elliston, 1826; and Samuel Phelps, 1846. The latest representative +of Falstaff in England was H. Beerbohm-Tree, who, although a man of +slender figure, contrived to simulate corpulence, and who manifested in +his acting a fine instinct as to the meaning of the character and +considerable resources of art in its expression, although the +predominant individuality and the copious luxuriance of Falstaff's rosy +and juicy humour were not within his reach. Upon the American stage the +part is practically disused; and this is a pity, seeing that a source of +great enjoyment and one of the most suggestive and fruitful topics that +exist in association with the study of human nature are thus in a great +degree sequestered from the public mind. Still it is better to have no +Falstaff on the stage than to have it encumbered with a bad one; and +certainly for the peculiar and exacting play of _Henry IV._ there are +now no actors left: at least they are not visible in America. + + + + +XVII. + +ADA REHAN. + + +In browsing over the fragrant evergreen pages of Cibber's delightful +book about the stage, and especially in reflecting upon the beautiful +and brilliant women who, drawn by his magic pencil, dwell there, +perpetual, in life, colour, and charm, the reflective reader may perhaps +be prompted to remember that the royal line of stage beauties is not +extinct, and that stage heroines exist in the present day who are quite +as well worthy of commemoration as any that graced the period of Charles +the Second or of good Queen Anne. Our age, indeed, has no Cibber to +describe their loveliness and celebrate their achievements; but surely +if he were living at this hour that courtly, characteristic, and +sensuous writer--who saw so clearly and could portray so well the +peculiarities of the feminine nature--would not deem the period of Ellen +Terry and Marie Wilton, of Ada Rehan and Sarah Bernhardt and Genevieve +Ward, of Clara Morris and Jane Hading, unworthy of his pen. As often as +fancy ranges over those bright names and others that are kindred with +them--a glittering sisterhood of charms and talents--the regret must +arise that no literary artist with just the gallant spirit, the +chivalry, the sensuous appreciation, the fine insight, and the pictorial +touch of old Cibber is extant to perpetuate their glory. The hand that +sketched Elizabeth Barry so as to make her live forever in a few brief +lines, the hand that drew the fascinating and memorable portrait of +Susanna Mountfort ("Down goes her dainty diving body to the ground, as +if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own +attractions")--what might it not have done to preserve for the knowledge +of future generations the queens of the theatre who are crowned and +regnant to-day! Cibber could have caught and reflected the elusive charm +of such an actress as Ada Rehan. No touch less adroit and felicitous +than his can accomplish more than the suggestion of her peculiar +allurement, her originality, and her fascinating because sympathetic and +piquant mental and physical characteristics. + +Ada Rehan, born at Limerick, Ireland, on April 22, 1860, was brought to +America when five years old, and at that time she lived and went to +school in Brooklyn. No one of her progenitors was ever upon the stage, +nor does it appear that she was predisposed to that vocation by early +reading or training. Her elder sisters had adopted that pursuit, and +perhaps she was impelled toward it by the force of example and domestic +association, readily affecting her innate latent faculty for the +dramatic art. Her first appearance on the stage was made at Newark, New +Jersey, in 1873, in a play entitled _Across the Continent_, in which she +acted a small part, named Clara, for one night only, to fill the place +of a performer who had been suddenly disabled by illness. Her readiness +and her positive talent were clearly revealed in that effort, and it was +thereupon determined in a family council that she should proceed; so she +was soon regularly embarked upon the life of an actress. Her first +appearance on the New York stage was made a little later, in 1873, at +Wood's museum (it became Daly's theatre in 1879), when she played a +small part in a piece called _Thorough-bred_. During the seasons of +1873-74-75 she was associated with the Arch Street theatre, +Philadelphia,--that being her first regular professional engagement. +(John Drew, with whom, professionally, Ada Rehan has been long +associated, made his first appearance in the same season, at the same +house.) She then went to Macaulay's theatre, Louisville, where she acted +for one season. From Louisville she went to Albany, as a member of John +W. Albaugh's company, and with that manager she remained two seasons, +acting sometimes in Albany and sometimes in Baltimore. After that she +was for a few months with Fanny Davenport. The earlier part of her +career involved professional endeavours in company with the wandering +stars, and she acted in a variety of plays with Edwin Booth, Adelaide +Neilson, John McCullough, Mrs. Bowers, Lawrence Barrett, John Brougham, +Edwin Adams, Mrs. Lander, and John T. Raymond. From the first she was +devotedly fond of Shakespeare, and all the Shakespearian characters +allotted to her were studied and acted by her with eager interest and +sympathy. While thus employed in the provincial stock she enacted +Ophelia, Cordelia, Desdemona, Celia, Olivia, and Lady Anne, and in each +of those parts she was conspicuously good. The attention of Augustin +Daly was first attracted to her in December 1877, when she was acting at +Albaugh's theatre in Albany, the play being _Katharine and Petruchio_ +(Garrick's version of the _Taming of the Shrew_), and Ada Rehan +appearing as Bianca; and subsequently Daly again observed her as an +actress of auspicious distinction and marked promise at the Grand Opera +House, New York, in April 1879. Fanny Davenport was then acting in that +theatre in Daly's strong American play of _Pique_--one of the few dramas +of American origin that aptly reflect the character of American domestic +life--and Ada Rehan appeared in the part of Mary Standish. She was +immediately engaged under Daly's management, and in May 1879 she came +forth at the Olympic theatre, New York, as Big Clemence in that author's +version of _L'Assommoir_. On September 17, 1879, Daly's theatre (which +had been suspended for about two years) was opened upon its present +site, the southwest corner of Thirtieth Street and Broadway, and Ada +Rehan made her first appearance there, enacting the part of Nelly Beers +in a play called _Love's Young Dream_. The opening bill on that +occasion comprised that piece, together with a comedy by Olive Logan, +entitled _Newport_. On September 30 a revival of _Divorce_, one of +Daly's most fortunate plays, was effected, and Ada Rehan impersonated +Miss Lu Ten Eyck--a part originally acted (1873) by Fanny Davenport. +From that time to this (1892) Ada Rehan has remained the leading lady at +Daly's theatre; and there she has become one of the most admired figures +upon the contemporary stage. In five professional visits to Europe, +acting in London, Paris, Edinburgh, Dublin, Berlin, and other cities, +she pleased judicious audiences and augmented her renown. Daly took his +company of comedians to London for the first time in 1884, where they +fulfilled an engagement of six weeks at Toole's theatre, beginning July +19. The second visit to London was made two seasons later, when they +acted for nine weeks at the Strand theatre, beginning May 27, 1886. At +that time they also played in the English provinces, and they visited +Germany--acting at Hamburg and at Berlin, where they were much liked and +commended. They likewise made a trip to Paris. Their third season abroad +began at the Lyceum theatre, London, May 3, 1888, and it included +another expedition to the French capital, which was well rewarded. Ada +Rehan at that time impersonated Shakespeare's Shrew. It was in that +season also that she appeared at Stratford-upon-Avon, where Daly gave a +performance (August 3, 1888) in the Shakespeare Memorial theatre, for +the benefit of that institution. The fourth season of Daly's comedians +in London began on June 10, 1890, at the Lyceum theatre, and lasted ten +weeks; and this was signalised by Ada Rehan's impersonation of Rosalind. +The fifth London season extended from September 9 to November 13, 1891. + +This is an outline of her professional story; but how little of the real +life of an actor can be imparted in a record of the surface facts of a +public career! Most expressive, as a comment upon the inadequacy of +biographical details, is the exclamation of Dumas, about Aimee Desclee: +"Une femme comme celle-la n'a pas de biographie! Elle nous a emus, et +elle en est morte. Voila toute son historie!" Ada Rehan, while she has +often and deeply moved the audience of her riper time, is happily very +far from having died of it. There is deep feeling beneath the luminous +and sparkling surface of her art; but it is chiefly with mirth that she +has touched the public heart and affected the public experience. Equally +of her, however, as of her pathetic sister artist of the French stage, +it may be said that such a woman has no history. In a civilisation and +at a period wherein persons are customarily accepted for what they +pretend to be, instead of being seen and understood for what they are, +she has been content to take an unpretentious course, to be original and +simple, and thus to allow her faculties to ripen and her character to +develop in their natural manner. She has not assumed the position of a +star, and perhaps the American community, although favourable and +friendly toward her, may have been somewhat slow to understand her +unique personality and her superlative worth. The moment a thoughtful +observer's attention is called to the fact, however, he perceives how +large a place Ada Rehan fills in the public mind, how conspicuous a +figure she is upon the contemporary stage, and how difficult it is to +explain and classify her whether as an artist or a woman. That blending +of complexity with transparency always imparts to individual life a +tinge of piquant interest, because it is one denotement of the +temperament of genius. + +The poets of the world pour themselves through all subjects by the use +of their own words. In what manner they are affected by the forces of +nature--its influences of gentleness and peace or its vast pageants of +beauty and terror--those words denote; and also those words indicate the +action, upon their responsive spirits, of the passions that agitate the +human heart. The actors, on the other hand, assuming to be the +interpreters of the poets, must pour themselves through all subjects by +the use of their own personality. They are to be estimated accordingly +by whatever the competent observer is able to perceive of the nature and +the faculties they reveal under the stress of emotion, whether tragic or +comic. Perhaps it is not possible--mind being limited in its +function--for any person to form a full, true, and definite summary of +another human creature. To view a dramatic performance with a +consciousness of the necessity of forming a judicial opinion of it is +often to see one's own thought about it rather than the thing itself. +Yet, when all allowance is made for difficulty of theme and for +infirmity of judgment, the observer of Ada Rehan may surely conclude +that she has a rich, tender, and sparkling nature, in which the +dream-like quality of sentiment and the discursive faculty of +imagination, intimately blended with deep, broad, and accurate +perceptions of the actual, and with a fund of keen and sagacious sense, +are reinforced with strong individuality and with affluent and +extraordinary vital force. Ada Rehan has followed no traditions. She +went to the stage not because of vanity but because of spontaneous +impulse; and for the expression of every part that she has played she +has gone to nature and not to precept and precedent. The stamp of her +personality is upon everything that she has done; yet the thinker who +looks back upon her numerous and various impersonations is astonished at +their diversity. The romance, the misery, and the fortitude of Kate +Verity, the impetuous passion of Katharine, the brilliant raillery of +Hippolyta, the enchanting womanhood of Rosalind--how clear-cut, how +distinct, how absolutely dramatic was each one of those +personifications! and yet how completely characteristic each one was of +this individual actress! Our works of art may be subject to the +application of our knowledge and skill, but we ourselves are under the +dominance of laws which operate out of the inaccessible and indefinable +depths of the spirit. Alongside of most players of this period Ada Rehan +is a prodigy of original force. Her influence, accordingly, has been +felt more than it has been understood, and, being elusive and strange, +has prompted wide differences of opinion. The sense that she diffuses of +a simple, unselfish, patient nature, and of impulsive tenderness of +heart, however, cannot have been missed by anybody with eyes to see. And +she crowns all by speaking the English language with a beauty that has +seldom been equalled. + + + + +XVIII. + +TENNYSON'S COMEDY OF THE FORESTERS. + + +"Besides, the King's name is a tower of strength." Thousands of people +all over the world honour, and ought to honour, every word that falls +from the pen of Alfred Tennyson. He is a very great man. No poet since +the best time of Byron has written the English language so well--that is +to say, with such affluent splendour of imagination; such passionate +vigour; such nobility of thought; such tenderness of pathos; such +pervasive grace, and so much of that distinctive variety, flexibility, +and copious and felicitous amplitude which are the characteristics of an +original style. No poet of the last fifty years has done so much to +stimulate endurance in the human soul and to clarify spiritual vision in +the human mind. It does not signify that now, at more than fourscore, +his hand sometimes trembles a little on the harp-strings, and his touch +falters, and his music dies away. It is still the same harp and the +same hand. This fanciful, kindly, visionary, drifting, and altogether +romantic comedy of _Robin Hood_ is not to be tried by the standard that +is author reared when he wrote _Ulysses_ and _Tithonus_ and _The Passing +of Arthur_--that imperial, unapproachable standard that no other poet +has satisfied. + + "Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day." + +But though the passion be subdued and the splendour faded, the deep +current of feeling flows on and the strong and tender voice can still +touch the heart and charm the ear. That tide of emotion and that tone of +melody blend in this play and make it beautiful. The passion is no +longer that of _Enone_ and _Lucretius_ and _Guinevere_ and _Locksley +Hall_ and _Maud_ and _The Vision of Sin_. The thought is no longer that +of _In Memoriam_, with its solemn majesty and infinite pathos. The music +is no longer that of _The May Queen_ and the _Talking Oak_ and _Idle +Tears_. But why should these be expected? He who struck those notes +strikes now another; and as we listen our wonder grows, and cannot help +but grow, that a bard of fourscore and upward should write in such +absolute sympathy with youth, love, hope, happiness, and all that is +free and wandering and martial and active in the vicissitudes of +adventure, the exploits of chivalry, and the vagabondish spirit of gypsy +frolic. The fact that he does write in that mood points to the one +illuminative truth now essential to be remembered. The voice to which we +are privileged to listen, perhaps for the last time, is the voice of a +great poet--by which is meant a poet who is able, not through the medium +of intellect but through the medium of emotion, to make the total +experience of mankind his own experience, and to express it not only in +the form of art but with the fire of nature. The element of power, in +all the expressions of such a mind, will fluctuate; but every one of its +expressions will be sincere and in a greater or less degree will be +vital with a universal and permanent significance. That virtue is in +Alfred Tennyson's comedy of _Robin Hood_, and that virtue will insure +for it an abiding endurance in affectionate public esteem. + +The realm into which this play allures its auditor is the realm of +_Ivanhoe_--the far-off, romantic region of Sherwood forest, in the +ancient days of stout king Richard the First. The poet has gone to the +old legends of Robin Hood and to the ballads that have been made upon +them, and out of those materials--using them freely, according to his +fancy--he has chosen his scene and his characters and has made his +story. It is not the England of the mine and the workshop that he +represents, and neither is it the England of the trim villa and the +formal landscape; it is the England of the feudal times--of gray castle +towers, and armoured knights, and fat priests, and wandering minstrels, +and crusades and tournaments; England in rush-strewn bowers and under +green boughs; the England in which Wamba jested and Blondel sung. To +enter into that realm is to leave the barren world of prose; to feel +again the cool, sweet winds of summer upon the brow of youth; to catch, +in fitful glimpses, the shimmer of the Lincoln green in the sunlit, +golden glades of the forest, and to hear the merry note of the huntsman +commingled, far away, with "horns of Elfland faintly blowing." The +appeal is made to the primitive, elemental, poetical instinct of +mankind; and no detail of realism is obtruded, no question of +probability considered, no agony of the sin-tortured spirit subjected to +analysis, no controversy promoted and no moral lesson enforced. For once +the public is favoured with a serious poetical play, which aims simply +to diffuse happiness by arousing sympathy with pleasurable scenes and +picturesque persons, with virtue that is piquant and humour that is +refined, with the cheerful fortitude that takes adversity with a smile, +and with that final fortunate triumph of good over evil which is neither +ensanguined with gore nor saddened with tears, nor made acrid with +bitterness. The play is pastoral comedy, written partly in blank verse +and partly in prose, and cast almost wholly out of doors--in the open +air and under the greenwood tree--and, in order to stamp its character +beyond doubt or question, one scene of it is frankly devoted to a +convocation of fairies around Titania, their queen. + +The impulse that underlies this piece is the old, incessant, undying +aspiration, that men and women of the best order feel, for some avenue +of escape, some relief, some refuge, from the sickening tyranny of +convention and the commonplace, and from the overwhelming mystery with +which all human life is haunted and oppressed. A man who walks about in +a forest is not necessarily free. He may be as great a slave as anybody. +But the exalted imagination dwells upon his way of life as emancipated, +breezy, natural, and right. That way, to the tired thinker, lie peace +and joy. There, if anywhere--as he fancies--he might escape from all the +wrongs of the world, all the problems of society, all the dull business +of recording, and analysing, and ticketing mankind, all the clash of +selfish systems that people call history, and all the babble that they +call literature. In that retreat he would feel the rain upon his face, +and smell the grass and the flowers, and hear the sighing and whispering +of the wind in the green boughs; and there would be no need to trouble +himself any more, whether about the past or the future. Every great +intellect of the world has felt that wild longing, and has recorded +it--the impulse to revert to the vast heart of