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R. 3 - 2-3/ (*. / ;4 g a & * ºf…" PIRE FA C E. THE aim and scope of this volume may be briefly explaimed. My object in writing the text which accompanies the engravings here illustrating twenty-nine of Shakespeare's plays has been to give, in a concise form, an account of the stage-history of each play, together with a note on the most famous representatives of the principal parts in those plays. The history of the connection of these plays with the stage, and of the chief actors in them, has accordingly been related for a period extending over two centuries; from the time, in short, of Betterton's Hamlet to that of the last Shakespearean revival at the Lyceum under the management of Henry Irving. An attempt has also been made to include in these pages a record of the achievements of the greater American actors on the Shakespearean stage, and, besides, to give a mote on the pro- ductions of Shakespeare's works in the United States. It is hoped that the lovers of Shakespeare and the stage, both in England and America, may thus be provided with a book novel in idea, interesting, and useful. s It has not been always possible to keep to the strict lines on which the volume is formed, as two or three of the plays here represented the two parts of “King Henry VI.,” for instance—possess but little stage-history. In the majority of cases, however, it has been my pleasure to recall the principal productions and players of the past, and, in addi- tion, to pay a tribute to the Shakespearean actors of to-day. A. B. HENRY IRVING, WHO, BY HIS BRILLIANT GENIUS AND HIS IN DOMIT ABLE IN ID U S T R Y, HAs ILLUSTRATED § { q Ées peate THROUGHOUT GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA, THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED. SI IA IN ESIPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS: WITH DES C R.I.PTIVE NOTES ON THE PLAYS, AND THE PRINCIPAL SHAKE SPEARE AN PLAYERS, FROM BETTERTON TO IRWING. I3Y AUSTIN BRERETON. 3 ſ ſits fr a feb 61) TIIIRTY STEEL PLATES AND TEN WOOD ENGRAVINGS. CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED: LoNDON, PARIS, NEW YORK 3 MELBOURNE. 1887. [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.] C O N T E N T S. PAGE THE WINTER'S TALE ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 11 THE COMEDY OF ERRORS ... . . . . . . . . . . . . ... ... ... ... 13 CYMBELINE ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 15 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 17 ECING HENRY WIII. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 19 KING RICHARD II. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 25 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 29 CORIOLANUS ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 33 MUCH AIDO, AIBOUT NOTHING ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... ... 35 OTHELLO ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 89 ROMEO AND JULIET ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 43 THE TWO GENTILEMEN OF WERONA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 ECING RICHARD III. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 47 _-THE MERCHANT OF VENICE ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 49 MACBETH tº a tº tº e & * * * - * * - - - ... ... e tº º ë e is * - G - - - * * * 53 TWELFTH NIGHT, OR, WHAT YOU WILL ... ... ... ... ... ... 57 KING JOHN ... . . . . . . . . . . . ºl ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL ... ... ... ... . ... ... ... ... 63 HAMLET ... . . . . . . . . . . . . " MEASURE FOR MEASURE ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 69. RING LEAR ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 71 Julius casAR ... . . . . . . . . . . " LOWE’S TABOUR, 'S LOST ... ... ... ... ... . . . .'; 77 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 79 TIMON of ATHENs. . . . . . . . . .” - si -KING HENRY Iv.–PART I. º. . . . . . . .” - sº KING HENRY v. . . . . . . . . . .” - sº KING HENRY VI.-PART I. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 89 KING HENRY WI.—PART II. ..., • * * tº º º tº e º * * tº tº g tº tº e & tº ſº º tº º tº 93 IB - 96 * “noſtauw's H “ ” uoistus M. " " xvs quot any advo sowſ 86 & & ''' 3.10qplot) '9 “’ ‘’’ ‘’’ (tootº) 'O tºo manoag {{HL *º, I6 & 6 ''' 446.LIQUIS L ''' ' ' ' (IOS48 MW GE 'ſ ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' Sqsoºl OAAI, GIHL 68 * * ' ' ' topuſh 'O +) ' ' ' ' ' SmotoS O H ' ' ' ' ' ' sai'IºIVHO CLNV on W Io NVoſ’ /8 * $ ''' Aopylum') iſ ‘VºI'W ‘00SXIoICI JI GIONVMCI CIO GINITIVHLWXI CINV A. 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GINNW CINV IIIA Xà NaH 6I & & ‘’’ sºloqo'à 'O VºI ‘jith uouoſos ‘’’ ‘’’ ‘’’ WVH5NIXong CINV. XESTOAA ZI $ $ ‘’’ ‘’’ qoosite N “ IIoºsſex. To W ‘ſ’ ‘’’ ‘’’ ‘’’ (IHOJI sº IN CINV HIVISTVGI- QI & & “’ [[obgºuolº) “9 ''' spleApº 'GI IN ‘’’ ‘’’ ‘’’ sawn HISOd q Nw NºHoow I §I & S “ ” toneq 'ſ “ ” “’ [o]uoſº ‘’’ ‘’’ ‘’’ ‘’’ sorwoº CI OMJ, GHJ, II offod oonſ of “ urban]ow ‘O “ ” (tosłu M G ſ " " " vi.1quad q Nv Tāzīāori 2007ds?pu0, I “ ” “ ” “ ” “ ” “ ” “ Havāāsaxwhis ſo IIva Laod **IGHAV&I)NGI "LSIL&IV ‘J.OSIfg|OS –03-0– 's H.LVT.I HO ISIT · |× % |× Ź. · |（~~~~ % Z % Z // · （ % r-T- SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. THE WINTER’S TALE. THIS play belongs to Shakespeare’s later period, when the poet had gone back to Stratford. It teaches the ill that is consequent of jealousy, and the beauty and nobleness of forgiveness. Leontes, King of Sicilia, irritated by some trifling impru- dences on the part of his wife, becomes violently enraged with his old friend and guest, King Polixenes of Bohemia, whom he designs for death. His confidant, Camillo, warns Polixenes and flies with him to Bohemia. The Queen, Hermione, is cast into prison at her husband’s command, and her little daughter is exposed on the shores of Bohemia, where she is generally supposed to be the daughter of an old shepherd. The girl, Perdita, is loved by Florizel, the son of Polixenes. The father of the latter, enraged at his attachment to the supposed shepherdess, pur- poses to separate the lovers, but they elude him by flying to Leontes in Sicily. Here the mystery of the girl’s birth is cleared up; Hermione, who is supposed to be dead, comes forth from her concealment, and the comedy concludes with recon- ciliation and rejoicing. - - The subject of “The Winter’s Tale’’ is borrowed from Robert Greene's pastoral romance, “Pandosto, the Triumph of Time” (1588), which, after various alterations, subsequently appeared as “A Pleasant History of Dorastus and Fawnia.” The first notice of the comedy is given in the diary of Dr. Forman, who saw the play at the Globe Theatre on May 15th, 1611. From the account books of the Revels at Court it also appears that it was acted at Whitehall on November 5th of the same year. Garrick laid hands upon the play in 1756. He reduced it from five into three acts, by cutting down the courtship of Florizel and Perdita, the exculpation of Hermione, and the part of Autolycus. The original title was preserved, and the compressed version made a great success. Garrick’s version was afterwards published under the title of “Florizel and Perdita.” Hazlitt saw “The Winter’s Tale * performed at Covent Garden on November 28th, 1811. Let the impression of that performance be recorded in his own words:– “Nothing could go off with more éclat, with more spirit and grandeur of effect. Mrs. Siddons played Hermione, and in the last scene acted the painted statue to the life—with true monumental dignity and noble passion; Mr. Kemble, in Leontes, worked himself up into a very fine classical phrensy ; and Bannister [Geneste says that Fawcett filled the part] as Autolycus, roared as loud for pity as a sturdy beggar 12 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. could do who felt none of the pain he counterfeited, and was sound of wind and limb.” Later revivals of the play include those given by Macready