Nature, that knows no +doubt, and harbours no fear, and keeps no regret, and feels no sorrow, +and troubles itself not at all. Matthew Arnold dreamily and perhaps +austerely expressed it in _The Scholar Gypsy_. Byron more humanly +uttered it in four well-remembered lines, of _Childe Harold_: + + "Oh, that the desert were my dwelling-place, + With one fair spirit for my minister, + That I might all forget the human race, + And, hating nothing, love but only her." + +_Robin Hood_, as technical drama, is frail. Its movement, indeed, is not +more indolent than that of its lovely prototypes in Shakespeare, _As You +Like It_ and _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. With all the pastorals Time +ambles. But, on the other hand, Tennyson's piece is not a match for +either of those Shakespearean works, in massiveness of dramatic +signification or in the element of opportunity for the art of acting. +Character, poetry, philosophy, humour, and suggestion it contains; but +it contains no single scene in which its persons can amply put forth +their full histrionic powers with essentially positive dramatic effect. +Its charm resides more in being than in doing, and therefore it is more +a poem than a play, and perhaps more a picture than a poem. It is not +one of those works that arouse, agitate, and impel. It aims only to +create and sustain a pleased condition; and that aim it has +accomplished. No spectator will be deeply moved by it, but no spectator +will look at it without delight. While, however, _Robin Hood_ as a drama +is frail, it is not destitute of the dramatic element. It depicts a +central character in action, and it tells a representative love story--a +story in which the oppressive persecutor of impoverished age is foiled +and discomfited, in which faithful affection survives the test of trial, +and in which days of danger end at last in days of blissful peace. +Traces of the influence of Shakespeare--exerted by his pastoral comedies +and by the _Merry Wives of Windsor_--are obvious in it. There is no +imitation; there is only kinship. The sources that Scott explored for +some of the material used in _Ivanhoe_ also announce themselves. Many +stories could be derived from the old Robin Hood ballads. The poet has +only chosen and rearranged such of their incidents as would suit his +purpose--using those old ballads with perfect freedom, but also using +them with faultless taste. + +Robin Hood was born at Locksley, in the county of Nottingham, about +1160, when Henry the Second was king. His true name was Robert +Fitzooth--a name that popular mispronunciation converted into Robin +Hood--and he was of noble lineage. Old records declare him to have been +the Earl of Huntingdon. He was extravagant and adventurous, and for +reasons that are unknown he preferred to live in the woods. His haunts +were chiefly Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire, and Barnsdale, in +Yorkshire. Among his associates were William Scadlock, commonly called +Scarlet; Much, a miller's son; Friar Tuck, a vagabond monk; and Little +John, whose name was Nailor. Robin Hood and his band were kind to the +poor; but they robbed the rich and they were specially hard on the +clergy. There is a tradition that a woman named Maid Marian went with +Robin into the forest, but nothing is known about her. Robin lived till +the age of eighty-seven, and he might have lived longer but that a +treacherous relative, the prioress of Kirkley--to whose care he had +entrusted himself in order that he might be bled--allowed him to bleed +to death. At the time indicated in Tennyson's comedy--the year 1194, +which was the year of King Richard's return from captivity in +Germany--he was thirty-four years old. It is the year of _Ivanhoe_, and +in the play as in the novel, the evil agent is the usurper Prince John. + +Fifteen characters take part in this comedy. Act first is called "The +Bond and the Outlawry." The action begins in a garden before Sir Richard +Lea's castle--or rather the dialogue begins there, by which the basis of +the action is revealed. Maid Marian is Marian Lea, the daughter of Sir +Richard. Walter Lea, the son of Sir Richard, has been captured by the +Moors, and in order to pay the boy's ransom Sir Richard has borrowed a +large sum of money from the Abbot of York. That debt must presently be +paid; but Sir Richard does not see his way clear to its payment, and if +he does not pay it he must forfeit his land. The Sheriff of Nottingham, +a wealthy suitor for the hand of Marian, is willing to pay that debt, in +case the girl will favour his suit. But Marian loves the Earl of +Huntingdon and is by him beloved; and all would go well with those +lovers, and with Sir Richard, but that the Earl of Huntingdon is poor. +Poor though he be, however, he makes a feast, to celebrate his birthday, +and to that festival Sir Richard and his daughter are bidden. Act first +displays the joyous proceedings of that good meeting and the posture of +those characters toward each other. The Sheriff of Nottingham intrudes +himself upon the scene, accompanied by Prince John, who is disguised as +a friar. The Prince has cast a covetous eye upon Marian, and, although +he outwardly favours the wish of the Sheriff, he is secretly determined +to seize her for himself. The revellers at Huntingdon's feast, unaware +of the Prince's presence, execrate his name, and at length he retires, +in a silent fury. Robin gives to Marian a remarkable ring that he has +inherited from his mother. Later a herald enters and reads a +proclamation from Prince John, declaring the Earl of Huntingdon to be a +felon, and commanding his banishment. Robin cannot forcibly oppose that +mandate, and he therefore determines to cast in his lot with Scarlet and +Friar Tuck and other "minions of the moon," and thenceforward to live a +free and merry life under the green boughs of Sherwood Forest. A year is +supposed to pass. Act second, called "The Flight of Marian," begins with +a song of the Foresters, in the deep wood--"There is no land like +England." That is a scene of much gentle beauty, enhanced by Robin +Hood's delivery of some of the finest poetry in the play, and also by +the delicious music of Sir Arthur Sullivan. Robin descants upon +freedom, and upon the advantage of dwelling beneath the sky rather than +beneath a groined roof that shuts out all the meaning of heaven. There +is a colloquy between Little John, who is one of Robin's men, and Kate, +who is Marian's maid. Those two are lovers who quarrel and make it up +again, as lovers will. Kate has come to the forest, bringing word of the +flight of her mistress. Prince John has tried to seize Marian, and that +brave girl has repulsed and struck him; and she and her father have +fled--intending to make for France, in which land the old knight expects +to find a friend who will pay his debt and save his estate. While Robin +is considering these things he perceives the approach of Prince John and +the Sheriff of Nottingham, and, thereupon, he takes refuge in the hut of +an old witch and disguises himself in some of her garments. Prince John +and the Sheriff, who are in pursuit of Sir Richard and Marian, find +Robin in this disguise, and for a time they are deceived by him; but +soon they penetrate his masquerade and assail him--whereupon some of his +people come to his assistance, and he is reinforced by Sir Richard Lea. +Prince John and his party are beaten and driven away. Sir Richard is +exhausted, and Robin commits him to the care of the Foresters. Marian, +arrayed as a boy, and pretending to be her brother Walter, has been +present at this combat, as a spectator, and a sparkling scene of +equivoke, mischief, and sentiment ensues between Marian and Robin. That +scene Tennyson wrote and inserted for Ada Rehan, to whose vivacious +temperament it is fitted, and whose action in it expressed with equal +felicity the teasing temper of the coquette and the propitious fondness +of the lover. Robin discovers Marian's identity by means of the ring +that he gave her, and, after due explanation, it is agreed that she and +her father will remain under his protection. Act third is called "The +Crowning of Marian," and is devoted to pictures, colloquies, and +incidents, now serious and now comical, showing the life of the +Foresters and the humorous yet discriminative justice of their gypsy +chief. Sir Richard Lea is ill and he cannot be moved. The outlaws crown +Marian, with an oaken chaplet, and declare her to be their queen. Robin +Hood vindicates his vocation, and in a noble speech on +freedom--deriving his similes from the giant oak tree, as Tennyson has +ever loved to do--declares himself the friend of the poor and the +servant of the king; the absent Richard of the Lion Heart, for whose +return all good men are eager. Various beggars, friars, and other +travellers are halted on the road, in practical illustration of Robin's +doctrine; comic incidents from the old ballads are reproduced; and so +the episode ends merrily of these frolics in the wood. At that point a +delicious fairy pageant is introduced, presenting Queen Titania and her +elves and illustrating at once the grievance of the fairies against the +men whose heavy feet have crushed their toads and bats and flowers and +mystic rings, and Marian's dream of love. Sir Arthur Sullivan's music is +here again used, and again it is felt to be characteristic, melodious, +and uncommonly sweet and tender. Act fourth begins in a forest bower at +sunrise. Marian and Robin meet there and talk of Sir Richard and of his +bond to the Abbot of York--soon to fall due and seemingly to remain +unpaid. Robin has summoned the Abbot and his justiciary to come into the +forest and to bring the bond. King Richard, unrecognised, now arrives, +and in submission to certain laws of the woodland he engages in an +encounter of buffets, and prevails over all his adversaries. At the +approach of the Abbot, however, fearing premature recognition, the +monarch will flit away; but his gypsy friends compel him to accept a +bugle, upon which he is to blow a blast when in danger. The Abbot and +his followers arrive, and Robin Hood offers the money to redeem Sir +Richard's bond; but, upon a legal quibble, the Abbot declines to receive +it--preferring to seize the forfeited land. Prince John and the Sheriff +of Nottingham appear, and Robin and his Foresters form an ambuscade. Sir +Richard Lea has been brought in, upon his litter, and Marian stays +beside him. Prince John attempts to seize her, but this time he is +frustrated by the sudden advent of King Richard--from whose presence he +slinks away. The myrmidons of John, however, attack the King, who would +oppose them single-handed; but Friar Tuck snatches the King's bugle and +blows a blast of summons--whereupon the Foresters swarm into the field +and possess it. John's faction is dispersed, Marian is saved, the absent +Walter Lea reappears, Sir Richard is assured of his estate, the Abbot +and the Sheriff are punished, and Robin Hood and Maid Marian may +wed--for now the good King Richard has come again to his own. + +The lyrics in the piece possess the charm of fluent and unaffected +sweetness, and of original, inventive, and felicitous fancy, and some of +them are tenderly freighted with that indescribable but deeply affecting +undertone of pathetic sentiment which is a characteristic attribute of +Tennyson's poetry. + +The characters in the comedy were creatures of flesh and blood to the +author, and they come out boldly, therefore, on the stage. Marian Lea is +a woman of the Rosalind order--handsome, noble, magnanimous, +unconventional, passionate in nature, but sufficient unto herself, +humorous, playful, and radiant with animal spirits. Ada Rehan embodied +her according to that ideal. The chief exaction of the part is +simplicity--which yet must not be allowed to degenerate into tameness. +The sweet affection of a daughter for her father, the coyness yet the +allurement of a girl for her lover, the refinement of high birth, the +blithe bearing and free demeanour of a child of the woods, and the +predominant dignity of purity and honour--those are the salient +attributes of the part. Ada Rehan struck the true note at the +outset--the note of buoyant health, rosy frolic, and sprightly +adventure--and she sustained it evenly and firmly to the last. Every eye +was pleased with the frank, careless, cheerful beauty of her presence, +and every ear was soothed and charmed with her fluent and expressive +delivery of the verse. In this, as in all of the important +representations that Ada Rehan has given, the delightful woman-quality +was conspicuously present. She can readily impersonate a boy. No actress +since Adelaide Neilson has done that so well. But the crowning +excellence of her art was its expression of essential womanhood. Her +acting was never trivial and it never obtruded the tedious element of +dry intellect. It refreshed--and the spectator was happier for having +seen her. Many pleasant thoughts were scattered in many minds by her +performance of Maid Marian, and no one who saw it will ever part with +the remembrance of it. + + + + +XIX. + +ELLEN TERRY: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. + + +It was perhaps an auspicious portent, it certainly is an interesting +fact, that the first play that was ever acted in America at a regular +theatre and by a regular theatrical company was Shakespeare's comedy of +_The Merchant of Venice_. Such at least is the record made by William +Dunlap, the first historian of the American theatre, who names +Williamsburg, Virginia, as the place and September 5, 1752 as the date +of that production. It ought to be noted, however (so difficult is it to +settle upon any fact in this uncertain world), that the learned +antiquarian Judge C.P. Daly, fortified likewise by the scrupulously +accurate Ireland, dissents from Dunlap's statement and declares that +Cibber's alteration of Shakespeare's _Richard the Third_ was acted by a +regular company in a large room in Nassau Street, New York, at an +earlier date, namely, on March 5, 1750. All the same, it appears to +have been Shakespeare's mind that started the dramatic movement in +America. The American stage has undergone great changes since that time, +but both _The Merchant of Venice_ and _Richard the Third_ are still +acted, and in the _Merchant_, if not in _Richard_, the public interest +is still vital. In New York, under Edwin Booth's management, at the +Winter Garden theatre, January 28, 1867, and subsequently at Booth's +theatre, and in London, under Henry Irving's management, at the Lyceum +theatre, November 1, 1879, sumptuous productions of the _Merchant_ have +brilliantly marked the dramatic chronicle of our times. Discussion of +the great character of Shylock steadily proceeds and seems never to +weary either the disputants or the audience. The sentiment, the fancy, +and the ingenuity of artists are often expended not only upon the +austere, picturesque, and terrible figure of the vindictive Jew, but +upon the chief related characters in the comedy--upon Bassanio and +Portia, Gratiano and Nerissa, Lorenzo and Jessica, the princely and +pensive Antonio, the august Duke and his stately senators, and the +shrewd and humorous Gobbo. More than one painting has depicted the +ardent Lorenzo and his fugitive infidel as they might have looked on +that delicious summer night at Belmont when they saw "how the floor of +heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," and when the +blissful lover, radiant with happiness and exalted by the sublime, +illimitable, unfathomable spectacle of the star-strewn firmament, +murmured, in such heaven-like cadence, of the authentic music of heaven. + +It is not to be denied that lovely words are spoken to Jessica, and that +almost equally lovely words are spoken by her. Essayists upon the +_Merchant_ have generally accepted her without a protest--so much do +youth and beauty in a woman count in the scale when weighed against duty +and integrity. There is no indication that Shylock was ever unjust or +unkind to Jessica. Whatever he may have been to others he seems always +to have been good to her; and she was the child of that lost Leah of his +youthful devotion whom he passionately loved and whom he mourned to the +last. Yet Jessica not only abandoned her father and his religion, but +robbed him of money and jewels (including the betrothal ring, the +turquoise, that her mother had given to him), when she fled with the +young Christian who had won her heart. It was a basely cruel act; but +probably some of the vilest and cruelest actions that are done in this +world are done by persons who are infatuated by the passion of love. +Mrs. Jameson, who in her beautiful essay on Portia extenuates the +conduct of Jessica, would have us believe that Shylock valued his +daughter far beneath his wealth, and therefore deserved to be deserted +and plundered by her; and she is so illogical as to derive his +sentiments on this subject from his delirious outcries of lamentation +after he learned of her predatory and ignominious flight. The argument +is not a good one. Fine phrases do not make wrong deeds right. It were +wiser to take Jessica for the handsome and voluptuous girl that +certainly she is, and to leave her rectitude out of the question. +Shakespeare in his drawing of her was true to nature, as he always is; +but the student who wants to know where Shakespeare's heart was placed +when he drew women must look upon creatures very different from Jessica. +The women that Shakespeare seems peculiarly to have loved are Imogen, +Cordelia, Isabella, Rosalind, and Portia--Rosalind, perhaps, most of +all; for although Portia is finer than Rosalind, it is extremely +probable that Shakespeare resembled his fellow-men sufficiently to have +felt the preference that Tom Moore long afterward expressed: + + "Be an angel, my love, in the morning, + But, oh! be a woman to-night." + +When Ellen Terry embodied Portia--in Henry Irving's magnificent revival +of _The Merchant of Venice_--the essential womanhood of that character +was for the first time in the modern theatre adequately interpreted and +conveyed. Upon many play-going observers indeed the wonderful wealth of +beauty that is in the part--its winsome grace, its incessant sparkle, +its alluring because piquant as well as luscious sweetness, its +impetuous ardour, its enchantment of physical equally with emotional +condition, its august morality, its perfect candour, and its noble +passion--came like a surprise. Did the great actress find those +attributes in the part (they asked themselves), or did she infuse them +into it? Previous representatives of Portia had placed the emphasis +chiefly, if not exclusively, upon morals and mind. The stage Portia of +the past has usually been a didactic lady, self-contained, formal, +conventional, and oratorical. Ellen Terry came, and Portia was figured +exactly as she lives in the pages of Shakespeare--an imperial and yet an +enchanting woman, dazzling in her beauty, royal in her dignity, as +ardent in temperament as she is fine in brain and various and splendid +in personal peculiarities and feminine charm. After seeing that +matchless impersonation it seemed strange that Portia should ever have +been represented in any other light, and it was furthermore felt that +the inferior, mechanical, utilitarian semblance of her could not again +be endured. Ellen Terry's achievement was a complete vindication of the +high view that Shakespearean study has almost always taken of that +character, and it finally discredited the old stage notion that Portia +is a type of decorum and declamation. + +Aside from Hazlitt, who thought that Portia is affected and pedantic, +and who did not like her because he did not happen to appreciate her, +the best analytical thinkers about Shakespeare's works have taken the +high view of that character. Shakespeare himself certainly took it; for +aside from her own charming behaviour and delightful words it is to be +observed that everybody in the play who speaks of her at all speaks her +praise. It is only upon the stage that she has been made artificial, +prim, and preachy. That misrepresentation of her has, perhaps, been +caused, in part, by the practice long prevalent in our theatre of +cutting and compressing the play so as to make Shylock the chief figure +in it. In that way Portia is shorn of much of her splendour and her +meaning. The old theatrical records dwell almost exclusively upon +Shylock, and say little if anything about Portia. In Shakespeare's time, +no doubt, _The Merchant of Venice_ was acted as it is written, the +female persons in it being played by boys, or by men who could "speak +small." Alexander Cooke (1588-1614) played the light heroines of +Shakespeare while the poet was alive. All students of the subject are +aware that Burbage was the first Shylock, and that when he played the +part he wore a red wig, a red beard, and a long false nose. No record +exists as to the first Portia. The men who were acting female characters +upon the London stage when that institution was revived immediately +after the Restoration were Kynaston, James Nokes, Angel, William +Betterton, Mosely, and Floid. Kynaston, it is said, could act a woman so +well that when at length women themselves began to appear as actors it +was for some time doubted whether any one of them could equal him. The +account of his life, however, does not mention Portia as one of his +characters. + +Indeed the play of _The Merchant of Venice_, after it languished out of +sight in that decadence of the stage which ensued upon the growth of the +Puritan movement in England, did not again come into use until it was +revived in Lord Landsdowne's alteration of it produced at the theatre in +Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1701, and even then it was grossly perverted. +Forty years later, however, on St. Valentine's Day 1741, at Drury Lane, +when Macklin regenerated the character of Shylock, the original piece +was restored to the theatre. Women in the meantime had come upon the +stage. The garrulous and delightful Pepys, who had seen Kynaston play a +female part, records in his marvellous Diary that he first saw women as +actors on January 3, 1661. Those were members of Killigrew's company, +which preceded that of Davenant by several months, if not by a year; and +therefore the common statement in theatrical books that the first woman +that ever appeared on the English stage was Mrs. Sanderson, of +Davenant's company, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, is erroneous: and indeed +the name of the first English actress is as much unknown as the name of +the first Portia. When Macklin restored Shakespeare's _Merchant of +Venice_ to the stage it is not likely that the character of Portia was +dwarfed, for its representative then was Kitty Clive, and that actress +was a person of strong will. With Clive the long list begins of the +Portias of the stage. She was thirty years old when she played the part +with Macklin, and it is probable that she played it with dignity and +certain that she played it with sparkling animation and piquant grace. +The German Ulrici, whose descriptive epithets for Portia are "roguish +and intellectual," would doubtless have found his ideal of the part +fulfilled in Clive. The Nerissa that night was Mrs. Pritchard, then also +thirty years old, but not so famous as she afterward became. + +The greatest actress on the British stage in the eighteenth century +undoubtedly was Margaret Woffington (1719-1760). Sarah Siddons, to whom +the sceptre passed, was only five years old when Woffington died. Both +those brilliant names are associated with Portia. Augustin Daly's _Life +of Woffington_--the best life of her that has been written, and one of +the most sumptuous books that have been made--contains this reference to +her performance of that part: "All her critics agree that her +declamation was accurate and her gesture grace and nature combined; but +in tragic or even dramatic speeches her voice probably had its limits, +and in such scenes, being overtaxed, told against her. As Portia she +appeared to great advantage; but when Lorenzo says, 'This is the voice, +or I am much deceived, of Portia,' and Portia replies, 'He knows me, as +the blind man knows the cuckoo, by the bad voice,' the audience laughed +outright, and Woffington, conscious of her deficiency, with great +good-humour joined with them in their merriment." The incident is +mentioned in the _Table Talk_ (1825) of Richard Ryan, to which book Daly +refers. Mrs. Siddons made her first appearance on the London stage as +Portia December 29, 1775, and conspicuously failed in the part on that +occasion, but she became distinguished in it afterward; yet it is +probable that Mrs. Siddons expressed its nobility more than its +tenderness, and much more than its buoyant and glittering glee, which +was so entirely and beautifully given by Ellen Terry. After Peg +Woffington and before Mrs. Siddons the most conspicuous Portia was Mrs. +Dancer, whom Hugh Kelley, in his satirical composition of _Thespis_, +calls a "moon-eyed idiot,"--from which barbarous bludgeon phrase the +reader derives a hint as to her aspect. Some of the tones of Mrs. +Dancer's voice were so tender that no one could resist them. Spranger +Barry could not, for he married her, and after his death she became Mrs. +Crawford. Miss Maria Macklin, daughter of the first true Shylock of the +stage, acted Portia, April 13, 1776, with her father. She is recorded as +an accomplished woman but destitute of genius--in which predicament she +probably was not lonesome. On June 11, 1777 Portia was acted at the +Haymarket by Miss Barsanti, afterward Mrs. Lister, an actress who, since +she excelled in such parts as were customarily taken by Fanny Abington +(the distinct opposite of Portia-like characters), must have been +unsuited for it. The names of Miss Younge, Miss Farren, Miss E. Kemble, +Miss Ryder, Mrs. Pope, Miss De Camp, and Miss Murray are in the record +of the stage Portias that comes down to 1800. Probably the best of all +those Portias was Mrs. Pope. + +The beautiful Mrs. Glover played Portia in 1809 at the Haymarket +theatre. Mrs. Ogilvie played it, with Macready as Shylock (his first +appearance in that part), on May 13, 1823. Those figures passed and left +no shadow. Two English actresses of great fame are especially associated +with Portia--Ellen Tree, afterward Mrs. Charles Kean, and Helen Faucit, +now Lady Martin; and no doubt their assumptions of the part should be +marked as exceptions from the hard, didactic, declamatory, perfunctory +method that has customarily characterised the Portia of the stage. Lady +Martin's written analysis of Portia is noble in thought and subtle and +tender in penetration and sympathy. Charlotte Cushman read the text +superbly, but she was much too formidable ever to venture on assuming +the character. Portia is a woman who deeply loves and deeply rejoices +and exults in her love, and she is never ashamed of her passion or of +her exultation in it; and she says the finest things about love that are +said by any of Shakespeare's women; the finest because, while supremely +passionate, the feeling in them is perfectly sane. It is as a lover that +Ellen Terry embodied her, and while she made her a perfect woman, in all +the attributes that fascinate, she failed not, in the wonderful trial +scene, to invest her with that fine light of celestial anger--that +momentary thrill of moral austerity--which properly appertains to the +character at the climax of a solemn and almost tragical situation. + +On the American stage there have been many notable representatives of +the chief characters in _The Merchant of Venice_. In New York, when the +comedy was done at the old John Street theatre in 1773, Hallam was +Shylock and Mrs. Morris Portia. Twenty years afterward, at the same +house, Shylock was played by John Henry, and Portia by Mrs. Henry, while +the brilliant Hodgkinson appeared as Gratiano. Cooper, whose life has +been so well written by that ripe theatrical scholar Joseph N. Ireland, +in one of the books of the Dunlap Society, assumed Shylock in 1797 at +the theatre just then opened in Greenwich Street. The famous Miss +Brunton (then Mrs. Merry), was the Portia, and the cast included Moreton +as Bassanio, Warren as Antonio, Bernard as Gratiano, and Blissett as +Tubal. How far away and how completely lost and forgotten those once +distinguished and admired persons are! Yet Cooper in his day was +idolised: he had a fame as high, if not as widely spread, as that of +Henry Irving or Edwin Booth at present. William Creswick--lately dead at +an advanced age in London--was seen upon the New York stage as Shylock +in 1840; Macready in 1841; Charles Kean in 1845. With the latter, Ellen +Tree played Portia. Charles W. Couldock enacted Shylock on September 6, +1852, at the Castle Garden theatre, in a performance given to +commemorate the alleged centenary of the introduction of the drama into +America. The elder Wallack, the elder Booth, Edwin Forrest, G.V. Brooke, +George Vandenhoff, Wyzeman Marshall, and E.L. Davenport are among the +old local representatives of the Jew. Madam Ponisi used to play Portia, +and so did Mrs. Hoey. + +In December 1858, when _The Merchant of Venice_ was finely revived at +Wallack's theatre, with the elder Wallack as Shylock, the cast included +Lester Wallack as Bassanio, John Brougham as Gratiano, A. W. Young--a +quaintly comic actor, too soon cut off--as Launcelot Gobbo, Mary +Gannon--the fascinating, the irresistible--as Nerissa, and handsome Mrs. +Sloan as Jessica. The eminent German actor Davison played Shylock, in +New York, in his own language; and many German actors, no one of them +comparable with him, have been seen in it since. Lawrence Barrett often +played it, and with remarkable force and feeling. The triumphs won in it +by Edwin Booth are within the remembrance of many playgoers of this +generation. When he last acted the Jew Helena Modjeska was associated +with him as Portia. Booth customarily ended the piece with the trial +scene, omitting the last act; and indeed that was long the stage custom; +but with the true Portia of Ellen Terry and a good cast in general the +last act went blithely and with superb effect. The comedy was not +written for Shylock alone. He is a tremendous identity, but he is not +the chief subject. The central theme is Portia and her love. That theme +takes up a large part of the play,--which is like a broad summer +landscape strewn with many-coloured flowers that flash and glitter in +the sun, while slowly a muttering thunder-storm gathers and lowers, and +presently sweeps overhead, casting one black shadow as it passes, and +leaving the fragrant and glistening plain all the brighter and sweeter +for the contrast with its defeated menace and vanishing gloom. + + + + +XX. + +RICHARD MANSFIELD AS RICHARD THE THIRD. + + +The ideal of Richard that was expressed by this actor did not materially +differ from that which has been manifested by great tragic actors from +Garrick to Booth. He embodied a demoniac scoffer who, nevertheless, is a +human being. The infernal wickedness of Richard was shown to be impelled +by tremendous intellect but slowly enervated and ultimately thwarted and +ruined by the cumulative operation of remorse--corroding at the heart +and finally blasting the man with desolation and frenzy. That, +undoubtedly, was Shakespeare's design. But Richard Mansfield's +expression of that ideal differed from the expression to which the stage +has generally been accustomed, and in this respect his impersonation was +distinctive and original. + +The old custom of playing Richard was to take the exaggerated statements +of the opening soliloquy in a literal sense, to provide him with a big +hump, a lame leg, and a fell of straight black hair, and to make him +walk in, scowling, with his lower lip protruded, and declare with +snarling vehemence and guttural vociferation his amiable purpose of +specious duplicity and miscellaneous slaughter. The opening speech, +which is in Shakespeare's juvenile manner--an orotund, verbose manner, +which perhaps he had caught from Marlowe, and which he outgrew and +abandoned--was thus utilised for displaying the character in a massed +aspect, as that of a loathsome hypocrite and sanguinary villain; and, +that being done, he was made to advance through about two-thirds of the +tragedy, airily yet ferociously slaying everybody who came in his way, +until at some convenient point, definable at the option of the actor, he +was suddenly smitten with a sufficient remorse to account for his +trepidation before and during the tent-scene; and thereafter he was +launched into combat like a meteoric butcher, all frenzy and all gore, +and killed, amid general acclamation, when he had fenced himself out of +breath. + +That treatment of the character was, doubtless, in part a necessary +consequence of Shakespeare's perfunctory adoption of the Tudor doctrine +that Richard was a blood-boltered monster; but in a larger degree it was +the result of Cibber's vulgar distortion of the original piece. The +actual character of the king,--who seems to have been one of the ablest +and wisest monarchs that ever reigned in England--has never recovered, +and it never will recover, from the odium that was heaped upon it by the +Tudor historians and accepted and ratified by the great genius of +Shakespeare. The stage character of the king has been almost as +effectually damned by the ingenious theatrical claptrap with which +Cibber misrepresented and vulgarised Shakespeare's conception, assisted +by the efforts of a long line of blood-and-thunder tragedians, only too +well pleased to depict a gory, blathering, mugging miscreant, such as +their limited intelligence enabled them to comprehend. The stage +Richard, however, may possibly be redeemed. In Cibber he is everything +that Queen Margaret calls him, and worse than a brute. In Shakespeare, +although a miscreant, he is a man. The return to Shakespeare, +accordingly, is a step in the right direction. That step was taken some +time ago, although not maintained, first by Macready, then by Samuel +Phelps, then by Edwin Booth, and then by Henry Irving. Their good +example was followed by Richard Mansfield. He used a version of the +tragedy, made by himself,--a piece indicative of thoughtful study of the +subject as well as a keen intuitive grasp of it. He did not stop short +at being a commentator. Aiming to impersonate a character he treated +Shakespeare's prolix play in such a manner as to make it a practicable +living picture of a past age. The version was in five acts, preserving +the text of the original, much condensed, and introducing a few lines +from Cibber. It began with a bright processional scene before the Tower +of London, in which Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV., was conspicuous, and +against that background of "glorious summer" it placed the dangerous +figure of the Duke of Gloster. It comprised the murder of Henry VI., the +wooing of Lady Anne,--not in a London street, but in a rural place, on +the road to Chertsey; the lamentation for King Edward IV.; the episode +of the boy princes; the condemnation of Hastings,--a scene that +brilliantly denotes the mingled artifice and savagery of Shakespeare's +Gloster; the Buckingham plot; the priest and mayor scene; the +temptation of Tyrrel; the fall of Buckingham; the march to battle; the +episode of the spectres; and the fatal catastrophe on Bosworth Field. +Enough of the story was thus related to satisfy the Shakespeare scholar. + +The notable peculiarity was the assumption that there are considerable +lapses of time at intervals during the continuance of the story. The +effort to reconcile poetry with history produced little if any +appreciable practical result upon the stage,--seeing that an audience +would not think of lapses of time unless those lapses were mentioned in +the play-bill. An incessant continuity of action, a ceaseless rush and +whirl of events, is the essential life of the play. No auditor can feel +that Richard has waited twelve years before making any movement or +striking any blow, after his aspiration that heaven will take King +Edward and leave the world for him "to bustle in." That word "bustle" is +a favourite word with Richard. And furthermore there is no development +of his character in Shakespeare's play: there is simply the presentation +of it, complete and rounded at the outset, and remaining invariably and +inflexibly the same to the close. + +Mansfield, however, deduced this effect from his consideration of the +flight of time: a contrast between Richard at nineteen and Richard at +thirty-three, a contrast strongly expressive of the reactionary +influence that an experience of evil deeds has produced upon a man who +at first was only a man of evil thoughts and evil will. This imported +into the performance a diversity of delineation without, however, +affecting the formidable weight of the figure of Richard, or its +brilliancy, or its final significance. The embodiment was splendid with +it, and would be just as splendid without it. The presence of heart and +conscience in that demoniac human creature is denoted by Shakespeare and +must be shown by the actor. Precisely at what point his heaven-defying +will should begin to waver is not defined. Mansfield chose to indicate +the operation of remorse and terror in Richard's soul as early as the +throne scene and before yet the king has heard that the royal boys have +been murdered. The effect of his action, equally with the method of it, +was magnificent. You presently saw him possessed of the throne for which +he had so terribly toiled and sinned, and alone upon it, bathed in +blood-red light, the pitiable personification of gorgeous but haunted +evil, marked off from among mankind and henceforth desolate. Throughout +that fine scene Mansfield's portrayal of the fearful struggle between +wicked will and human weakness was in a noble vein of imagination, +profound in its sincerity, affecting in its pathos, and pictorial in its +treatment. In the earlier scenes his mood and his demeanour had been +suffused with a cool, gay, mockery of elegant cynicism. He killed King +Henry with a smile, in a scene of gloomy mystery that might have come +from the pencil of Gustave Dore. He looked upon the mourning Lady Anne +with cheerful irony and he wooed her with all the fervour that passion +and pathos can engender in the behaviour of a hypocrite. His +dissimulation with the princes and with the mayor and the nobles was to +the last degree specious. One of his finest points was the temptation of +Buckingham to murder the princes. There, and indeed at all points, was +observed the absence of even the faintest reminiscence of the ranting, +mouthing, flannel-jawed king of clubs who has so generally strutted and +bellowed as Shakespeare's Gloster. All was bold and telling in the +manner, and yet the manner was reticent with nature and fine with +well-bred continence. + +With the throne scene began the spiritual conflict. At least it then +began to be disclosed; and from that moment onward the state of Richard +was seen to be that of Orestes pursued by the furies. But Mansfield was +right, and was consistent, in making the monarch faithful in his +devotion to evil. Richard's presentiments, pangs, and tremors are +intermittent. In the great, empty, darkening throne-room, with its +shadowy nooks and dim corners, shapeless and nameless spectres may +momentarily come upon him and shake his strong spirit with the sinister +menace of hell. Along the dark plains, on the fateful night before the +battle, the sad ghosts may drift and wander, moaning and wailing in the +ghastly gloom; and in that hour of