in 1842, and James Anderson in 1850, at Drury Lane. Charles Kean's revival—“the result of profuse expenditure, exceeding painstaking, and an almost crazy fondness for archaeological accuracy *—took place at the Princess’s in 1856. At Drury Lane, in 1878, Charles Dillon appeared as Leontes, with Miss Wallis as Hermione. In June, 1881, the comedy was once more acted on the stage of “old Drury,” this time by the Saxe-Meiningen Company. The most jovial and best-remembered Autolycus of the stage in England is J. Pritt Harley, who followed Fawcett in the character. “The Winter's Tale" has yet another association with our stage. Miss Darby, a native of Bristol and a pupil of Hannah More, made a luckless marriage, before she was sixteen years old, with Mr. Robinson, a young profligate, who neglected his beautiful wife and left her open to all the temptations of the town. Poverty drove her to Garrick, who, although retired from the stage, rehearsed “Romeo and Juliet” with her, and sat in the stalls on the night of December 10th, 1776, when she played Juliet to the Romeo of William Brereton, thus making her first appearance on the theatric boards. Her stage career was not of long duration. On December 3rd, 1779, “The Winter's Tale" was acted at Drury Lane, for the sixth time, by Royal command. The King, Queen, and Royal Family were in their box when Mrs. Robinson, the Perdita of the evening, entered the green-room, looking enchantingly lovely. “You will make a conquest of the Prince to-night,” said Gentleman Smith, laughingly. The prophecy unfortunately proved too true. The Prince was subdued by Perdita's beauty. He wrote letters to her signed “Florizel,” and had his messages carried by the Earl of Essex. The Prince’s portrait and a paper heart were sent to the beautiful actress. The token bore, on one side, this motto: “Je ne change qu’en mourant,” and on the reverse side this : “Unalterable to my Perdita through life.” Abandoned by her profligate husband, Perdita listened to the wooing of the Prince. A meeting in a boat, a moonlit walk in Rew Gardens, and the specious promises of the Royal wooer, were followed, in May, 1780, by the with- drawal from the stage of “Perdita,” Robinson. Needless to say that the deathless love of the Prince soon died out, and the Royal favourite, now cast aside, was left to spend the rest cf her life in writing novels and verses, and contributing to the Morning Post. The last of the pupils of David Garrick, she died, after much cruel suffering, in 1800. “The charming and beautiful Mrs. Robinson / I pity her from the bottom of my soul l’’ was the comment of Mrs. Siddons, a woman who was not apt to be over charitable in connection with the failings of her own sex. A notable revival of the comedy took place at Burton’s Theatre, New York, in 1860, with William Evans Burton as Autolycus, a rôle in which he was inimitable. Leontes was played by the younger J. W. Wallack, a man whose genius was the delight of the American stage, whose versatility was the marvel of his fellows, and whose genial nature and unselfish manhood were the admiration of his friends. Lawrence Barrett was the Florizel. -º-º-º-º-º-º-º-º: T3 THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. FROM such evidence as the frequent occurrence of rhymes and the long-drawn Alexandrines employed by the earlier English dramatists, it is reasonable to suppose that this play is one of Shakespeare’s earliest efforts in drama. It was probably written about 1591. Its plot was borrowed from the “Menaechmi” of the old Latin comedian, Plautus, but not directly. A translation of the “Menaechmi,” by W. Warner, was published in 1595, although it was known in manuscript before that date. It is not likely that Shakespeare knew the latter, but it is more than likely that he was acquainted with an old play, now lost, called “The Historie of Error,” which was acted before Queen Elizabeth on New Year's Night, 1577, at Hampton Court, and again, on January 6th, 1583, at Windsor. The subject of the original has been entirely remodelled and enriched by Shakespeare. To the twin brothers of the same name are added two slaves, also twins, of the same name, and marvellously resembling each other in personal appearance. So strong is the likeness between the Dromios that the Ephesian slave salutes his brother with “Methinks, you are my glass, and not my brother : ” the moment taken by our artist for his illustration of the play. The improbability of the original thus becomes doubled, but, having accepted one set of improbabilities, the spectator must not grumble at a second. It is a legitimate and laughter- provoking farce, and that is all that it was intended to be. While, in preserving adherence to the unities of action, time, and place, Shakespeare rivals the Latin play, he has so contrived to convey to the spectator the necessary previous impart- ment in a more pleasing and ingenious manner than that chosen by Plautus; for, while the Latin author has presented the explanation through the medium of a prologue, our author has rendered it more matural and pathetic by placing it in the mouth of Ægeon, the father of the Antipholi. Dr. Pinch, the conjurer, resembles the apothecary of “Romeo and Juliet,” and is an excrescence not to be found in Plautus. It is also a noteworthy circumstance that Shakespeare introduced into the story the love of Antipholus of Syracuse for Luciana. “What is due to Shakespeare, and to him alone,” says Swinburne, “is the honour of having embroidered, on the naked old canvas of comic whim, those flowers of elegiac beauty which vivify and diversify the scene of Plautus, as reproduced by the art of Shakespeare. In this light and lovely work of the youth of Shakespeare, we find for the first time that strange admix- ture of farce with fancy, of lyric charm with comic effect, which occurs so often in his later work, from the date of ‘As You Like It’ to the date of ‘The Winter’s Tale.’” 14 |SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. It is Hazlitt, I think, who points out that the sameness of the names of the two sons of Ægeon and the two Dromios, as well as their being constantly taken for each other by the other characters in the play, causes a painful effort of attention in order to keep them distinct in mind. Again, on the stage, the bewilderment is heightened by the complete similarity of their persons and dress, or the identity of appearance which the story supposes would be destroyed. These reasons are good, and sufficient to account for the want of great popularity of the farce on the stage. “The Comedy of Errors ’’ was probably the play performed at Gray’s Inn in 1594, according to the following entry in the “Gesta Grayorum,” published in 1688: —“After such sports, a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the players; so that night was begun and continued to the end in nothing but confusion and errors; whereupon it was ever afterwards called ‘The Night of Errors.’” The difficulty of representing such a piece on the stage is obvious. No wonder then that “The Comedy of Errors” bears a scant history of its performance. Occasionally, however, players have appeared bearing such a resemblance to each other, that the representation of the farce has been not only possible, but successful. The brothers, Charles and Henry Webb, have delighted audiences, as Dromio of Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse respectively, both in England and America. When they played at Drury Lane in September, 1866, Mr. T. Mead, long an honoured member of Mr. Henry Irving’s company, was the AEgeon, and the piece was acted in twelve scenes. Later on, the Hon. Lewis Wingfield, taking the play in hand, reduced it to three acts of one scene each, and in this form “The Comedy of Errors” was pro- duced, with much scenic splendour, at the Alexandra. Theatre, Liverpool, by the late Edward Saker, on June 13th, 1881, when it went capitally and enjoyed a successful