haunted desolation the doomed king +may feel that, after all, he is but mortal man, and that his pre-ordered +destruction is close at hand and not to be averted; but Richard never +deceives himself; never palters with the goodness that he has scorned. +He dies as he has lived, defiant and terrible. + +Mansfield's treatment of the ghost scenes at Bosworth was novel, +original, and poetic, and his death scene was not only a display of +personal prowess but a reproduction of historical fact. With a detail +like this the truth of history becomes useful, but in general the actor +cannot safely go back of the Shakespearean scheme. To present Richard as +he probably was would be to present a man of some virtue as well as +great ability. Mansfield's acting revealed an amiable desire to infuse +as much goodness as possible into the Shakespearean conception, but he +obtained his chief success by acting the part substantially according to +Shakespeare and by setting and dressing the play with exceptional if not +altogether exact fidelity to the time, the places, and the persons that +are implicated in the story. + +Shakespeare's Richard is a type of colossal will and of restless, +inordinate, terrific activity. The objects of his desire and his effort +are those objects which are incident to supreme power; but his chief +object is that assertion of himself which is irresistibly incited and +steadfastly compelled by the overwhelming, seething, acrid energy of his +feverish soul, burning and raging in his fiery body. He can no more help +projecting himself upon the affairs of the world than the malignant +cobra can help darting upon its prey. He is a vital, elemental force, +grisly, hectic, terrible, impelled by volcanic heat and electrified and +made lurid and deadly by the infernal purpose of restless wickedness. No +actor can impersonate Richard in an adequate manner who does not possess +transcendent force of will, combined with ambitious, incessant, and +restless mental activity. Mansfield in those respects is qualified for +the character, and out of his professional resources he was able to +supply the other elements that are requisite to its constitution and +fulfilment. He presented as Richard a sardonic, scoffing demon, who +nevertheless, somewhere in his complex nature, retains an element of +humanity. He embodied a character that is tragic in its ultimate effect, +but his method was that of the comedian. His portrayal of Richard, +except at those moments when it is veiled with craft and dissimulation, +or at those other and grander moments, infrequent but awful and +agonising, when it is convulsed with terror or with the anguish of +remorse, stood forth boldly in the sunshine, a crystallised and deadly +sarcasm, equally trenchant upon itself and all the world, equally +scornful of things human and things divine. That deadly assumption of +keen and mordant mockery, that cool, glittering, malignant lightness of +manner, was consistently sustained throughout the performance, while the +texture of it was made continuously entertaining by diversity of colour +and inflection, sequent on changing moods; so that Richard was shown as +a creature of the possible world of mankind and not as a fiction of the +stage. + +The part was acted by him: it was not declaimed. He made, indeed, a +skilful use of his uncommon voice--keeping its tones light, sweet, and +superficial during the earlier scenes (while yet, in accordance with his +theory of development, Gloster is the personification of evil purpose +only beginning to ripen into evil deed), and then permitting them to +become deeper and more significant and thrilling as the man grows old in +crime and haggard and convulsed in self-conflict and misery. But it was +less with vocal excellence that the auditor was impressed than with the +actor's identification with the part and his revelation of the soul of +it. When first presented Gloster was a mocking devil. The murder of +King Henry was done with malice, but the malice was enwrapped with glee. +In the wooing of Lady Anne there was both heart and passion, but the +mood was that of lightsome duplicity. It is not until years of scheming +and of evil acts, engendering, promoting, and sustaining a condition of +mental horror and torture, have ravaged his person and set their seal +upon him, in sunken cheek and hollow eye, in shattered nerves and deep +and thrilling voice, surcharged at once with inveterate purpose and with +incessant agony, that this light manner vanishes, and the demeanour and +action of the wicked monarch becomes ruthless, direct, and terrible. +Whether, upon the basis of a play so discursive, so episodical, so +irresolutely defined as Shakespeare's _Richard the Third_, that theory +of the development of its central character is logically tenable is a +dubious question. In Shakespeare the character is presented full-grown +at the start, and then, through a confused tangle of historical events, +is launched into action. Nevertheless in his practical application of it +Mansfield made his theory effective by a novel, powerful, interesting +performance. You could not help perceiving in Mansfield's embodiment +that Gloster was passing through phases of experience--that the man +changed, as men do change in life, the integral character remaining the +same in its original fibre, but the condition varying, in accordance +with the reaction of conduct upon temperament and conscience. + +Mansfield deeply moved his audience in the repulse of Buckingham, in the +moody menace of the absent Stanley, in the denunciation of Hastings, and +in the awakening from the dream on the night before the battle. +Playgoers have seldom seen a dramatic climax so thrilling as his +hysterical recognition of Catesby, after the moment of doubt whether +this be not also a phantom of his terrific dream. It was not so much by +startling theatrical effects, however, as by subtle denotements, now of +the tempest and now of the brooding horror in the king's heart, that the +actor gained his victory. The embodiment lacked incessant fiery +expedition--the explosive, meteoric quality that astounds and dazzles. +Chief among the beauties was imagination. The attitude of the monarch +toward his throne--the infernal triumph, and yet the remorseful agony +and withering fear--in the moment of ghastly loneliness when he knows +that the innocent princes have been murdered and that his imperial +pathway is clear, made up one of the finest spectacles of dramatic +illumination that the stage has afforded. You saw the murderer's hideous +exultation, and then, in an instant, as the single ray of red light from +the setting sun streamed through the Gothic window and fell upon his +evil head, you saw him shrink in abject fear, cowering in the shadow of +his throne; and the dusky room was seemingly peopled with gliding +spectres. That treatment was theatrical, but in no derogatory sense +theatrical--for it comports with the great speech on conscience; not the +fustian of Cibber, about mutton and short-lived pleasure, but the speech +that Shakespeare has put into Richard's mouth; the speech that inspired +Mansfield's impersonation--the brilliant embodiment of an intellectual +man, predisposed to evil, who yields to that inherent impulse, and +thereafter, although intermittently convulsed with remorse, fights with +tremendous energy against the goodness that he scorns and defies, till +at last he dashes himself to pieces against the adamant of eternal law. + + + + +XXI. + +GENEVIEVE WARD: FORGET ME NOT. + + +In the season of 1880-81 Genevieve Ward made a remarkably brilliant hit +with her embodiment of Stephanie De Mohrivart, in the play of _Forget Me +Not_, by Herman Merivale, and since then she has acted that part +literally all round the world. It was an extraordinary +performance--potent with intellectual character, beautiful with +refinement, nervous and steel-like with indomitable purpose and icy +glitter, intense with passion, painfully true to an afflicting ideal of +reality, and at last splendidly tragic: and it was a shining example of +ductile and various art. Such a work ought surely to be recorded as one +of the great achievements of the stage. Genevieve Ward showed herself to +possess in copious abundance peculiar qualities of power and beauty upon +which mainly the part of Stephanie is reared. The points of assimilation +between the actress and the part were seen to consist in an imperial +force of character, intellectual brilliancy, audacity of mind, iron +will, perfect elegance of manners, a profound self-knowledge, and +unerring intuitions as to the relation of motive and conduct in that +vast network of circumstance which is the social fabric. Stephanie +possesses all those attributes; and all those attributes Genevieve Ward +supplied, with the luxuriant adequacy and grace of nature. But Stephanie +superadds to those attributes a bitter, mocking cynicism, thinly veiled +by artificial suavity and logically irradiant from natural hardness of +heart, coupled with an insensibility that has been engendered by cruel +experience of human selfishness. This, together with a certain mystical +touch of the animal freedom, whether in joy or wrath, that goes with a +being having neither soul nor conscience, the actress had to supply--and +did supply--by her art. As interpreted by Genevieve Ward the character +was reared, not upon a basis of unchastity but upon a basis of +intellectual perversion. Stephanie has followed--at first with +self-contempt, afterward with sullen indifference, finally with the bold +and brilliant hardihood of reckless defiance--a life of crime. She is +audacious, unscrupulous, cruel; a consummate tactician; almost sexless, +yet a siren in knowledge and capacity to use the arts of her sex; +capable of any wickedness to accomplish an end, yet trivial enough to +have no higher end in view than the reinvestiture of herself with social +recognition; cold as snow; implacable as the grave; remorseless; wicked; +but, beneath all this depravity, capable of self-pity, capable of +momentary regret, capable of a little human tenderness, aware of the +glory of the innocence she has lost, and thus not altogether beyond the +pale of compassion. And she is, in externals,--in everything visible and +audible,--the ideal of grace and melody. + +In the presence of an admirable work of art the observer wishes that it +were entirely worthy of being performed and that it were entirely clear +and sound as to its applicability--in a moral sense, or even in an +intellectual sense--to human life. Art does not go far when it stops +short at the revelation of the felicitous powers of the artist; and it +is not altogether right when it tends to beguile sympathy with an +unworthy object and perplex a spectator's perceptions as to good and +evil. Genevieve Ward's performance of Stephanie, brilliant though it +was, did not redeem the character from its bleak exile from human +sympathy. The actress managed, by a scheme of treatment exclusively her +own, to make Stephanie, for two or three moments, piteous and forlorn; +and her expression of that evanescent anguish--occurring in the appeal +to Sir Horace Welby, her friendly foe, in the strong scene of the second +act--was wonderfully subtle. That appeal, as Genevieve Ward made it, +began in artifice, became profoundly sincere, and then was stunned and +startled into a recoil of resentment by a harsh rebuff, whereupon it +subsided through hysterical levity into frigid and brittle sarcasm and +gay defiance. For a while, accordingly, the feelings of the observer +were deeply moved. Yet this did not make the character of Stephanie less +detestable. The blight remains upon it--and always must remain--that it +repels the interest of the heart. The added blight likewise rests upon +it (though this is of less consequence to a spectator), that it is +burdened with moral sophistry. Vicious conduct in a woman, according to +Stephanie's logic, is not more culpable or disastrous than vicious +conduct in a man: the woman, equally with the man, should have a social +license to sow the juvenile wild oats and effect the middle-aged +reformation; and it is only because there are gay young men who indulge +in profligacy that women sometimes become adventurers and moral +monsters. All this is launched forth in speeches of singular terseness, +eloquence, and vigour; but all this is specious and mischievous +perversion of the truth--however admirably in character from Stephanie's +lips. Every observer who has looked carefully upon the world is aware +that the consequences of wrongdoing by a woman are vastly more +pernicious than those of wrongdoing by a man; that society could not +exist in decency, if to its already inconvenient coterie of reformed +rakes it were to add a legion of reformed wantons; and that it is innate +wickedness and evil propensity that makes such women as Stephanie, and +not the mere existence of the wild young men who are willing to become +their comrades--and who generally end by being their dupes and victims. +It is natural, however, that this adventurer--who has kept a +gambling-hell and ruined many a man, soul and body, and who now wishes +to reinstate herself in a virtuous social position--should thus strive +to palliate her past proceedings. Self-justification is one of the +first laws of life. Even Iago, who never deceives himself, yet announces +one adequate motive for his fearful crimes. Even Bulwer's Margrave--that +prodigy of evil, that cardinal type of infernal, joyous, animal +depravity--can yet paint himself in the light of harmless loveliness and +innocent gayety. + +_Forget Me Not_ tells a thin story, but its story has been made to yield +excellent dramatic pictures, splendid moments of intellectual combat, +and affecting contrasts of character. The dialogue, particularly in the +second act, is as strong and as brilliant as polished steel. In that +combat of words Genevieve Ward's acting was delicious with trenchant +skill and fascinating variety. The easy, good-natured, bantering air +with which the strife began, the liquid purity of the tones, the +delicate glow of the arch satire, the icy glitter of the thought and +purpose beneath the words, the transition into pathos and back again +into gay indifference and deadly hostility, the sudden and terrible mood +of menace, when at length the crisis had passed and the evil genius had +won its temporary victory--all those were in perfect taste and +consummate harmony. Seeing that brilliant, supple, relentless, +formidable figure, and hearing that incisive, bell-like voice, the +spectator was repelled and attracted at the same instant, and thoroughly +bewildered with the sense of a power and beauty as hateful as they were +puissant. Not since Ristori acted Lucretia Borgia has the stage +exhibited such an image of imperial will, made radiant with beauty and +electric with flashes of passion. The leopard and the serpent are fatal, +terrible, and loathsome; yet they scarcely have a peer among nature's +supreme symbols of power and grace. Into the last scene of _Forget Me +Not_,--when at length Stephanie is crushed by physical fear, through +beholding, unseen by him, the man who would kill her as a malignant and +dangerous reptile,--Genevieve Ward introduced such illustrative +"business," not provided by the piece, as greatly enhanced the final +effect. The backward rush from the door, on seeing the Corsican avenger +on the staircase, and therewithal the incidental, involuntary cry of +terror, was the invention of the actress: and from that moment to the +final exit she was the incarnation of abject fear. The situation is one +of the strongest that dramatic ingenuity has invented: the actress +invested it with a colouring of pathetic and awful truth. + + + + +XXII. + +EDWARD S. WILLARD IN THE MIDDLEMAN AND JUDAH. + + +E.S. Willard accomplished his first appearance upon the American stage +(at Palmer's theatre, November 10, 1890), in the powerful play of _The +Middleman_, by Henry Arthur Jones. A representative audience welcomed +the modest and gentle stranger and the greeting that hailed him was that +of earnest respect. Willard had long been known and esteemed in New York +by the dramatic profession and by those persons who habitually observe +the changeful aspects of the contemporary stage on both sides of the +ocean; but to the American public his name had been comparatively +strange. The sentiment of kindness with which he was received deepened +into admiration as the night wore on, and before the last curtain fell +upon his performance of Cyrus Blenkarn he had gained an unequivocal and +auspicious victory. In no case has the first appearance of a new actor +been accompanied with a more brilliant exemplification of simple worth; +and in no case has its conquest of the public enthusiasm been more +decisive. Not the least impressive feature of the night was the steadily +increasing surprise of the audience as the performance proceeded. It was +the actor's way to build slowly, and at the opening of the piece the +poor inventor's blind ignorance of the calamity that is impending is +chiefly trusted to create essential sympathy. Through those moments of +approaching sorrow the sweet unconsciousness of the loving father was +expressed by Willard with touching truth. In this he astonished even as +much as he pleased his auditors; for they were not expecting it. + +One of the most exquisite enjoyments provided by the stage is the advent +of a new actor who is not only new but good. It is the pleasure of +discovery. It is the pleasure of contact with a rich mind hitherto +unexplored. The personal appearance, the power of the eye, the variety +of the facial expression, the tones of the voice, the carriage of the +person, the salient attributes of the individual character, the altitude +of the intellectual development, the quality of the spirit, the extent +and the nature of those artistic faculties and resources that constitute +the professional equipment,--all those things become the subject first +of interested inquiry and next of pleased recognition. Willard is +neither of the stately, the weird, the mysterious, nor the ferocious +order of actor. There is nothing in him of either Werner, Manfred, or +Sir Giles Overreach. He belongs not to either the tradition of John +Kemble or of Edmund Kean. His personality, nevertheless, is of a +distinctive and interesting kind. He has the self-poise and the exalted +calm of immense reserve power and of tender and tremulous sensibility +perfectly controlled. His acting is conspicuously marked by two of the +loveliest attributes of art--simplicity and sincerity. He conceals +neither the face nor the heart. His figure is fine and his demeanour is +that of vigorous mental authority informed by moral purity and by the +self-respect of a manly spirit. Goodness, although a quality seldom +taken into the critical estimate, nevertheless has its part in spiritual +constitution and in consequent effect. It was, for instance, an element +of artistic potentiality in the late John McCullough. It operated +spontaneously; and just so it does in the acting of Willard, who, first +of all, gives the satisfying impression of being genuine. A direct and +thorough method of expression naturally accompanies that order of mind +and that quality of temperament. Every movement that Willard makes upon +the stage is clear, free, open, firm, and of an obvious significance. +Every tone of his rich and resonant voice is distinctly intended and is +distinctly heard. There are no "flaws and starts." He has formed a +precise ideal. He knows exactly how to embody and to utter it, and he +makes the manifestation of it sharp, defined, positive, and cogent. His +meaning cannot be missed. He has an unerring sense of proportion and +symmetry. The character that he represents is shown, indeed, all at +once, as a unique identity; but it is not all at once developed, the +manifestation of it being made gradually to proceed under the stress of +experience and of emotion. He rises with the occasion. His feelings are +deep, and he is possessed of extraordinary power for the utterance of +them--not simply vocal power, although that, in his case, is +exceptional, but the rare faculty of becoming convulsed, inspired, +transfigured, by passion, and of being swept along by it, and of +sweeping along his hearers. His manner covers, without concealing, great +intensity. This is such a combination of traits as must have existed--if +the old records are read aright--in that fine and famous actor, John +Henderson, and which certainly existed in the late Benjamin Webster. It +has, however, always been rare upon the stage, and, like all rare +jewels, it is precious. The actor who, from an habitual mood of sweet +gravity and patient gentleness, can rise to the height of delirious +passion, and there sustain himself at a poise of tempestuous +concentration which is the fulfilment of nature, and never once seem +either ludicrous or extravagant, is an actor of splendid power and +extraordinary self-discipline. Such an actor is Willard. The blue eyes, +the slightly olive complexion, the compact person, the picturesque +appearance, the melodious voice, the flexibility of natural action, and +the gradual and easy ascent from the calm level of domestic peace to the +stormy summit of passionate ecstasy recall personal peculiarities and +artistic methods long passed away. The best days of Edwin L. Davenport +and the younger James Wallack are brought to mind by them. + +In the drama of _The Middleman_ Willard had to impersonate an inventor, +of the absorbed, enthusiastic, self-regardless, fanatical kind. Cyrus +Blenkarn is a potter. His genius and his toil have enriched two persons +named Chandler, father and son, who own and conduct a porcelain factory +in an English town of the present day. Blenkarn has two daughters, and +one of them is taken from him by the younger Chandler. The circumstances +of that deprivation point at disgrace, and the inventor conceives +himself to have suffered an odious ignominy and irreparable wrong. Young +Chandler has departed and so has Mary Blenkarn, and they are eventually +to return as husband and wife; but Cyrus Blenkarn has been aroused from +his reveries over the crucible and furnace,--wherein he is striving to +discover a lost secret in the potter's art that will make him both rich +and famous,--and he utters a prayer for vengeance upon these Chandlers, +and he parts from them. A time of destitution and of pitiful struggle +with dire necessity, sleepless grief, and the maddening impulse of +vengeance now comes upon him, so that he is wasted almost to death. He +will not, however, abandon his quest for the secret of his art. He may +die of hunger and wretchedness; he will not yield. At the last moment +of his trial and his misery--alone--at night--in the alternate lurid +blaze and murky gloom of his firing-house--success is conquered: the +secret is found. This climax, to which the preliminaries gradually and +artfully lead, affords a great opportunity to an actor; and Willard +greatly filled it. The old inventor has been bowed down almost to +despair. Grief and destitution, the sight of his remaining daughter's +poverty, and the conflict of many feelings have made him a wreck. But +his will remains firm. It is not, however, until his last hope has been +abandoned that his success suddenly comes--and the result of this is a +delirium. That situation, one of the best in modern drama, has been +treated by the author in such a manner as to sustain for a long time the +feeling of suspense and to put an enormous strain upon the emotion and +the resources of an actor. Willard's presentment of the gaunt, +attenuated figure of Cyrus Blenkarn--hollow-eyed, half-frantic, +hysterical with grief and joy--was the complete incarnation of a +dramatic frensy; and this, being sympathetic, and moving to goodness and +not to evil, captured the heart. It was a magnificent exhibition, not +alone of the physical force that sometimes is so essential in acting but +of that fervour of the soul without which acting is a mockery. + +The skill with which Willard reserved his power, so that the +impersonation might gradually increase in strength, was one of the best +merits of his art. Blenkarn's prayer might readily be converted into the +climax of the piece, and it might readily be spoken in such a way that +no effect would be left for the culmination in the furnace-room. Those +errors were avoided, and during three out of the four acts the movement +of the piece was fluent, continuous, and cumulative. In this respect +both the drama and the performance were instructive. Henry Arthur Jones +has diversified his serious scenes with passages of sportive humour and +he has freighted the piece with conventional didacticism as to the +well-worn question of capital and labour. The humour is good: the +political economy need not detain attention. The value of the play does +not reside in its teaching but in its dramatic presentation of strong +character, individual experience, and significant story. The effect +produced by _The Middleman_ is that of moral elevation. Its auditor is +touched and ennobled by a spectacle of stern trial, pitiable suffering, +and stoical endurance. In the purpose that presides over human +destiny--if one may accept the testimony equally of history and of +fiction--it appears to be necessary first to create strong characters +and then to break them; and the manner in which they are broken usually +involves the elements alike of dramatic effect and of pathos. That +singular fact in mortal experience may have been noticed by this author. +His drama is a forcible exposition of it. _The Middleman_ was set upon +Palmer's stage in such a way as to strengthen the dramatic illusion by +the fidelity of scenery. The firing-house, with its furnaces in +operation, was a copy of what may be seen at Worcester. The picture of +English life was excellent. + +When Willard played the part of Judah Llewellyn for the first time in +America (December 29, 1890), he gained from a sympathetic and judicious +audience a verdict of emphatic admiration. Judah Llewellyn is a good +part in one of the most striking plays of the period--a play that tells +an interesting and significant story by expressive, felicitous, and +incessant action; affects the feelings by situations that are vital +with dramatic power; inspires useful thought upon a theme of +psychological importance; cheers the mind with a fresh breeze of +satirical humour; and delights the instinct of taste by its crisp and +pungent style. Alike by his choice of a comparatively original subject +and his deft method in the treatment of it Henry Arthur Jones has shown +a fine dramatic instinct; and equally in the evolution of character and +the expression of experience and emotion he has wrought with feeling and +vigour. Most of the plays that are written, in any given period, pass +away with the period to which they appertain. _Judah_ is one of the +exceptions; for its brilliantly treated theme is one of perennial +interest, and there seems reason to believe, of a work so vital, that +long after the present generation has vanished it still will keep its +place in the theatre, and sometimes be acted, not as a quaint relic but +as a living lesson. + +That theme is the psychic force in human organism. The author does not +obtrude it; does not play the pedant with it; does not lecture upon it; +and above all does not bore with it. He only uses it; and he has been so +true to his province as a dramatist and not an advocate that he never +once assumes to decide upon any question of doctrine that may be +involved in the assertion of it. His heroine is a young woman who thinks +herself to be possessed of a certain inherent restorative power of +curing the sick. This power is of psychic origin and it operates through +the medium of personal influence. This girl, Vashti Dethick, has exerted +her power with some success. Other persons, having felt its good effect, +have admitted its existence. The father of Vashti, an enterprising +scamp, has thereupon compelled the girl to trade upon her peculiar +faculty; little by little to assume miraculous powers; and finally to +pretend that her celestial talent is refreshed and strengthened by +abstinence from food, and that her cures are wrought only after she has +fasted for many days. He has thus converted her into an impostor; yet, +as her heart is pure and her moral principle naturally sound, she is ill +at ease in this false position, and her mental distress has suddenly +become aggravated, almost to the pitch of desperation, by the arrival of +love. She has lost her heart to a young clergyman, Judah Llewellyn, the +purity of whose spirit and the beauty of whose life are a bitter and +burning rebuke to her enforced deceitfulness of conduct. Here is a woman +innocently guilty, suddenly aroused by love, made sensitive and noble +(as that passion commonly makes those persons who really feel it), and +projected into a condition of aggrieved excitement. In this posture of +romantic and pathetic circumstances the crisis of two lives is suddenly +precipitated in action. + +Judah Llewellyn also is possessed of spiritual sensibility and psychic +force. In boyhood a shepherd, he has dwelt among the mountains of his +native Wales, and his imagination has heard the voices that are in rocks +and trees, in the silence of lonely places, in the desolation of the +bleak hills, and in the cold light of distant stars. He is now a +preacher, infatuated with his mission, inspired in his eloquence, +invincible in his tremendous sincerity. He sees Vashti and he loves her. +It is the first thrill of mortal passion that ever has mingled with his +devotion to his Master's work. The attraction between these creatures is +human; and yet it is more of heaven than of earth. It is a tie of +spiritual kindred that binds them. They are beings of a different order +from the common order--and, as happens in such cases, they will be +tried by exceptional troubles and passed through a fire of mortal +anguish. For what reason experience should take the direction of misery +with fine natures in human life no philosopher has yet been able to +ascertain; but that it does take that direction all competent +observation proves. To Vashti and Judah the time speedily comes when +their love is acknowledged, upon both sides--the preacher speaking +plainly; the girl, conscious of turpitude, shrinking from a spoken +avowal which yet her whole personality proclaims. Yielding to her +father's malign will she has consented to make one more manifestation of +curative power, to go through once more,--and for the last time,--the +mockery of a pretended fast. The scene is Lord Asgarby's house; the +patient is Lord Asgarby's daughter--an only child, cursed with +constitutional debility, the foredoomed victim of premature decline. +This frail creature has heard of Vashti and believes in her, and desires +and obtains her society. To Professor Dethick this is, in every sense, a +golden opportunity, and he insists that the starvation test shall be +thoroughly made. Lord Asgarby, willing to do anything for his idolised +daughter, assents to the plan, and his scientific friend, cynical +Professor Jopp, agrees, with the assistance of his erudite daughter, to +supervise the experiment. Vashti will fast for several days, and the +heir of Asgarby will then be healed by her purified and exalted +influence. + +The principal scene of the play shows the exterior of an ancient, unused +tower of Asgarby House, in which Vashti is detained during the fast. The +girl is supposed to be starving. Her scampish father will endeavour to +relieve her. Miss Jopp is vigilant to prevent fraud. The patient is +confident. Judah, wishful to be near to the object of his adoration, has +climbed the outer wall and is watching, beneath the window, unseen, in +the warder's seat. The time is summer, the hour midnight, and the +irrevocable vow of love has been spoken. At that supreme instant, and +under conditions so natural that the picture seems one of actual life, +the sin of Vashti is revealed and the man who had adored her as an angel +knows her for a cheat. With a difference of circumstances that +situation--in the fibre of it--is not new. Many a lover, male and +female, has learned that every idol has its flaw. But the situation is +new in its dramatic structure. For Judah the discovery is a terrible +one, and the resultant agony is convulsive and lamentable. He takes, +however, the only course he could be expected to take: he must vindicate +the integrity of the woman whom he loves, and he commits the crime of +perjury in order to shield her reputation from disgrace. + +What will a man do for the woman whom he loves? The attributes of +individual character are always to be considered as forces likely to +modify passion and to affect conduct. But in general the answer to that +question may be given in three words--anything and everything! The +history of nations, as of individuals, is never rightly read until it is +read in the light of knowledge of the influence that has been exerted +over them by women. Cleopatra, in ancient Egypt, changed the history of +Rome by the ruin of Marc Antony. Another heroine recently toppled +Ireland down the fire-escape into the back-yard. So goes the world. In +Judah, however, the crime that is done for love is pursued to its +consequence of ever-accumulative suffering, until at length, when it has +been expiated by remorse and repentance, it is rectified by confession +and obliterated by pardon. No play ever taught a lesson of truth with +more cogent dramatic force. The cynical, humorous scenes are +delightful. + +Willard's representation of Cyrus Blenkarn stamped him as one of the +best actors of the age. His representation of Judah Llewellyn deepened +that impression and reinforced it with a conviction of marked +versatility. In his utterance of passion Willard showed that he has +advanced far beyond the Romeo stage. The love that he expressed was that +of a man--intellectual, spiritual, noble, a moral being and one +essentially true. Man's love, when it is real, adores its object; +hallows it; invests it with celestial attributes; and beholds it as a +part of heaven. That quality of reverence was distinctly conveyed by the +actor, and therefore to observers who conceive passion to be delirious +abandonment (of which any animal is capable), his ardour may have seemed +dry and cold. It was nevertheless true. He made the tempestuous torrent +of Judah's avowal the more overwhelming by his preliminary +self-repression and his thoughtful gentleness of reserve; for thus the +hunger of desire was beautiful with devotion and tenderness; and while +the actor's feelings seemed borne away upon a whirling tide of +irresistible impulse his exquisite art kept a perfect control of face, +voice, person, demeanour, and delivery, and not once permitted a lapse +into extravagance. The character thus embodied will long be remembered +as an image of dignity, sweetness, moral enthusiasm, passionate fervour, +and intellectual power; but, also, viewed as an effort in the art of +acting, it will be remembered as a type of consummate grace in the +embodiment of a beautiful ideal clearly conceived. The effect of +spiritual suffering, as conveyed in the pallid countenance and ravaged +figure, in the last act, was that of noble pathos. The delivery of all +the speeches of the broken, humiliated, haunted minister was deeply +touching, not alone in music of voice but in denotement of knowledge of +human nature and human suffering and endurance. The actor who can play +such a part in such a manner is not an experimental artist. Rather let +him be called--in the expressive words of one of his country's poets-- + + "Sacred historian of the heart + And moral nature's lord." + + + + +XXIII. + +SALVINI AS KING SAUL AND KING LEAR. + + +Salvini was grander and finer in King Saul than in any other embodiment +that he presented. He seized the idea wholly, and he executed it with +affluent power. He brought to the part every attribute necessary to its +grandeur of form and its afflicting sympathy of spirit. His towering +physique presented, with impressive accuracy, the Hebrew monarch, chosen +of God, who was "lifted a head and shoulders above the people." His +tremulous sensibility, his knowledge of suffering, his skill in +depicting it, his great resources of voice, his vigour and fineness of +action, his exceptional commingling of largeness and gentleness--all +these attributes combined in that performance, to give magnificent +reality to one of the most sublime conceptions in literature. By his +personation of Saul Salvini added a new and an immortal figure to the +stage pantheon of kings and heroes. + +Alfieri's tragedy of _Saul_ was written in 1782-83, when the haughty, +impetuous, and passionate poet was thirty-four years old, and at the +suggestion of the Countess of Albany, whom he loved. He had suffered a +bereavement at the time, and he was in deep grief. The Countess tried to +console him by reading the Bible, and when they came upon the narrative +of Saul the idea of the tragedy was struck out between them. The work +was written with vigorous impulse and the author has left, in his +autobiography, the remark that none of his tragedies cost him so little +labour. _Saul_ is in five acts and it contains 1567 lines--of that +Italian _versi sciolti_ which inadequately corresponds to the blank +verse of the English language. The scene is laid in the camp of Saul's +army. Six persons are introduced, namely, Saul, Jonathan, David, Michel, +Abner, and Achimelech. The time supposed to be occupied by the +action--or rather, by the suffering--of the piece is a single day, the +last in the king's life. Act first is devoted to explanation, conveyed +in warnings to David, by Jonathan, his friend, and Michel, his wife. Act +second presents the distracted monarch, who knows that God has forsaken +him and that death is at hand. In a speech of terrible intensity he +relates to Abner the story of the apparition of Samuel and the doom that +the ghost has spoken. His children humour and soothe the broken old man, +and finally succeed in softening his mind toward David--whom he at once +loves, dreads, and hates, as the appointed instrument of his destruction +and the successor to his crown. Act third shows David playing upon the +harp before Saul, and chanting Saul's deeds in the service and defence +of Israel--so that he calms the agonised delirium of the haunted king +and wins his blessing; but at last a boastful word makes discord in the +music's charm, and Saul is suddenly roused into a ghastly fury. Acts +fourth and fifth deal with the wild caprices and maddening agonies of +the frenzied father; the ever-varying phenomena of his mental disease; +the onslaught of the Philistines; the killing of his sons; the frequent +recurrence, before his mind's eye, of the shade of the dead prophet; and +finally his suicidal death. It is, in form, a classical tragedy, +massive, grand, and majestically simple; and it blazes from end to end +with the fire of a sublime imagination. + +Ardent lovers of Italian literature are fond of ranking _Saul_ with +_Lear_. The claim is natural but it is not valid. In _Lear_--not to +speak of its profound revelations of universal human nature and its vast +philosophy of human life--there is a tremendous scope of action, through +which mental condition and experience are dramatically revealed; and +there is the deepest deep of pathos, because the highest height of +afflicted goodness. In _Saul_ there is simply--upon a limited canvas, +without adjuncts, without the suggestion of resources, without the +relief of even mournful humour, and with a narrative rather than a +dramatic