run. Mr. Lionel Brough then appeared as one of the Dromios, Mrs. Saker being the Adriana. The same version was used in a revival at the Strand Theatre on January 18th, 1883, with Mr. John S. Clarke as the Syracusan Dromio, and Mr. Harry Paulton as the Ephesian twin. s Besides the Brothers Webb, the second Jefferson (Joseph of that ilk, 1774–1832) and Joseph L. Cowell have impersonated the Dromios in America. The last-named actor, who was born in Kent on August 7th, 1792, recorded that Lord Nelson was “a mean-looking little man, but very kind and agreeable to children | * He belonged to the York Circuit, and afterwards to Drury Lane. He acted in the United States from 1821 to 1844, when he returned to England. After another visit to America, he finally returned to London, where he died on November 14th, 1863. His daughter was the mother of the famous Bateman Children, still well known to the stage. Cowell was noted for his performance of Crack in “The Turnpike Gate ’’— a musical piece, by T. Knight, first represented at Covent Garden in 1799. His portrait, in that character, is one of the illustrations of Wemys's “Acting American Theatre.” Mr. Alfred Thompson brought out an elaborate and successful revival of “The Comedy of Errors ” at the Star Theatre, New York, in the autumn of 1885. | 1 |- ---- - -|- ） ---- ：|× |-|- |-|- |-… \, ， º ： |- | - … … ， ， º - ·| 5º |- №№. -|-- |×~|-|- ſº，||-'n |- |- . ºº: . .|-， ，|- .：|-|- - º ） |×. ： №， №. |（ --- --- tº z º - - --L-- PLN- -º-º-º-º-º- ºn 15 CYMBEL IN E. ALTHOUGH classed by Heminge and Condell amongst the Tragedies, a better definition of this play is to call it a comedy. In spite of the seriousness which pervades it, in spite of the action which everywhere borders on the tragic, and although the comic element finds no place in it, yet the piece cannot properly be ranked as a tragedy. Its ending is happy, but it has a further claim upon the title of comedy, or tragi-comedy, inasmuch as it has no tragic plot and no tragic pathos. In this play, evil, which appears to flourish at first, is eventually turned into good. At the outset, Leonatus Posthumus is sentenced to banishment on account of his secret marriage with the king's daughter, Imogen, who has rebelled against her father's authority. Cymbeline, accordingly, vents his passion on his daughter and her husband. The cunning Iachimo having won, by means of deception, his strange wager with the husband concerning Imogen’s fidelity, Posthumus determines to have the wife he thinks faithless put to death. But his servant, Pisanio, betraying the motive of the crime, induces Imogen to fly the court. Imogen, dressed as a boy, starts for Italy in order to find her husband, and on her way thither encounters some of the most surprising adventures ever related by poet or dramatist. Eventually, the wicked queen confesses her evil doings, Posthumus and Imogen are restored to one another, and all ends, as good comedies should end, in reconciliation, peace, and prospective happiness. The vagaries of the plot of this piece induced Dr. Johnson to make the following observation: “To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life, were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for exaggeration.” These strictures of the learned writer are not, it must be confessed, without foundation. But whatever the faults of “Cymbeline,” and those faults are grievous enough, Imogen, the most ideal of all Shakespeare’s characters, fully redeems them. Her purity, her truth, and true womanliness remain untouched despite all temptations, sufferings, and suspicion. Mrs. Jameson justly remarks that in Imogen “we must imagine something of the romantic enthusiasm of Juliet, of the truth and constancy of Helen, of the dignified purity of Isabel, and of the tender sweetness of Viola, of the self-possession and intellect of Portia—combined together so equally and so harmoniously that we can scarcely say that one quality predominates over the other, . . . and thus, while she resembles each of these characters individually, she stands wholly distinct from all.” “Cymbeline,” like so many others of Shakespeare's plays, has suffered much from the adapter. Tom D'Urfey laid hands upon it in 1682, when his dilution 16 SHARESPEAREAN SCENES AND CIHARACTERS. of the comedy was produced at the Theatre Royal under the title of “The Injured Princess; or, the Fatal Wager.” The scene was laid at “Lud's Town,” otherwise London, and this garbled version continued to be acted so late as 1738, when it was played at Covent Garden. In 1755, an alteration of the Shakespearean play was made by one Charles Marsh. Its author was thus quaintly criticised by the “Biographia Dramatica: ” “Though Mr. Marsh was not at that time a magistrate, the dulness he displayed in the present undertaking afforded strong presumptions of his future rise to a seat on the bench.” Garrick, who won great favour in the character of Posthumus, made a more reverent alteration in 1761, but even he committed a serious blunder by omitting the soliloquy of the physician in the first act. Sarah Siddons acted Imogen, for the first time, at Drury Lane, on January 29th, 1787, with J. P. Kemble as Posthumus. One special reason for her undertaking the character was to prevent Mrs. Jordan—whose admirers had predicted great success for her in tragedy—from attempting similar parts. As in the case of Rosalind, the boy’s dress donned by Imogen gave great trouble to Mrs. Siddons, who wrote that she “would be extremely obliged to Mr. Hamilton [William Hamilton, R.A., 1751–1801] if he would be so good as to make her a slight sketch for a boy’s dress, to conceal the person as much as possible. . . . The dress is for Imogen, but Mrs. Siddons does not wish to have it known.” She was peculiarly happy in the character, Imogen’s repulse of Cloten and her rebuke to Tachimo being particularly successful through the dignity of her demeanour. Of the latter quality, that lovely romp, Dora Jordan, possessed not a particle, although she had appeared as Imogen, and won much favour in the part, during the previous season. J. P. Kemble appeared as Posthumus to the Tachimo of George Frederick Cooke, and, in 1823, Edmund Kean and Charles Mayne Young fought for supremacy on the same stage in these respective parts. On March 17th, 1817, Junius Brutus Booth appeared, at Covent Garden, as Posthumus to the Tachimo of Young. “Cymbeline '' was one of Macready’s notable revivals, while Samuel Phelps made the play popular at Sadler’s Wells. Mention should not be omitted of the Imogen of Helen Faucit (Lady Martin). Miss Faucit was associated with Macready during his management, and played Imogen with him. Touching her performance of this part, in November, 1864, Prof. Henry Morley thus wrote in his “Journal of a London Playgoer : ” “In its tenderness and grace of womanhood; in the simple piety which looks to the gods when Imogen commits herself to rest, or is about to read a letter from her husband; in the wife’s absolute love and perfect innocency, void of false shame, slow to believe ill, strong to resist it, Miss Faucit’s Imogen is eloquent to our eyes, even when she fails now and them to satisfy our ears.” It is notable that during her visit to the United States, in 1877, the beautiful and lamented Lilian Adelaide Neilson first appeared there in the character of Imogen. * * w * º - º º | | | º 17 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. As Mr. F. J. Furnivall has pointed out, this is Shakespeare's only play of contemporary manners, his only sketch of middle-class English life. Sir John Falstaff, Ford, and the “merry wives,” mine host of the Garter Inn, the streets and houses of Windsor, and its deer park, combine in reflecting such a picture of the time and manners of Queen Elizabeth’s reign as we get nowhere else in the works of Shakespeare. It is interesting for this reason, and also because tradition affirms that the comedy was written, in fourteen days, at the com- mand of the Virgin Queen, who, having enjoyed the character of the doughty knight in “Ring Henry IV.,” expressed a desire to see Sir John in love. But in love he could not be without his character being destroyed, and one half of those very blemishes for which he is beloved by the audience, disappearing from his nature. So Shakespeare did the next best thing to making him in love : he made him believe that he was affected by mischievous Mistress Ford and good Mistress Page. How gloriously he deceives himself! He'll make more of his old body than he has done. “Will they yet look after thee?” He does not beat about the bush, but comes to the point at once. His letter having opened to him the door of Mistress Ford’s house, he does not sigh, or make love in pretty language. Soldier-like he attempts to take the fortress by storm. “Have I caught my heavenly jewel? Why, now let me die, for I have lived long enough; this is the period of my ambition,” he exclaims, as he meets Mistress Ford. In the very next sentence he speaks the words which have given rise to our illustration: “Mistress Ford, I cannot cog, I cannot prate, Mistress Ford. Now shall I sin in my wish : I would thy husband were dead. I’ll speak it before the best lord, I would make thee my lady.” A few moments after the delivery of this speech, he is carried off in the buck- basket, hidden from sight by a pile of dirty linen, and thrown into the Thames. The immersion does not daunt him in his attempt to win the Windsor wife; he goes to meet her again, is beaten for his pains; and makes yet a third attempt, when he is pinched by children, disguised as fairies, and jeered at by the townsfolk. The first representative of Sir John Falstaff, in “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” was John Heminge, one of the editors of the 1623 folio of Shakespeare. He was succeeded in the part by John Lowin, and John Lacey (1622–81) was a great Falstaff. The play was acted by royal command at St. James's on April 23rd, 1706, with Betterton as Falstaff, George Powell as Ford, Vanbruggen as Page, Pinkethman as Dr. Caius, Thomas Doggett as Sir Hugh, Mrs. Bracegirdle as Mrs. Ford, and Mrs. Barry as Mrs. Page. Powell, who was envious of Betterton's success, and weak enough to think himself capable of taking his place, C 18 SHARESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. afterwards acted Falstaff in imitation of Betterton. At the express command of Queen Anne, Barton Booth once appeared as Falstaff—once and once only. “The Merry Wives” was one of the first plays which attracted public atten- tion at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, soon after the opening of that house, under Charles II.'s patent, in 1715. Beyond James Quin, the Falstaff, the cast was not particularly noteworthy. - - • 3 & * “The Merry Wives of Windsor” was converted into an opera in 1824 by Frederick Reynolds, the dramatist, who engrafted upon the comedy many “musical embellishments,” so-called, and for the next quarter of a century the piece was invariably presented in this form. Reynolds, who had subjected “The Comedy of Errors,” “Twelfth Night,” and “The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ to the same treatment, held that but for his alterations the plays would not have been repre- sented at all, and that his manipulations were “advantageous to the managers and without injury to the immortal bard.” Consequently the parts of Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page were assigned to such singers as Miss Stephens, Miss Cubitt, or Mdme. Vestris, who “discoursed sweet music” all through the piece. The young lover, Fenton, was allotted to the great tenor, Braham, who frequently stayed in his wooing with sweet Anne Page to sing “Blow, blow, thou winter wind,” or some such song of an equally irrelevant nature. This “operatic comedy * was abolished by Charles Kean when he revived the play at the Princess's Theatre, on November 22nd, 1851, when it had a run of twenty-five nights. The last noteworthy revival of the play in England was at the Gaiety. Theatre in December, 1874, with Samuel Phelps as Falstaff, Mr. Hermann Vezin as Mr. Ford, William Belford as Mr. Page, Mr. Arthur Cecil as Dr. Caius, Mr. John Maclean as Justice Shallow, Mr. J. G. Taylor as Slender, and Mrs. John Wood as Mrs. Ford. The Falstaff of Phelps, though occasionally over-sententious in manner, was noticeable for its humour, vigour and incisiveness. - - The greatest Falstaff of the American stage was James Henry Hackett, a comedian only equalled in this part, in England, by Phelps, and approached, in the United States, by William Warren (1767–1832), the father of the famous comedian of that name now living in retirement in Boston. Other Falstaffs famous in the annals of the American theatre are Harwood, Charles Bass, Benedict de Barr, and John Jack. Joseph Jefferson, the second of this famous line of actors, who lived from 1774 to 1832, was unequalled as Sir Hugh Evans. His eldest son, Thomas, made his first important effort on the stage, in his fifteenth year, at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, on October 7th, 1811, as Master Slender. The present Joseph Jefferson has also appeared in the character of Slender. The first performance of “The Merry Wives of Windsor’’ in America took place at the theatre in John Street, New York, on October 5th, 1788, when J. Harper acted Falstaff. The comedy was revived at Daly's Theatre, in the same city, on November 19th, 1872, and again in January, 1886, Charles Fisher being the Falstaff on both occasions. Drawn by Solowox HART, R.A. | | | | | Wolsey. | | WOLSEY AND BUCKINGHAM. Well, we shall then know more; and Buckingham Shall lessen this big look. “Henry VIII.," Art /., Scene 1. (From the Drawing in the Tyrrell Collection.) - Eºrated by C. Roberts. 19 KING HENRY VIII. IN no other play has Shakespeare provided so much pomp and pageantry, so much ceremonial, as in “King Henry VIII.” Here we have not only banquets and masques, lawsuits and visions, but coronation and baptismal festivities as well. “No play,” says Gervinus, “seems so loosely united in its various parts, none so wholly wanting in a fundamental idea connecting the individual parts, as this. We first have Buckingham's wily intrigues against Wolsey, which turn against himself; in the second act, however, he has already retired from the scene. Then we discover, in Queen Katherine, a new enemy of the Cardinal’s, and his machinations rob her of her throne and her husband. Thus far, the action and the figures are, externally at least, grouped round the Cardinal, but he, too, finally disappears in the third act. The external threads of the continuation of the play—the marriage of Anne Bullen— are only accidentally connected with Wolsey, and the enmity between Cranmer and Gardiner has nothing to do with him. Lastly, the birth and baptism of Queen Elizabeth come in like a new appendage, which may be said to be a natural but not an aesthetic result of what has gone before, and only seems to be connected with the person of Cranmer by the christening gift which, as a godfather, he had to present to the infant. The plastic, life-like, and animated course of the first three acts, which revolve around three sharply defined and interesting figures, evaporates in a strange manner; the two last acts proceed at first in motionless descriptions, but end in a regular kind of dramatic spiritualism. The fourth act contains nothing but the coronation of the new, and the death of the old, Queen. The fifth takes up a short spell of action in the proceedings of Gardiner and Cranmer, but this soon breaks off, the main incident being Cranmer's prophetic speech about the infant.” As Mr. Spedding rightly observes: “The strongest sympathies which have been awakened in us run in the opposite course to the action. Our sympathy is for the grief and goodness of Queen Katherine, while the course of the action requires us to entertain, as