background--the portraiture of a condition; and, because the +man displayed is neither so noble nor so human, the pathos surcharging +the work is neither so harrowing nor so tender. Yet the two works are +akin in majesty of ideal, in the terrible topic of mental disease that +shatters a king, and in the atmosphere of desolation that trails after +them like a funeral pall; and it is not a wonder that Alfieri's Saul +should be deemed the greatest tragedy ever originated in the Italian +language. It attains a superb height, for it keeps an equal pace with +the severe simplicity of the Bible narrative on which it is founded. It +depicts the condition of an imaginative mind, a stately and robust +character, an arrogant, fiery spirit, a kind heart, and a royal and +regally poised nature, that have first been undermined by sin and the +consciousness of sin, and then crazed by contact with the spirit world +and by a nameless dread of the impending anger of an offended God. It +would be difficult to conceive of a more distracting and piteous state. +Awe and terror surround that august sufferer, and make him both holy and +dreadful. In his person and his condition, as those are visible to the +imaginative mind, he combined elements that irresistibly impress and +thrill. He is of vast physical stature, that time has not bent, and of +great beauty of face, that griefs have ravaged but not destroyed. He is +a valiant and sanguinary warrior, and danger seems to radiate from his +presence. He is a magnanimous king and a loving father, and he softens +by generosity and wins by gentleness. He is a maniac, haunted by +spectres and scourged with a whip of scorpions, and his red-eyed fury +makes all space a hell and shatters silence with the shrieks of the +damned. He is a human soul, burdened with the frightful consciousness +of Divine wrath and poised in torment on the precipice that overhangs +the dark, storm-beaten ocean of eternity. His human weakness is frighted +by ghastly visions and indefinite horrors, against which his vain +struggle only makes his forlorn feebleness more piteous and drear. The +gleams of calm that fall upon his tortured heart only light up an abyss +of misery--a vault of darkness peopled by demons. He is already cut off +from among the living, by the doom of inevitable fate, and while we pity +him we fear him. His coming seems attended with monstrous shapes; he +diffuses dissonance; his voice is a cry of anguish or a wail of +desolation; his existence is a tempest; there can be no relief for him +save death, and the death that ends him comes like the blessing of tears +to the scorched eyelids of consuming misery. That is the Saul of the +Bible and of Alfieri's tragedy; and that is the Saul whom Salvini +embodied. It was a colossal monument of human suffering that the actor +presented, and no one could look upon it without being awed and +chastened. + +Salvini's embodiment of King Lear was a remarkable manifestation of +physical resources and of professional skill. The lofty stature, the +ample and resonant voice, the copious animal excitement, the fluent +elocution and the vigorous, picturesque, and often melodramatic +movements, gestures, and poses of Salvini united to animate and +embellish a personality such as would naturally absorb attention and +diffuse excitement. Every artist, however, moves within certain specific +and positive limitations--spiritual, mental, and physical. No actor has +proved equal to every kind of character. Salvini, when he acted Hamlet, +was unspiritual--giving no effect to the haunted tone of that part or to +its weird surroundings; and when he acted Macbeth he was unimaginative, +obscure, common, and therefore inadequate. The only Shakespearean +character that he excelled in is Othello, and even in that his ideal +displayed neither the magnanimity nor the tenderness that are in +Shakespeare's conception. The chief attributes of the Moor that he +interpreted were physical; the loftiest heights that he reached were +terror and distracted grief; but he worked with a pictorial method and a +magnetic vigour that enthralled the feelings even when they did not +command the judgment. + +His performance of King Lear gave new evidence of his limitations. +During the first two acts he made the king a merely restless, choleric, +disagreeable old man, deficient in dignity, destitute of grandeur, and +especially destitute of inherent personal fascination--of the +suggestiveness of ever having been a great man. Lear is a ruin--but he +has been a Titan; the delight of all hearts no less than the monarch of +all minds. The actor who does not invest him with that inherent, +overwhelming personal fascination does not attain to his altitude. The +cruel afflictions that occur in the tragedy do not of themselves +signify: the pity is only that they should occur to him. That is the +spring of all the pathos. In Salvini's Lear there were beautiful moments +and magnificent bits of action. "I gave you all" and "I'm cold myself" +were exquisite points. He missed altogether, however, the more subtle +significance of the reminiscent reference to Cordelia--as in "No more of +that, I have noted it well"--and he gave, at the beginning, no +intimation of impending madness. In fact he introduced no element of +lunacy till he reached the lines about "red-hot spits" in Edgar's first +mad scene. + +Much of Salvini's mechanism in Lear was crude. He put the king behind a +table, in the first scene--which had the effect of preparation for a +lecture; and it pleased him to speak the storm speech away back at the +upper entrance, with his body almost wholly concealed behind painted +crags. With all its moments of power and of tenderness the embodiment +was neither royal, lovable, nor great. It might be a good Italian Lear: +it was not the Lear of Shakespeare. Salvini was particularly out of the +character in the curse scene and in the frantic parting from the two +daughters, because there the quality of the man, behind the action, +seemed especially common. The action, though, was theatrical and had its +due effect. + + + + +XXIV. + +HENRY IRVING AS EUGENE ARAM. + + +Henry Irving's impersonation of Eugene Aram--given in a vein that is +distinctly unique--was one of strange and melancholy grace and also of +weird poetical and pathetic power. + +More than fifty years ago, just after Bulwer's novel on the subject of +Eugene Aram was published, that character first came upon the stage, and +its first introduction to the American theatre occurred at the Bowery, +where it was represented by John R. Scott. Aram languished, however, as +a dramatic person, and soon disappeared. He did not thrive in England, +neither, till, in 1873, Henry Irving, who had achieved great success in +_The Bells_, prompted W.G. Wills to effect his resuscitation in a new +play, and acted him in a new manner. The part then found an actor who +could play it,--investing psychological subtlety with tender human +feeling and romantic grace, and making an imaginary experience of +suffering vital and heartrending in its awful reality. The performance +ranks with the best that Henry Irving has given--with _Mathias_, +_Lesurques_, _Dubosc_, _Louis XI._, and _Hamlet_; those studies of the +night-side of human nature in which his imagination and intellect and +his sombre feeling have been revealed and best exemplified. + +Eugene Aram was born at Ramsgill, in Nidderdale, Yorkshire, in 1704. His +father, Peter Aram, was a man of good family but becoming reduced in +circumstances he took service as a gardener on the estate of Sir Edward +Blackett, of Newby Hall. In 1710 Peter Aram and his family were living +at Bondgate, near Ripon, and there Eugene went to school and learned to +read the New Testament. At a considerably later period he was +instructed, during one month, by the Rev. Mr. Alcock, of Burndall. This +was the extent of the tuition that he ever received from others. For the +rest he was self-taught. He had a natural passion for knowledge and he +displayed wonderful industry in its acquisition. When sixteen years old +he knew something of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and later he made himself +acquainted with Chaldaic and Arabic. His occupation, up to this time, +was that of assistant to his father, the gardener; but about 1720 he was +employed in London as a clerk to a merchant, Mr. Christopher Blackett, a +relative to his father's patron, Sir Edward. He did not remain there +long. A serious illness prostrated him, and on recovering he returned to +Nidderdale, with which romantic region his fate was to be forever +associated. He now became a tutor, and not long after he was employed as +such at a manor-house, near Ramsgill, called Gowthwaite Hall, a +residence built early in the seventeenth century by Sir John Yorke, and +long inhabited by his descendants. While living there he met and courted +Anna Spance, the daughter of a farmer, at the lonely village of +Lofthouse, and in 1731 he married her. The Middlesmoor registry contains +the record of this marriage, and of the baptism and death of their first +child. In 1734 Eugene Aram removed to Knaresborough, where he kept a +school. He had, all this while, sedulously pursued his studies, and he +now was a scholar of extraordinary acquirements, not only in the +languages but in botany, heraldry, and many other branches of learning. +His life seemed fair and his future bright: but a change was at hand. +He had not resided long at Knaresborough before he became acquainted +with three persons most unlike himself in every way. These men were +Henry Terry, Richard Houseman, and Daniel Clarke. Houseman was a +flax-dresser. Clarke was a travelling jeweller. All of them were +intemperate; and it is supposed that the beginning of Eugene Aram's +downfall was the appetite for drink. The confederacy that he formed with +these men is not easily explicable, and probably it never has been +rightly explained. The accepted statement is that it was a confederacy +for fraud and theft. Clarke was reported to be the heir presumptive to a +large fortune. He purchased goods, was punctual in his payments, and +established his credit. He was supposed to be making purchases for a +merchant in London. He dealt largely in gold and silver plate and in +watches, and soon he made a liberal use of his credit to accumulate +valuable objects. In 1744 he disappeared, and he never was seen or heard +of again. His frauds became known, and the houses of Aram and Houseman, +suspected as his associates, were searched, but nothing was found to +implicate either of them. + +Soon after this event Aram left Knaresborough--deserting his wife--and +proceeded to London, where for two years he had employment as a teacher +of Latin. He was subsequently an usher at the boarding school of the +Rev. Anthony Hinton, at Hayes, in Middlesex, and there it was observed +that he displayed an extraordinary and scrupulous tenderness and +solicitude as to the life and safety of even worms and insects--which he +would remove from the garden walks and put into places of security. At a +later period he found employment as a transcriber of acts of Parliament, +for registration in chancery. Still later he became an usher at the Free +School of Lynn, in Norfolk, where, among other labours, he undertook to +make a comparative lexicon, and with this purpose collated over 3000 +words in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Celtic. He had ample +opportunity to leave England but he never did so. At length, in 1759, a +labourer who was digging for limestone, at a place known as St. Robert's +Cave, Thistle Hill, near Knaresborough, came upon a human skeleton, bent +double and buried in the earth. Suspicion was aroused. These bones, it +was surmised, might be those of Daniel Clarke. His mysterious +disappearance and his associates were remembered. The authorities sent +forth and arrested Terry, Houseman, and Eugene Aram, and those persons +were brought to their trial at York. A bold front would have saved them, +for the evidence against them was weak. Aram stood firm, but Houseman +quailed, and presently he turned "state's evidence" and denounced Aram +as the murderer of Clarke. The accused scholar spoke in his own defence, +and with astonishing skill, but he failed to defeat the direct and +decisive evidence of his accomplice. Houseman declared that on the day +of the murder Clarke, Aram, and himself were in company, and were +occupied in disposing of the property which they had obtained; that Aram +proposed to walk in the fields, and that they proceeded, thereupon, at +nightfall, to the vicinity of St. Robert's Cave. Clarke and Aram, he +said, went over the hedge and advanced toward the cave, and Aram struck +Clarke several times upon the breast and head, and so killed him. It was +a dark night, and in the middle of winter, but the moon was shining +through drifting clouds, and Houseman said he could see the movement of +Aram's hand but not the weapon that it held. He was about twelve yards +from the spot of the murder. He testified that the body of Clarke was +buried in the cave. The presiding justice charged against the prisoner +and Eugene Aram was convicted and condemned. He subsequently, it is +said, confessed the crime, alleging to the clergyman by whom he was +attended that his wife had been led into an intrigue by Clarke, and that +this was the cause of the murder. Here, doubtless, is the indication of +the true nature of this tragedy. Aram, prior to his execution, was +confined in York Castle, where he wrote a poem of considerable length +and some merit, and also several shorter pieces of verse. On the morning +of his execution it was found that he had opened a vein in his arm, with +the intent to bleed to death, but the wound was staunched, and he was +taken to Knaresborough and there hanged, and afterward his body was hung +in chains in Knaresborough Forest. His death occurred on August 13, +1759, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. On the night before his +execution he wrote a rhythmical apostrophe to death:-- + + "Come, pleasing rest! eternal slumber fall! + Seal mine, that once must seal the eyes of all! + Calm and composed my soul her journey takes; + No guilt that troubles and no heart that aches." + +Such is the story of Eugene Aram--a story that has furnished the basis +of various fictions, notably of Bulwer's famous novel, and which +inspired one of the best of the beautiful poems of Thomas Hood. Wills +gathered hints from it, here and there, in the making of his play; but +he boldly departed from its more hideous and repulsive incidents and +from the theory of the main character that might perhaps be justified by +its drift. In the construction of the piece Henry Irving made many +material suggestions. The treatment of the character of Aram was devised +by him, and the management of the close of the second act denotes his +felicity of invention. + +The play opens in the rose-garden of a rural rectory in the sweet, green +valley of the shining Nidd. The time is twilight; the season summer; and +here, in a haven of peace and love, the repentant murderer has found a +refuge. Many years have passed since the commission of his crime, and +all those years he has lived a good life, devoted to study, instruction, +and works of benevolence. He has been a teacher of the young, a helper +of the poor, and he has gained respect, affection, and honourable +repute. He is safe in the security of silence and in the calm self-poise +of his adamantine will. His awful secret sleeps in his bosom and is at +rest forever. He has suffered much and he still suffers; yet, lulled +into a false security by the uneventful lapse of years and by that +drifting, desolate, apathetic recklessness which is sequent on the +subsiding storm of passionate sorrow, he has allowed himself to accept a +woman's love and to love her in return, and half to believe that his +long misery has expiated his sin and that even for him there may be a +little happiness yet possible on earth. Eugene Aram, the village +school-master, and Ruth Meadows, the vicar's daughter, are betrothed +lovers; and now, on the eve of their wedding morning, they stand +together among the roses, while the sun is going down and the sweet +summer wind plays softly in the leaves, and from the little gray church +close by a solemn strain of music--the vesper hymn--floats out upon the +stillness of the darkening day. The woman is all happiness, confidence, +and hope; the man, seared and blighted by conscious sin and subdued by +long years of patient submission to the sense of his own unworthiness, +is all gentleness, solicitude, reverence, and sorrow. At this supreme +moment, when now it seems that everything is surely well, the one man in +the world who knows Eugene Aram's secret has become, by seeming chance, +a guest in the vicarage; and even while Ruth places her hand upon her +lover's heart and softly whispers, "If guilt were there, it still should +be my pillow," the shadow of the gathering night that darkens around +them is deepened by the blacker shadow of impending doom. The first act +of the play is simply a picture. It involves no action. It only +introduces the several persons who are implicated in the experience to +be displayed, denotes their relationship to one another, and reveals a +condition of feeling and circumstance which is alike romantic, pathetic, +and perilous, and which is soon to be shattered by the disclosure of a +fatal secret. The act is a preparation for a catastrophe. + +In the second act the opposed characters clash: the movement begins, +and the catastrophe is precipitated. The story opens at nightfall, +proceeds the same evening, and ends at the dawn of the ensuing day. The +scene of act second is a room in the vicarage. Aram and Parson Meadows +are playing chess, and Ruth is hovering about them and roguishly +impeding their play. The purpose accomplished here is the exhibition of +domestic comfort and content, and this is further emphasised by Ruth's +recital of a written tribute that Aram's pupils have sent to him, on the +eve of his marriage. Wounded by this praise the conscience-stricken +wretch breaks off abruptly from his pastime and rushes from the room--an +act of desperate grief which is attributed to his modesty. The parson +soon follows, and Ruth is left alone. Houseman, their casual guest, +having accepted the vicar's hospitable offer of a shelter for the night, +has now a talk with Ruth, and he is startled to hear the name of Eugene +Aram, and thus to know that he has found the man whose fatal secret he +possesses, and upon whose assumed dread of exposure his cupidity now +purposes to feed. In a coarsely jocular way this brutish creature +provokes the indignant resentment of Ruth, by insinuations as to her +betrothed lover's past life; and when, a little later, Ruth and Aram +again meet, she wooingly begs him to tell her of any secret trouble that +may be weighing upon his mind. At this moment Houseman comes upon them, +and utters Aram's name. From that point to the end of the act there is a +sustained and sinewy exposition, strong in spirit and thrilling in +suspense,--of keen intellect and resolute will standing at bay and +making their last battle for life, against the overwhelming odds of +heaven's appointed doom. Aram defies Houseman and is denounced by him; +but the ready adroitness and iron composure of the suffering wretch +still give him supremacy over his foe--till, suddenly, the discovery is +announced of the bones of Daniel Clarke in St. Robert's Cave, and the +vicar commands Aram and Houseman to join him in their inspection. Here +the murderer suffers a collapse. There has been a greater strain than +even he can bear; and, left alone upon the scene, he stands petrified +with horror, seeming, in an ecstasy of nameless fear, to look upon the +spectre of his victim. Henry Irving's management of the apparition +effect