a theme of joy and compensatory satisfaction, the coronation of Anne Bullen and the birth of her daughter; which are, in fact, a part of Katherine’s injury, and amount to little less than the ultimate triumph of wrong.” - - . It was during the performance of a play called “All Is True,” presumably a revival of Shakespeare’s “Ring Henry VIII.” under another title, that the Globe Theatre was burnt down on June 29th, 1613. The calamity was due to some sparks from theatrical artillery lodging in the thatch with which the stage was roofed. The following stanza, taken from a ballad published at the time, entitled “A Sonnet on the Pitiful Burning of the Globe Playhouse in London,” alludes to Richard Burbage, who was the Wolsey of the play, and to Henry Condell (called “Condy,” 20 SHAKESPEAREAN SOENES AND CHARACTERS. for the sake of the rhyme), the joint-editor, with Heminge, of the Shakespeare folio of 1623:— “Out run the knights, out run the lords, And there was great ado; Some lost their hats, and some their swords, Then out run Burbadge too : The reprobates, though drunk on Monday, Pray'd for the Fool, and Henry Condy.” The opportunity afforded by this play for pageantry was not lost sight of by Sir William Davenant, who brought out the piece with great show on January 1st, 1663, at Lincoln's Inn Fields. “This play was all new cloathed in proper habits: the King's was new, and all the Lords, the Cardinals, the Bishops, the Doctors, Procters, Lawyers, and Tipstaves.” Betterton, who was instructed in the part by Sir William Davenant, from his remembrance of the older performer, Lowin, excelled as the King, while Joseph Harris, an admirable and versatile actor, was the Wolsey. Nokes was Norfolk, Cave Underhill, Gardiner, and Price (an excellent low comedian, frequently mentioned by the stage historian, Downes) appeared in the small part of Lord Sands. Betterton’s wife, pretty Mistress Saunderson, played Queen Katherine. Pepys saw this performance, which, though he “went with resolution to like it,” he thought it “so simple a thing made up of a great many patches, that besides the shows and processions in it, there is nothing in the world good or well done.” But all the same, we are assured of “Every part, by the great care of Sir William, being exactly performed; it being all new cloathed and new scenes; it continued acting fifteen days together with general applause.” This, be it remembered, was a long run for those times. Barton Booth succeeded Betterton as Henry VIII. To support the dignity of the character, and yet retain that vein of humour which pervades it, requires no less caution than ability on the part of the actor. Unless great care be exercised, Henry may be made a royal bully or a ridiculous buffoon. Booth was particularly happy in preserving the true spirit of the part throughout the entire play. Macklin, who saw him several times in it, declared that he shone with marked lustre in the character. James Quin, who had the good sense to admire and imitate Booth, and the honesty to own that he did so, kept as near as possible to the greater actor’s impersonation. But Quin was deficient in flexibility as well as strength of voice; he could not give a vigorous utterance to impetuous and vehement anger, nor could he dart tremendous looks. Herein Booth excelled. Quin was, besides, a stranger to grace in action or deportment, while Booth walked with the ease of a gentleman and the dignity of a monarch. The grandeur and magnificence of King Hal were, in Booth, sustained to the full. Even the four words “Go thy ways, Kate l’” Booth gave with such a happy emphasis, conveying at once characteristic humour and a liberal acknowledgment of Katherine's virtuous excellence, that the audience |- |- |- |- ---- |- · |- · |-_ |- ---- · |- … -|- |-|- |- |× №… |- |- . |× |- ----| – |-|- |-№. |- ------ Assem & company, Lºree. C. KING FIENRY VIII. 21 applauded and admired the actor. In uttering this sentence, Quin borrowed something of Booth’s manner, but with it he mixed a little of that of Falstaff. On the other hand, the apostrophe “My learned and well-beloved servant, Cranmer, Prithee return, etc.,” was spoken by Quin in a low voice, so melodiously and well-tuned, as to be distinctly heard in every part of the theatre. Colley Cibber has been much praised for his assuming port, pride, and dignity in Wolsey, but, it has been said, his manner did not correspond with the dignity of the character. Again, in Wolsey's “This candle burns not clear; ’tis I must snuff it; Then, out it goes' —one of the three scenes, by the way, of our illustrations of this play—he condescended to imitating, with his forefinger and thumb, the extinguishing of a candle with a pair of snuffers. In Wolsey’s last scene, Cibber's pride and passion were impotent and almost farcical. His grief, resignation, and tenderness, were inadequate from a deficiency of those powers which the melting tones of voice and proper facial expression can alone bestow. Mossop would have excelled in Wolsey if speaking with feeling and energy were all the requisites of the part; but in spite of, or, possibly, because of his Cardinal’s robe, his action, step, and general deportment were unsuitable to the rôle of the accomplished statesman. West Digges would have been a good Wolsey, had he not sometimes been extravagant in gesture and quaint in elocution. He assumed, in this part, an uncommon grandeur of bearing, which occasionally developed into bombastical strutting. The grave tones of his voice were not ill-suited to the more resigned portion of the part. Harris, the first Wolsey of whom we have any record, appears, then, to have been the best amongst our old actors. Robert Wilks, whose step-son, Fell, married the grand-daughter of William Penn, did not disdain to act Buckingham on occasion. In his first scene, the indignation and resentment of the character towards Wolsey broke out, in this excellent comedian, with feverish impetuosity; his action was vehement, his movements were quick and disturbed. His demeanour, when condemned, was gentle, graceful, and pathetic ; his grief was manly, refined, and temperate, such as became the nobleman and the Christian. The insignificant part of “an old lady, friend to Anne Bullen,” was acted for many years during last century by Mrs. Willis, an excellent low comedy actress, who played the small part with so much truth to nature that the audience invariably bestowed signal marks of approbation upon her. This actress lived to a great age in poverty. A subscription on her behalf was started among the players. When that graceless scamp, Colley Cibber’s son, Theophilus, was applied to, he excused himself on the ground that his finances were low in consequence of his having a large family to support. “How can that 22 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. be so?” he was asked; “you have neither wife nor child.” “It may be so; but I have a large family of vices,” he replied. - Let us now turn to the Queen, and her representatives. On the stage. This character has been summed up by Hazlitt as “the most perfect delineation of matronly dignity, sweetness, and resignation that can be conceived. Her appeals to the protection of the King, her remonstrances to the cardinals, her conversations with her women, show a noble and generous spirit accompanied with the utmost gentleness of nature. What can be more affecting than her answer to Campeius and Wolsey, who come to visit her as pretended friends?— ‘Nay, forsooth, my friends, They that must weigh out my afflictions, They that my trust must grow to, live not here: They are, as all my other comforts are, far hence, In mine own country, lords.’” Passing from Mrs. Betterton, of whose performance in this part no critical record exists, we come to Mrs. Porter, the tragic actress who died in 1762, and of whom Walpole held that she “surpassed Garrick in passionate tragedy.” She was great as Lady Macbeth, Belvidera, Alicia in “Jane Shore,” and Hermione in “The Distressed Mother.” She was tall, fair, well-shaped, and easy and dignified in action. In the vehemence of rage Johnson had never seen her equal. The dignity and grace of Queen Katherine were never more happily exhibited, until Mrs. Siddons' day, than by Mrs. Porter. Her first speech to the King— “That you would love yourself, and, in that love, Not unconsidered leave your honour, nor The dignity of your office, is the point Of my petition”— was uttered by her with such intelligence, that she commanded not only the applause, but the attention and sympathy of the audience. She understood her author so well that in delivering these simple words she managed to convey the prime duties of the kingly office with energy. Throughout this scene her conduct was a mixture of graceful elocution and dignified behaviour. Such was the power of her mind, and the pathos of her facial expression, that a harsh voice did not detract from her forcible expression of excessive grief. Mrs. Pritchard, who also essayed this character, was, according to Dr. Johnson, a “vulgar idiot” in ordinary life : “she would talk of her gownd ; but when she appeared on the stage she seemed to be inspired by gentility and understanding.” Her Queen Katherine was much approved, more especially in the Trial scene, where she was easy and natural; but she lacked her predecessor's force of utterance and dignity of action. Foremost in the list of famous representatives of Queen Katherine stands the great tragic actress, Sarah Siddons. On November 25th, 1788, after an absence of half a century from Drury Lane, “King Henry VIII.” was brought forward with Mrs. Siddons, then thirty-three years old, as the Queen, John Palmer as Henry, wº.º.º. º/*- - wº ºw º ZºZº. ºw º º sº ETCETT sº C S R D iſ A Jº Yº (0). JL S Jº Y. º ºg º zoº ºvº º Aºtº szzº ºr ºz ºf tº yoes º tº vºa º sº. -------------------> ----- - - - - -nºt- - - RING HENRY VIII. 23 John Kemble as Cromwell, and W. Bensley as Wolsey. No actress, either before or since, has equalled, much less excelled, Mrs. Siddons in the beauty of this im- personation, although Charlotte Cushman, in America, and Geneviève Ward, in England, have approached her in it. In the Council scene, where the examination of the Duke of Buckingham’s surveyor takes place, her quiet majesty of deport- ment, arising from the natural majesty of her mind and form, which imposed reverence and commanded subjection, and her clear and intelligent harmony of unlaboured elocution, which unravelled all the intricacies of language, illuminated obscure passages, and unfolded the precise meaning of every sentence, were of unrivalled excellence, Admirable, too, were her impressive dignity of appeal, her searching solemnity of tone and manner, when Katherine interrupts the wretched instrument of Wolsey in his schooled charge against Buckingham :- - - “If I know you well, You were the Duke's surveyor, and lost your office On the complaint o’ the tenants. Take good heed You charge not in your spleen a noble person, And spoil your nobler soul. I say, take heed l’ The insensibility of brutal apathy, or demoniac determination of evil, could alone have remained unalarmed and unchanged before the still, but tremendous force of her voice and eye as she uttered these words. It is related of Mrs. Siddons in this scene that on one occasion the actor who had played the Surveyor with her was perspiring with agitation on leaving the stage after the rebuke just quoted. On being questioned as to the cause of his agitation, he exclaimed, “That woman plays as if the thing were in earnest. She looked me so through and through with her black eyes that I would not for the world meet her on the stage again!” In the Trial scene the same exquisite truth of elocution marked the sorrowful, affectionate, and dignified address of the Queen to her husband. “But we dwell with the strongest admiration,” wrote a critic, “upon the extraordinary sublimity of her feelings and expression when Wolsey opposes her request of delay until she may have the advice of her friends in Spain. Here Mrs. Siddons exhibited one of those unequalled pieces of acting by which she assists the barrenness of the text and fills out the meaning of the scene. Those who have seen it will never forget it; but to those who have not, we feel it impossible to describe the majestic self-correction of the petulance and vexation which, in her perturbed state of mind, she feels at the misapprehension of Campeius, and the intelligent expression of countenance and gracious dignity of gesture with which she intimates to him his mistake, and dismisses him to his seat. And no language can possibly convey a picture of her immediate re-assumption of the fulness of majesty, glowing with scorn, con- tempt, anger, and the terrific pride of innocence, when she turns round to Wolsey and exclaims, ‘To you I speak | ** Here, her form seemed to expand and her eye to flash with fire. A death-scene of almost faultless art brought to a close a per- formance the like of which it is almost hopeless to see again. With a perception of 24 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. truth and of nature peculiarly her own, Mrs. Siddons displayed, in this final scene, through her feeble frame, and the death-stricken expression of her features, that morbid fretfulness of look, that restless desire of changing place and position, which often attend death. She sought relief from the irritability of illness by frequently moving her position in her chair; by having the pillows on which she reposed every now and then changed and re-adjusted; bending forward and sustaining herself, while speaking, by the pressure of her hands upon her knees; and playing with her drapery with restless and uneasy fingers. And all this was done with so much delicacy, and such effect, as to constitute it one of the most marvellous death-scenes ever witnessed on the stage—quite on a par with Sarah Bernhardt’s in “Frou-Frou,” and with Henry Irving's in “Louis XI.” As already indicated, the only actress who has approached her in this character, on the English stage, is Geneviève Ward, who played Queen Katherine for fifteen weeks, in Charles Calvert’s sumptuous revival of “King Henry VIII.,” at Manchester and Liverpool, in the autumn of 1877. She afterwards acted it in New York. Two noteworthy Queen Katherines are associated with the American stage. The first of these, Mrs. Duff, lived from 1794 to 1857. She was a Miss Mary Dyke, born in London, and the elder of a trio of lovely girls who appeared in Dublin, in 1809, as dancers. She was beloved by the Irish poet, Moore, who subsequently married her second sister, Elizabeth. Mary Dyke married a young Dublin actor named John R. Duff, with whom she went to America in 1810. In the autumn of 1826 she appeared at the Bowery Theatre, New York, as Katherine. “Those who remember the plaintive tenderness of her tones,” says John H. Ireland, “the majestic dignity of her demeanour, and the forceful grace of her action, need no assurance of the excellence of her delineation.” Let me close this account with a tribute to the genius of Charlotte Cushman from the pen of William Winter, the poet, and doyen of dramatic critics in America, who writes: “In dealing with the conceptions of Shakespeare, Miss Cushman’s spirit was the same, but her method was different. As Meg Merrilies, she obeyed the law of her own nature; as Queen Katherine, she obeyed the law of the poetic ideal that encompassed her. In that stately, sweet, and pathetic character, and again, though to a less extent, in the terrible yet tender character of Lady Macbeth, both of which she apprehended through an intellect always clear and an imagination always adequate, the form and limitations prescribed by the dominant genius of the poet were scrupulously respected. She made Shakespeare real, but she never dragged him down to the level of the actual. She knew the heights of that wondrous intuition