was such as is possible only to a man of genius, and such as +words may record but never can describe. + +The third act passes in the churchyard. Aram has fled from the sight of +the skeleton, and has fallen among the graves. It is almost morning. The +ghastly place is silent and dark. The spirit of the murderer is broken, +and his enfeebled body, long since undermined by the grief of remorse +and now chilled by the night dews, is in the throes of death. The +incidents of the closing scene are simple, but they are heart-breaking +in their pathos and awful in their desolation. The fugitive Houseman +finds Aram here, and spurns him as a whimpering lunatic. Then, in this +midnight hour and this appalling place, alone in the presence of God, +the murderer lifts his hands toward heaven, confesses his crime, and +falls at the foot of the cross. Here Ruth finds him, and to her, with +dying lips, he tells the story of the murder and of all that he has +since endured. And just as his voice falters into silence and his heart +ceases to beat, the diamond light of morning gleams in the eastern sky +and the glad music of an anthem floats softly from the neighbouring +church. Upon that beautifully significant picture the final curtain +fell. + +Wills's literary framework for the display of character and experience +is scarcely to be considered a perfect play. It begins by assuming on +the part of its auditor a knowledge of the mystery upon which it is +based. Such a knowledge the auditor ought certainly to have, but in +presence of an exact drama he derives it from what he sees and not from +remembrance of what he has read. The piece is, perhaps, somewhat +irrational in making Aram a resident, under his own name, of the actual +neighbourhood of his crime. It lowers the assumed nobility of his +character, furthermore, by making this remorseful and constantly +apprehensive murderer willing to yoke a sweet, innocent, and idolised +woman to misery and shame by making her his wife. And it mars its most +pathetic scene--the awful scene of the midnight confession in the +churchyard--by making Eugene Aram declare, to the woman of his love, the +one human being who comforts and sustains him on the brink of eternity, +that he has loved another woman for whose sake he did the murder. Since +the whole story was to be treated in a fanciful manner, a still wider +license in the play of fancy would, perhaps, have had a more entirely +gracious and satisfying effect. The language is partly blank verse and +partly prose; and, while its tissue is rightly and skilfully diversified +by judicious allowance for the effect of each character upon the garment +of individual diction, and while its strain, here and there, rises to +eloquence of feeling and beauty of imagery, there is a certain lack of +firmness in its verbal fibre. The confession speech that has to be +spoken by Aram comprises upward of ninety lines--and that is a severe +and perilous strain upon an actor's power of holding the public +interest. The beauties of the play, however, are many and strong. Its +crowning excellence is that it gives dramatic permanence to a strangely +interesting character. + +The knowledge of human nature that Henry Irving revealed in this part +and the manner in which he revealed it were nothing less than wonderful. +The moment he walked upon the scene you saw the blighted figure of a man +who has endured, and is enduring, spiritual torment. The whole +personality was suffused with a mournful strangeness. The man was +isolated and alone. It was a purely ideal view of the character that +the actor denoted; for he made Eugene Aram a noble, tender, gentle +person, whom ungovernable passion, under circumstances of overwhelming +provocation, had once impelled to an act of half-justifiable homicide, +and who had for years been slowly dying with remorse. He touched no +chord of terror, but only the chord of pity. Like his portrayal of +Mathias, the picture showed the reactionary effect of hidden sin in the +human soul; but the personality of the sufferer was entirely different. +Each of those men has had experience of crime and of resultant misery, +but no two embodiments could possibly be more dissimilar, alike in +spiritual quality and in circumstances. Mathias is dominated by paternal +love and characterised by a half-defiant, ever-vigilant, and often +self-approbative pride of intellect, in being able to guard and keep a +terrible and dangerous secret. Eugene Aram is dominated by a saint-like +tenderness toward a sweet woman who loves him, and characterised by a +profound, fitful melancholy, now humble and submissive, now actively +apprehensive and almost frenzied. Only once does he stand at bay and +front his destiny with a defiance of desperate will; and even then it is +for the woman's sake rather than for his own. Henry Irving's acting +made clear and beautiful that condition of temperament. A noble and +affectionate nature, shipwrecked, going to pieces, doomed, but making +one last tremendous though futile effort to avert the final and +inevitable ruin--this ideal was made actual in his performance. The +intellectual or spiritual value of such a presentment must depend upon +the auditor's capacity to absorb from a tragedy its lessons of insight +into the relations of the human soul to the moral government of the +world. Many spectators would find it merely morbid and gloomy; others +would find it superlatively illuminative and eloquent. Its artistic +value the actor himself made evident to every comprehension. There is a +moment of the performance when the originally massive and passionate +character of Eugene Aram is suddenly asserted above his meekness, +contrition, and sorrow; when, at the sound of his enemy's voice, he +first becomes petrified with the sense of peril, and then calmly gathers +all his powers to meet and conquer the danger. The splendid +concentration, the perfect poise, the sustained intensity, the copious +and amazing variety and force of emotion, and the positive, unerring, +and brilliant art with which Henry Irving met that emergency and +displayed that frightful and piteous aspect of assailed humanity, +desperate and fighting for life, made up such an image of genius as +seldom is seen and never will be forgotten. Rapid transition has ever +been one of the commonest and most effective expedients used in +histrionic art. This, on the contrary, was an example of sustained, +prolonged, cumulative, artistic expression of the most harrowing and +awful emotions with which the human soul can be convulsed; and it was a +wonder of consummate acting. The same thoroughness of identification and +the same astonishing adequacy of feeling pervaded the scene in the +churchyard. At first, in the dusky starlight, only a shapeless figure, +covered with a black cloak, was seen among the gravestones, crouched +upon a tomb; but the man that rose, as if out of the grave, pallid, +emaciated, ghastly, the spectre of himself, was the authentic image of +majestic despair, not less sublime than pitiable, and fraught with a +power that happiness could never attain. Not in our time upon the stage +has such a lesson been taught, with such overwhelming pathos, of the +utter helplessness of even the strongest human will, when once the soul +has been vitiated by sin and the eternal law of right defied by mortal +passion. In the supplication to his astonished accomplice the actor +seemed like one transfigured, and there the haunted effect was extremely +awful. + + + + +XXV. + +CHARLES FISHER. + + +In old times Charles Fisher often figured in the old comedies, and he +was one of the last of the thin and rapidly lessening group of actors +capable of presenting those pieces--wherein, although the substance be +human nature, the manner is that of elaborate and diversified artifice. +When he played Lieutenant Worthington, in _The Poor Gentleman_, he was a +gentleman indeed--refined, delicate, sensitive, simply courageous, +sustained by native integrity, and impressive with a dignity of manner +that reflected the essential nobility of his mind; so that when he +mistook Sir Robert Bramble for a bailiff, and roused that benevolent +baronet's astonishment and rage, he brought forth all the comic humour +of a delightful situation with the greatest ease and nature. He played +Littleton Coke, Sir Harcourt Courtly, old Laroque--in which he gave a +wonderful picture of the working of remorse in the frail and failing +brain of age--and Nicholas Rue, in _Secrets worth Knowing_, a sinister +and thrilling embodiment of avarice and dotage. He played Dr. Bland, the +elegant medical cynic of _Nos Intimes_; De la Tour, the formidable, +jealous husband of Henriette, in _Le Patte de Mouche_; Horace, in _The +Country Squire_; Goldfinch, in which he was airy, sagacious, dashing, +and superb, in _The Road to Ruin_; and Captain Cozzens, the nonchalant +rascal of _The Knights of the Round Table_, which he embodied in a style +of easy magnificence, gay, gallant, courageous, alert, imperturbable, +and immensely comic. He was the original Matthew Leigh in Lester +Wallack's romantic play of _Rosedale_ (1863). He acted Joseph Surface in +the days when Lester Wallack used to play Charles, and he always held +his own in that superior part. He was equally fine in Sir Peter and Sir +Oliver. When the good old play of _The Wife's Secret_ was revived in New +York, in 1864, he gave a dignified and impetuous performance of Sir +Walter Amyott. I remember him in those parts, with equal wonder at his +comprehensive variety of talent and admiration for his always adequate +skill. I saw him as the volatile Ferment, in _The School of Reform_, +and nothing could be more comic than his unwitting abuse of General +Tarragon, in that blustering officer's presence, or his equally +ludicrous scene of cross purposes with Bob Tyke. He was a perfect type, +as Don Manuel Velasco, in _The Compact_, of the gallant, stately Spanish +aristocrat. He excelled competition when, in a company that included +George Holland, W. Holston, A.W. Young, Mark Smith, Frederick C.P. +Robinson, and John Gilbert, he enacted the convict in _Never Too Late to +Mend_. He was equally at home whether as the King in _Don Caesar de +Bazan_ or as Tom Stylus the literary hack, in _Society_. He passed +easily from the correct and sentimental Sir Thomas Clifford, of _The +Hunchback_, to the frivolous Mr. Willowear, of _To Marry or Not to +Marry_. No one could better express than he did, when playing Wellborn, +both pride of birth and pride of character. One of his most +characteristic works was Hyssop, in _The Rent Day_. His scope and the +rich resources of his experience are denoted in those citations. It is +no common artist who can create and sustain a perfect illusion, and +please an audience equally well, whether in such a part as Gilbert +Featherstone, the villain, in _Lost in London_, or old Baptista, in _The +Taming of the Shrew_. The playgoer who never saw Charles Fisher as +Triplet can scarcely claim that he ever saw the part at all. The quaint +figure, the well-saved but threadbare dress, the forlorn air of poverty +and suffering commingled with a certain jauntiness and pluck, the +profound feeling, the unconscious sweetness and humour, the spirit of +mind, gentility, and refinement struggling through the confirmed +wretchedness of the almost heart-broken hack--who that ever laughed and +wept at sight of him in the garret scene, sitting down, "all joy and +hilarity," to write his comedy, can ever forget those details of a true +and touching embodiment? His fine skill in playing the violin was +touchingly displayed in that part, and gave it an additional tone of +reality. I once saw him acting Mercutio, and very admirable he was in +the guise of that noble, brave, frolicsome, impetuous young gentleman. +The intense vitality, the glancing glee, the intrepid spirit--all were +preserved; and the brilliant text was spoken with faultless fluency. It +is difficult to realise that the same actor who set before us that +perfect image of comic perplexity, the bland and benevolent Dean, in +_Dandy Dick_, could ever have been the bantering companion of Romeo and +truculent adversary of fiery Tybalt. Yet this contrast but faintly +indicates the versatile character of his mind. Fisher was upon the +American stage for thirty-eight years, from August 30, 1852, when he +came forth at Burton's theatre as Ferment. Later he went to Wallack's, +and in 1872 he joined Daly's company, in which he remained till 1890. It +may be conjectured that in some respects he resembled that fine comedian +Thomas Dogget, to whom Sir Godfrey Kneller, the painter, said, "I can +only copy Nature from the originals before me, while you vary them at +pleasure and yet preserve the likeness." Like Dogget he played, in a +vein of rich, hearty, jocose humour, and with great breadth of effect +and excellent colour, the sailor Ben, in _Love for Love_. The +resemblance was in mental characteristics, not physique--for Dogget was +a slight and sprightly man, whereas Fisher could represent majesty as +well as frolic. After he went to Daly's theatre he manifested a +surprising range of faculty. He first appeared there on October 28, +1872, as Mr. Dornton, in _The Road to Ruin_, and on November 19, +following, he acted Falstaff for the first time. He presented there the +other Shakespearean parts of Leonatus, Armado, and Malvolio--the last of +these being a model of fidelity to the poet, and now a classic in +reputation. He also assumed Adam and Jaques. He presented the living +image of Shakespeare himself, in _Yorick_, and his large, broad, stately +style gave weight to Don Manuel, in _She Would and She Wouldn't_; to +that apt type of the refined British aristocrat, Sir Geoffrey Champneys, +in _Our Boys_; and to many a noble father or benevolent uncle of the +adapted French society drama. Just as Dogget was supreme in such parts +as Fondlewife, so was Fisher superb in the uxorious husband whom the +demure child-wife bamboozles, in the comedies of Moliere. No man has +ever better depicted than he did a sweet nature shocked by calamity and +bowed down with grief, or, as in Joe Chirrup, in _Elfie_, manliness +chastened by affliction and ennobled by true love: yet his impersonation +of Fagin was only second to that of J.W. Wallack, Jr.; his Moody, in +_The Country Girl_, was almost tragic in its grim and grizzled +wretchedness and snarling wrath; and I have seen him assume to +perfection the gaunt figure and crazy mood of Noah Learoyd, in _The Long +Strike_, and make that personality a terrible embodiment of menace. From +the time he first acted the comic Major Vavasour, in _Henry Dunbar_, no +actor of equal quaintness has trod our stage. He died on June 11, 1891, +and was buried at Woodlawn. + + + + +XXVI. + +MRS. G.H. GILBERT. + + +Students of the English stage find in books on that subject abundant +information about the tragedy queens of the early drama, and much +likewise, though naturally somewhat less (because comedy is more +difficult to discuss than tragedy), about the comedy queens. Mrs. Cibber +still discomfits the melting Mrs. Porter by a tenderness even greater +than the best of Belvideras could dispense. Mrs. Bracegirdle and Mrs. +Oldfield still stand confronted on the historic page, and still their +battle continues year after year. All readers know the sleepy voice and +horrid sigh of Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth's awful scene of haunted +somnambulism; the unexampled and unexcelled grandeur of Mrs. Yates in +Medea; the infinite pathos of Mrs. Dancer (she that became in succession +Mrs. Spranger Barry and Mrs. Crawford) and her memorable scream, as Lady +Randolph, at "Was he alive?"; the comparative discomfiture of both +those ladies by Mrs. Siddons, with her wonderful, wailing cry, as +Isabella, "O, my Biron, my Biron," her overwhelming Lady Macbeth and her +imperial Queen Katharine. The brilliant story of Peg Woffington and the +sad fate of Mrs. Robinson, the triumphant career of Mrs. Abington and +the melancholy collapse of Mrs. Jordan--all those things, and many more, +are duly set down in the chronicles. But the books are comparatively +silent about the Old Women of the stage--an artistic line no less +delightful than useful, of which Mrs. G.H. Gilbert is a sterling and +brilliant representative. Mrs. Jefferson, the great-grandmother of the +comedian Joseph Jefferson, who died of laughter, on the stage (1766-68), +might fitly be mentioned as the dramatic ancestor of such actresses as +Mrs. Gilbert. She was a woman of great loveliness of character and of +great talent for the portrayal of "old women," and likewise of certain +"old men" in comedy. "She had," says Tate Wilkinson, "one of the best +dispositions that ever harboured in a human breast"; and he adds that +"she was one of the most elegant women ever beheld." Mrs. Gilbert has +always suggested that image of grace, goodness, and piquant ability. +Mrs. Vernon was the best in this line until Mrs. Gilbert came; and the +period which has seen Mrs. Judah, Mrs. Vincent, Mrs. Germon, Mary Carr, +Mrs. Chippendale, Mrs. Stirling, Mrs. Billington, Mrs. Drew, Mrs. +Phillips, and Madam Ponisi, has seen no superior to Mrs. Gilbert in her +special walk. She was in youth a beautiful dancer, and all her motions +have spontaneous ease and grace. She can assume the fine lady, without +for an instant suggesting the parvenu. She is equally good, whether as +the formal and severe matron of starched domestic life, or the genial +dame of the pantry. She could play Temperance in _The Country Squire_, +and equally she could play Mrs. Jellaby. All varieties of the +eccentricity of elderly women, whether serious or comic, are easily +within her grasp. Betsy Trotwood, embodied by her, becomes a living +reality; while on the other hand she suffused with a sinister horror her +stealthy, gliding, uncanny personation of the dumb, half-insane Hester +Dethridge. That was the first great success that Mrs. Gilbert gained, +under Augustin Daly's management. She has been associated with Daly's +company since his opening night as a manager, August 16, 1869, when, at +the Fifth Avenue theatre, then in Twenty-fourth Street, she took part in +Robertson's comedy of _Play_. The first time I ever saw her she was +acting the Marquise de St. Maur, in _Caste_, on the night of its first +production in America, August 5, 1867, at the Broadway theatre, the +house near the southwest corner of Broadway and Broome Street, that had +been Wallack's but now was managed by Barney Williams. The assumption of +that character, perfect in every particular, was instinct with pure +aristocracy; but while brilliant with serious ability it gave not the +least hint of those rich resources of humour that since have diffused so +much innocent pleasure. Most of her successes have been gained as the +formidable lady who typifies in comedy the domestic proprieties and the +Nemesis of respectability. It was her refined and severely correct +demeanour that gave soul and wings to the wild fun of _A Night Off_. +From Miss Garth to Mrs. Laburnum is a far stretch of imitative talent +for the interpretation of the woman nature that everybody, from +Shakespeare down, has found it so difficult to treat. This actress has +never failed to impress the spectator by her clear-cut, brilliant +identification with every type of character that she has assumed; and, +back of this, she has denoted a kind heart and a sweet and gentle yet +never insipid temperament--the condition of goodness, sympathy, +graciousness, and cheer that is the flower of a fine nature and a good +life. Scenes in which Mrs. Gilbert and Charles Fisher or James Lewis +have participated, as old married people, on Daly's stage, will long be +remembered for their intrinsic beauty--suggestive of the touching lines: + + "And when with envy Time, transported, + Shall think to rob us of our joys, + You'll in your