and potent magnetism, and she lifted herself and her hearers to their grand and beautiful eminence. Her best achievements in the illustration of Shakespeare were accord- ingly in the highest order of art. They were at once human and poetic. They were white marble suffused with fire. They thrilled the heart with emotion and passion, and they filled the imagination with a thoroughly satisfying sense of beauty, power, and completeness.” | | | | 25 KING RICHARD II. RICHARD II. is here represented as a man not deficient in immediate courage, which displays itself at his assassination; or in the powers of mind, as appears by the foresight he exhibits throughout the play; still, he is weak, feeble, and womanish, and possesses feelings which, although amiable in a woman, are out of place in a man, and unfitted for a king. From the beginning to the end of the play he pours out all the peculiarities and powers of his mind; he catches at new hope and seeks new friends, is disappointed, despairs, and at length makes a merit of his abdication. “He scatters himself,” says Coleridge, “into a multitude of images, and in conclusion endeavours to shelter himself from that which is around him by a crowd of his own thoughts. Throughout his whole career may be noted the most rapid transitions—from the highest insolence to the lowest humility—from hope to despair, from the extravagance of love to the agonies of resentment, and from the tenderest resignation to the bitterest reproaches.” Henry Bolingbroke, Richard’s rival, is a man of dauntless courage and ambition. Moreover, he is a man who has been sorely injured by the King. Yet he scarcely dares to acknowledge his own designs, and he comes home under the pretence of claiming his dukedom, and he professes that to be his object until the last; but, at the last, he avows his purpose to its full extent, of which he was himself unconscious at the beginning. A distinguished American critic has written that this tragedy “is replete with sharp contrasts of natural character. It paints with equal brilliancy the divine right of kings, and the wiliness and duplicity of astute politicians. It is expressed with great and irresistible vigour of diction. It contains passages equal to the best that its marvellous author has written, in poetic imagery and philosophic truth. Its eloquence is wondrous and incomparable. And, in its exposition of the grief of a tortured soul—struggling between petulant resentment against misfortune and the divine desire to be resigned—it discloses the most profound and instructive knowledge of human nature, and it attains to absolute sublimity of utterance.” Its story is taken from Holinshed’s “Chronicle.” The same writer also adds: “There were two dramatic passages in the life of Richard the Second—the rebellion of Wat Tyler in 1881, and the banishment of Bolingbroke in 1398. The one was an episode, and, moreover, it had, there is reason to think, been portrayed in a play on the subject of this king’s reign, earlier than that written by Shakespeare. The other was attended by consequences that were steadily interwoven in the skein of the monarch’s fate; and this, naturally, was preferred by Shakespeare, since it presented the largest and most fruitful field of interpretation for the exercise of his art. He has exhibited this passage in such a way as to illustrate the entire historic period through which King Richard lived, and, while presenting that sovereign’s 1) 26 SHARESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. character in the colours of actual life, to make Richard’s experiences typical and representative of a great moral truth. This tragedy is not alone the resplendent and pathetic picture of a king's ruin; it is also the impressive assertion that there is no permanent power and everlasting royalty but the power and royalty of virtue and justice.” - The first two acts depict the banishment of Bolingbroke and Mowbray, the death of John of Gaunt, Richard’s seizure of his uncle's estate—the banished Bolingbroke's inheritance—his departure for the wars in Ireland, Bolingbroke's return to England, and Richard's arrival from Ireland and reception of the news of the revolt against his authority. The third act shows his piteous submission to Bolingbroke, and the fourth his resignation of the crown, and his calling for a mirror—as represented by our artist—so that it may show him what a face he has “Since it is bankrupt of his majesty.” The last act is devoted to his parting from his young wife, Isabel, of France—a scene also depicted in our illustrations of the play—and his death, in captivity, at Pomfret Castle. There have been at least four adaptations of “ King Richard II.” The first of these, entitled “The Sicilian Usurper,” by Nahum Tate, was produced at Drury Lane in 1681, but played only twice, its further performance being prohibited. The second, like the remaining ones, bearing Shakespeare's title, was by Lewis Theobald. It was brought out at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1720, and was dedicated to the Earl of Orrery, who presented Theobald with a bank-note for a hundred pounds, enclosed in an Egyptian pebble snuff-box, on the occasion. Another alteration, by Francis Gentleman, was acted at Bath about the year 1754, and yet another adaptation, by James Goodhall, printed at Manchester in 1772, was offered to Garrick for representation and refused by him. . - It was the opinion of Coleridge that “were there an actor capable of represent- ing Richard, the part would delight us more than any other of Shakespeare's masterpieces.” Yet despite this high eulogium, Richard II. has tempted but few actors. Betterton, Barton Booth, Quin, Garrick, and Kemble left it untouched. Before Kean appeared in “King Richard II.” at Drury Lane, in 1815, I can trace only one important production of the play. This was at Covent Garden in 1744, when an Irish actor, Dennis Delane, appeared as Richard, and won applause for his rendering of the character. Lacy Ryan acted Bolingbroke, and Johnson, the son-in-law of the old poet, Aaron Hill, represented John of Gaunt. Johnson commonly had “tall” prefixed to his name, from the fact that he was close upon seven feet high. Kean appeared for the first time as Richard II. On March 9th of the year named. His performance of this part was made the subject of an essay by Hazlitt, from which the following is extracted —“It has been supposed that this is his finest part: that is, however, a total misrepresentation. There are only one or two electrical shocks given in it; and in many of his characters he gives a much greater number. The excellence of his acting is in proportion to the number of hits, for he has not equal truth or purity of style. Richard II. Drawn by J. M'L, RALSTON. Engraved ºy W. J. PALMER RICHARD II. AND THE QUEEN. Aºng Richard. We make woe wanton with this fond delay: Once more, adieu ; the rest let sorrow say. - “Richard II." Act P., Scene 1. RING RICHARD II. 27 was hardly given correctly as to the general outline. Mr. Kean made it a character of passion—that is, of feeling combined with energy; whereas, it is a character of pathos—that is to say, of feeling combined with weakness. This, we conceive, is the general fault of Mr. Kean's acting, that it is always energetic or nothing. He is always on full stretch—never relaxed. He expresses all the violence, all the extravagance, all the fierceness of the passions, but not their misgivings, their helplessness, their sinkings into despair. He has too much of that strong nerve and fibre that is always equally elastic. We might instance, to the present purpose, his dashing the glass down with all his might, in the scene with Hereford, instead of letting it fall out of his hands as from an infant’s ; also, his manner of expostu- lating with Bolingbroke, ‘Why on thy knee, thus low,” etc., which was altogether fierce and heroic, instead of being sad, thoughtful, and melancholy. If Mr. Kean would look