girls again be courted, + And I'll go wooing with my boys." + + + + +XXVII. + +JAMES LEWIS. + + +A prominent representative type of character is "the humorous man," and +that is Shakespeare's phrase to describe him. Wit is a faculty; humour +an attribute. Joseph Addison, Laurence Sterne, Washington +Irving--whatever else they might have been they were humourists. Sir +Roger de Coverley, Tristram Shandy, Uncle Toby, Diedrich Knickerbocker, +Ichabod Crane--these and other creations of their genius stand forth +upon their pages to exemplify that aspect of their minds. But the +humourist of the pen may, personally, be no humourist at all. Addison's +character was austere. Irving, though sometimes gently playful, was +essentially grave and decorous. + +Comical quality in the humorous man whom nature destines for the stage +must be personal. His coming brings with it a sense of comfort. His +presence warms the heart and cheers the mind. The sound of his voice, +"speaking oft," before he emerges upon the scene, will set the theatre +in a roar. This was notably true of Burton and of William Warren. The +glance, motion, carriage, manner, and the pause and stillness of such a +man, instil merriment. Cibber says that Robert Nokes had a palpable +simplicity of nature which was often as unaccountably diverting in his +common speech as on the stage, John E. Owens, describing the conduct of +a big bee in an empty molasses barrel, once threw a circle of his +hearers, of whom I was one, almost into convulsions of laughter. Artemas +Ward made people laugh the moment they beheld him, by his wooden +composure and indescribable sapience of demeanour. The lamented Daniel +E. Setchell, a comedian who would have been as famous as he was funny +had he but lived longer, presented a delightful example of spontaneous +humour. It is ludicrous to recall the simple gravity, not demure but +perfectly solemn, with which, on the deck of a Hudson River steamboat, +as we were passing West Point, he indicated to me the Kosciuszko +monument, saying briefly, "That's the place where Freedom shrieked." It +was the quality of his temperament that made his playfulness delicious. +Setchell was the mental descendant of Burton, as Burton was of Reeve and +as Reeve was of Liston. Actors illustrate a kind of heredity. Each +species is distinct and discernible. Lester Wallack maintained the +lineage of Charles Kemble, William Lewis, Elliston, and Mountfort--a +line in which John Drew has gained auspicious distinction. John +Gilbert's artistic ancestry could be traced back through Farren and +Munden to King and Quin, and perhaps still further, to Lowin and Kempe. + +The comedian intrinsically comical, while in his characteristic quality +eccentric and dry, has been exemplified by Fawcett, Blisset, Finn, and +Barnes, and is conspicuously presented by James Lewis. No one ever saw +him without laughter--and it is kindly laughter, with a warm heart +behind it. The moment he comes upon the stage an eager gladness diffuses +itself throughout the house. His refined quaintness and unconscious +drollery capture all hearts. His whimsical individuality never varies; +yet every character of the many that he has portrayed stands clearly +forth among its companions, a distinct, unique embodiment. The graceful +urbanity, the elaborate yet natural manner, the brisk vitality, the +humorous sapience of Sir Patrick Lundy--how completely and admirably he +expressed them! How distinct that fine old figure is in the remembrance +of all who saw it! But he has never played a part that he did not make +equally distinct. A painter might fill a gallery with odd, +characteristic creations by merely copying his compositions of +"make-up." The amiable professor in _A Night Off_, the senile Gunnion in +_The Squire_, Lissardo in _The Wonder_, Grumio in _The Shrew_--those and +many more he has made his own; while in the actor's province of making +comic characters really comical to others there is no artist who better +fulfils the sagacious, comprehensive injunction of Munden (imparted to a +youthful actor who spoke of being "natural" in order to amuse), "Nature +be d----d! Make the people laugh!" That, aside from all subtleties, is +not a bad test of the comic faculty, and that test has been met and +borne by the acting of James Lewis. + + + + +XXVIII. + +A LEAF FROM MY JOURNAL. + + +[November 23, 1867.] + +Thirty years hereafter many who are now active and honoured in dramatic +life will be at rest--their work concluded, their achievements a fading +tradition. But they will not be wholly forgotten. The same talisman of +memory that has preserved to our time the names and the deeds of the +actors of old will preserve to future times the names and the deeds that +are distinguished now in the mimic world of the stage. Legend, speaking +in the voice of the veteran devotee of the drama, will say, for example, +that of all the actors of this period there was no light comedian +comparable with Lester Wallack; that he could thoroughly identify +himself with character,--though it did not always please him to do so; +that his acting was so imaginative and so earnest as to make reality of +the most gossamer fiction; and that his vivacity--the essential element +and the crown of comedy-acting--was like the dew on the opening rose. +And therewithal the veteran may quaff his glass to the memory of another +member of the Wallack family, and speak of James Wallack as Cassius, and +Fagin, and the Man-in-the-Iron-Mask, and the King of the Commons, and +may say, with truth, that a more winning embodiment of bluff manliness +and humour was never known to our stage than the versatile actor who +made himself foremost in those characters. It will be impossible to +remember him without recalling his intimate professional associate, +Edwin L. Davenport. He was the only Brutus of his time, our old friend +will say, and in his prime the best Macbeth on the American stage; and +he could play almost any part in the drama, from the loftiest tragedy to +mere trash; and he was an admirable artist in all that he did. There +will be plenty of evidence to fortify that statement; and if the veteran +shall also say that Wallack's company contained, at the same time, the +best "old men" in the profession, no dissentient voice, surely, will +challenge the names of George Holland, John Gilbert, James H. Stoddart, +and Mark Smith. Cibber could play Lord Foppington at seventy-three; but +George Holland played Tony Lumpkin at seventy-seven. A young part,--but +the old man was as joyous as a boy and filled it with a boisterous, +mischievous humour at once delightful and indescribable. You saw him to +the best advantage, though, in Mr. Sulky, Humphrey Dobbin, and kindred +parts, wherein the fineness of his temperament was veiled under a +crabbed exterior and some scope was allowed for his superb skill in +painting character. So the discourse will run; and, when it touches upon +John Gilbert, what else than this will be its burden?--that he was +perfection as the old fop; that his Lord Ogleby had no peer; that he was +the oddest conceivable compound of dry humour, quaint manners, +frolicsome love of mischief, honest, hearty mirth, manly dignity, and +tender pathos. To Mark Smith it will render a kindred tribute. Squire +Broadlands, Old Rapid, Sir Oliver Surface--they cannot be forgotten. +Extraordinary truthfulness to nature, extraordinary precision of method, +large humanity, strong intellect, and refined and delicate humour that +always charmed and never offended--those were the qualities that +enrolled him among the best actors of his time. And it will not be +strange if Old Mortality passes then into the warmest mood of eulogium, +as he strives to recall the admirable, the incomparable "old woman" Mrs. +Vernon. She was a worthy mate of those worthies, he will exclaim. She +could be the sweet and loving mother, gentle and affectionate; the +stately lady, representative of rank and proud of it and true to it; and +the most eccentric of ludicrous old fools. She was the ideal Mrs. +Malaprop, and she surpassed all competitors in the character of Mrs. +Hardcastle. Mary Gannon was her stage-companion and her foil, he will +add--the merriest, most mischievous, most bewitching player of her time, +in her peculiar line of art. As Hester, in _To Marry or Not to Marry_, +and as Sophia, in _The Road to Ruin_, she was the incarnation of girlish +grace and delicious ingenuousness, and also of crisp, well-flavoured +mirth. No taint of tameness marred her acting in those kindred +characters, and no air of effort made it artificial. Nor was Fanny +Morant less remarkable for the glitter of comedy and for an almost +matchless precision of method. So will our friend of the future prose +on, in a vein that will be tedious enough to matter-of-fact people; but +not tedious to gentle spirits who love the stage, and sympathise with +its votaries, and keep alive its traditions--knowing that this mimic +world is as real and earnest as the strife that roars and surges around +it; that there as everywhere else humanity plays out its drama, whereof +the moral is always the same--that whether on the stage or in the mart, +on the monarch's throne or in the peasant's cot, + + "We are such stuff + As dreams are made on, and our little life + Is rounded with a sleep." + + +THE END. + + + + +THE WORKS OF + +WILLIAM WINTER. + + +SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND. 18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +GRAY DAYS AND GOLD. 18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +SHADOWS OF THE STAGE. 18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +SHADOWS OF THE STAGE. Second Series. 18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +OLD SHRINES AND IVY. 18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +Also a Small Limited LARGE PAPER EDITION. 4 Vols. Uniform. $8.00. + +WANDERERS: A Collection of Poems. NEW EDITION. WITH A PORTRAIT. 18MO, +CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +"The supreme need of this age in America is a practical conviction that +progress does not consist in material prosperity, but in spiritual +advancement. Utility has long been exclusively worshipped. The welfare +of the future lies in the worship of beauty. To that worship these pages +are devoted, with all that implies of sympathy with the higher +instincts, and faith in the divine destiny of the human race."--_From +the Preface to Gray Days and Gold_. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK + + + + +WANDERERS; + +BEING + +A Collection of the Poems of William Winter. + +New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. With a Portrait of the Author. + +18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + +Also a Limited LARGE PAPER EDITION, printed on English Hand-made Paper. +Price $2.50. + + +"But it has seemed to the author of these poems--which of course are +offered as absolutely impersonal--that they are the expression of +various representative moods of human feeling and various representative +aspects of human experience, and that therefore they may possibly +possess the inherent right to exist."--_From the Preface_. + +"The verse of Mr. Winter is dedicated mainly to love and wine, to +flowers and birds and dreams, to the hackneyed and never-to-be-exhausted +repertory of the old singers. His instincts are strongly conservative; +his confessed aim is to belong to 'that old school of English Lyrical +Poetry, of which gentleness is the soul, and simplicity the +garment.'"--_Saturday Review_. + +"The poems have a singular charm in their graceful spontaneity."--_Scots +Observer_. + +"Free from cant and rant--clear cut as a cameo, pellucid as a mountain +brook. It may be derided as trite, _borne_, unimpassioned; but in its +own modest sphere it is, to our thinking, extraordinarily successful, +and satisfies us far more than the pretentious mouthing which receives +the seal of over-hasty approbation."--_Athenaeum_. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. + + + + +SHADOWS OF THE STAGE. + +18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + + +"The fame of the actor more than that of any other artist is an +evanescent one--a 'bubble reputation'--indeed, and necessarily so from +the conditions under which his genius is exercised. While the impression +it makes is often more vivid and inspiring for the moment than that of +the poet and the painter, it vanishes almost with the occasion which +gave it birth, and lives only as a tradition in the memory of those to +whom it had immediately appealed. 'Shadows they are, and shadows they +pursue.' + +"The writer, therefore, who, gifted with insight and a poetic enthusiasm +which enables him to discern on the one hand the beauties in a dramatic +work not perceived by the many, and on the other the qualities in the +actor which have made him a true interpreter of the poet's thought, at +the same time possessing the faculty of revealing to us felicitously the +one, and the other is certainly entitled to our grateful recognition. + +"Such a writer is Mr. William Winter, easily the first,--for we know of +none other living in this country, or in the England he loves so much, +in whose nature the critic's vision is united with that of the poet so +harmoniously.... + +"Over and above all this, there is in these writings the same charm of +style, poetic glamour and flavor of personality which distinguish +whatever comes to us from Mr. Winter's pen, and which make them unique +in our literature."--_Home Journal_, New York + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. + + + + +OLD SHRINES AND IVY. + +18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + + +CONTENTS. + + _SHRINES OF HISTORY._ + + I. Storied Southampton. + + II. Pageantry and Relics. + + III. The Shakespeare Church. + + IV. A Stratford Chronicle. + + V. From London to Dover. + + VI. Beauties of France. + + VII. Ely and its Cathedral. + + VIII. From Edinburgh to Inverness. + + IX. The Field of Culloden. + + X. Stormbound Iona. + + _SHRINES OF LITERATURE._ + + XI. The Forest of Arden: As You Like It. + + XII. Fairy Land: A Midsummer Night's Dream. + + XIII. Will o' the Wisp: Love's Labour Lost. + + XIV. Shakespeare's Shrew. + + XV. A Mad World: Anthony and Cleopatra. + + XVI. Sheridan, and the School for Scandal. + + XVII. Farquhar, and the Inconstant. + +XVIII. Longfellow. + + XIX. A Thought on Cooper's Novels. + + XX. A Man of Letters: John R.G. Hassard. + +"Whatever William Winter writes is marked by felicity of diction and by +refinement of style, as well as by the evidence of culture and wide +reading. 'Old Shrines and Ivy' is an excellent example of the charm of +his work."--_Boston Courier_. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND. + +18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + + +"... It was the author's wish, in dwelling thus upon the rural +loveliness, and the literary and historical associations of that +delightful realm, to afford sympathetic guidance and useful suggestion +to other American travellers who, like himself, might be attracted to +roam among the shrines of the mother-land. Temperament is the +explanation of style; and he has written thus of England because she has +filled his mind with beauty and his heart with mingled joy and sadness; +and surely some memory of her venerable ruins, her ancient shrines, her +rustic glens, her gleaming rivers, and her flower-spangled meadows will +mingle with the last thoughts that glimmer through his brain when the +shadows of the eternal night are falling and the ramble of life is +done."--_From the Preface_. + +"He offers something more than guidance to the American traveller. He is +a convincing and eloquent interpreter of the august memories and +venerable sanctities of the old country."--_Saturday Review_. + +"The book is delightful reading."--_Scribner's Monthly_. + +"Enthusiastic and yet keenly critical notes and comments on English life +and scenery."--_Scotsman_. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. + + + + +GRAY DAYS AND GOLD. + +18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + + +CONTENTS. + +Classic Shrines. + Haunted Glens and Houses. + Old York. +The Haunts of Moore. + Beautiful Bath. + The Lakes and Fells of Wordsworth. +Shakespeare Relics at Worcester. + Byron and Hucknall Torkard. + Historic Nooks and Corners. + Shakespeare's Town. +Up and Down the Avon. + Rambles in Arden. + The Stratford Fountain. + Bosworth Field. + The Home of Dr. Johnson. +From London to Edinburgh. + Into the Highlands. + Highland Beauties. + The Heart of Scotland. + Sir Walter Scott. +Elegiac Memorials. + Scottish Pictures. + Imperial Ruins. + The Land of Marmion. + At Vesper Time. + +This book, which is intended as a companion to _Shakespeare's England_, +relates to the gray days of an American wanderer in the British Isles, +and to the gold of thought and fancy that can be found there. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. + + + + +GRAY DAYS AND GOLD. + +18MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. + + +PRESS NOTICES. + +"Mr. Winter's graceful and meditative style in his English sketches has +recommended his earlier volume upon (Shakespeare's) England to many +readers, who will not need urging to make the acquaintance of this +companion book, in which the traveller guides us through the quiet and +romantic scenery of the mother-country with a mingled affection and +sentiment of which we have had no example since Irving's day."--_The +Nation_. + +"As friendly and good-humoured a book on English scenes as any American +has written since Washington Irving."--_Daily News_, _London_. + +"Much that is bright and best in our literature is brought once more to +our dulled memories. Indeed, we know of but few volumes containing so +much of observation, kindly comment, philosophy, and artistic weight as +this unpretentious little book."--_Chicago Herald_. + +"They who have never visited the scenes which Mr. Winter so charmingly +describes will be eager to do so in order to realize his fine +descriptions of them, and they who have already visited them will be +incited by his eloquent recital of their attractions to repeat their +former pleasant experiences."--_Public Ledger_, _Philadelphia_. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., + +66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. + + + + +THE NOVEL: WHAT IT IS. + + +By F. MARION CRAWFORD, + +AUTHOR OF "CHILDREN OF THE KING," "A ROMAN SINGER," "SARACINESCA," ETC. + +With Photogravure Portrait of the Author. + +_18mo. Cloth. 75 cents._ + + +THE CHOICE OF BOOKS, AND OTHER LITERARY PIECES. + +By FREDERIC HARRISON, + +AUTHOR OF "OLIVER CROMWELL," ETC. + +_18mo. Cloth. 75 cents._ + + +"Mr. Harrison is an able and conscientious critic, a good logician, and +a clever man; his faults are superficial, and his book will not fail to +be valuable."--_N.Y. Times_. + +Mr. JOHN MORLEY, in his speech on the study of literature at the Mansion +House, 26th February, 1887, said: + +"Those who are curious as to what they should read in the region of pure +literature will do well to peruse my friend Frederic Harrison's volume +called _The Choice of Books_. You will find there as much wise thought, +eloquently and brilliantly put, as in any volume of its size." + +"Mr. Harrison furnishes a valuable contribution to the subject. It is +full of suggestiveness and shrewd analytical criticism. It contains the +fruits of wide reading and rich research."--_London Times_. + + +MACMILLAN & CO., Publishers, + +NEW YORK. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Shadows of the Stage, by William Winter + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHADOWS OF THE STAGE *** + +***** This file should be named 18860.txt or 18860.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/8/6/18860/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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