into some passages in this play—into that in particular, ‘Oh, that I were a mockery king of snow, to melt away before the sum of Bolingbroke –he would find a clue to this character, and to human nature in general, which he seems to have missed—how far feeling is connected with the sense of weakness, as well as of strength, or the power of imbecility, or the force of passiveness. “We never saw Mr. Kean look better than when we saw him in Richard II., and his voice appeared to us to be stronger. We saw him near, which is always in his favour; and we think one reason why the editor of this paper was disappointed in first seeing this celebrated actor, was his being at a considerable distance from the stage. We feel persuaded that, on a nearer and more frequent view of him, he will agree that he is a perfectly original, and sometimes a perfectly natural actor; that if his conception is not always just or profound, his execution is masterly; that where he is not the very character he assumes, he makes a most brilliant rehearsal of it; that he never wants energy, ingenuity, and animation, though he is often deficient in dignity, grace and tenderness; that if he frequently disappoints us in those parts where we expect him to do most, he as frequently surprises us by striking out unexpected beauties of his own ; and that the objectionable parts of his acting arise chiefly from the physical impediments he has to overcome.” Richard II. was a favourite part in the repertory of Junius Brutus Booth, but no record of his acting in this part exists. Macready was also correct and elegant in the part, but he possessed little sympathy with it. On November 8th, 1875, Edwin Booth revived the play at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York. He them appeared for the first time as Richard, and he presented an entirely new stage version of the tragedy. The nineteen scenes of the original were reduced to tem. A few passages of the text were transposed, and many omitted. The omitted passages are those which might be termed episodical, and those that dilate on points of which the simple statement is practically sufficient. A thoughtful endeavour was thus made to accelerate the movement of the tragedy, without marring its unity or poetical grace. It is memorable that on the night of April 23rd (Shakespeare’s birthday), 1879, Edwin Booth was shot at while acting Richard II. in Chicago. The excitement 28 SHA KESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. throughout the theatre was intense, the deed creating the fiercest indignation against the offender, who was arrested and secured, but not until the actor rose at the third shot, walked to the footlights, and pointed out the would-be-assassin to the audience as the pistol was again levelled at his head. At the trial which followed, the offender was proved to be insane, and was afterwards confined in a lunatic asylum. One of the bullets, which entered the scenery directly behind Booth, was secured by the actor, who had it set in a gold cartridge cap upon which is engraved, “From Mark Gray to Edwin Booth, April 23rd, 1879°—a grim reminder of a narrow escape from death. By subsequent measurement it was discovered that the aim of the lunatic was very correct, for had Booth risen at the proper and expected moment, one, at least, of the bullets must have penetrated his heart. It may not be out of place to add that Richard was remarkable for his personal beauty. He was a man of slender person, large head, large eyes, regular features, a small mouth, a sensitive chin, long, bushy hair, a grave, Sweet aspect, and a feminine contour of countenance. The countenance of Henry of Lancaster, better known as Bolingbroke, was noticeable for astute composure and almost ferocious determination. The eyes were severe, the nose was long, large, and aquiline, and the jaw was large and heavy. He was by nature a ruler and politician. His first wife, Mary de Bohun, bore him four sons, the eldest of whom ruled England, making a great name, both in history and poetry, as Henry W. Hume says that Richard “lived in a more magnificent manner than, perhaps, any of his predecessors or successors. His household consisted of ten thousand persons; he had three hundred in his kitchen; and all the other offices were furnished in proportion.” The historian also observes that “Indolent, profuse, addicted to low pleasures, he spent his whole time in feasting and jollity, and dissipated in idle show, or in bounties to favourites of no reputation, that revenue which the people expected to see him employ in enterprises directed to public honour and advantage. He forgot his rank by admitting all men to his familiarity; and he was not sensible that their acquaintance with the qualities of his mind was not able to impress them with the respect which he neglected to preserve from his birth and station.” It is evident, from the testimony of Froissart, that the English people were badly governed during the reign of Richard II. “We have a king,” they said, “that will do nothing; he intendeth but to idleness, and to accomplish his pleasure, and by that he showeth he careth not how everything goeth, so he may have his will.” The ages of some of the characters in this tragedy are as follows: Richard, 33; Bolingbroke, 33; John of Gaunt, 59; Duke of Norfolk, 40; and Queen Isabel, 11. The ages of the other characters can be only thus approximately stated: York, about 60; Aumerle, 30; Northumberland, 54; Carlisle, 60; and the Duchess of Gloster, 48. cºlo TTR-AM, SCULP- pºor ºn ºn ºn ºf ºz º.º.º.º. whº ºwe ºwº- ººr tº ºve º ºf wººz º.º. CA-S-L & Colº-AN.Y. Liºn- 29 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. “THE reading of this play is like wandering in a grove by moonlight; the descrip- tions breathe a sweetness like odours thrown from beds of flowers.” So wrote Hazlitt, who rebelled against the stage representation of this fantastic, delightful comedy. The dramatist has here interwoven, with undeniable charm, the most enchanting fantasy, the height of poetry, dignity, and nobleness, with the broadest farce. Here, all is fun and frolic, waywardness and caprice; the poem resembles a merry, wanton child, which skips lightly amid the dance of its companions, its foot scarcely touching the ground. Here we have a wanton play of merriment, a gay succession of pranks. The theme carried out by the action in the spirit of the fantastico-comic view of life has been ingeniously proved by A. Schöll (“Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung,” 1844) to be the illusion into which men are thrown by love, the poetry of life, while he holds captive the senses of the dramatic per- sonages as if by some irresistible charm. Titania has fallen in love with an Indian boy, whom Oberon, in a fit of jealousy, demands her to give up, so that he may make him one of his huntsmen. Egeus, the father of Hermia, has taken a blind preference for Demetrius, which is his only reason for refusing his daughter’s hand to Lysander, and he wishes to compel her to marry Demetrius against her inclination. And Demetrius, who was originally devoted to the faithful Helena, suddenly becomes passionately fond of Hermia, who has an aversion for him. Lastly, the play of “sweet Bully Bottom * and his companions (sketches from Shakespeare’s early Stratford life), in which they are wholly engrossed, turns upon the tragic love of Pyramus and Thisbe, and, moreover, Bottom is thrown into an amorous complication with the fairy, Titania. Nowhere else is the fairy element so delightful as in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream.” The leader of the fairy band is Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, who has been described by Hazlitt as “the Ariel of ‘A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” and yet as unlike as can be to the Ariel of ‘The Tempest.” No other poet could have made two such different characters out of the same fanciful materials and situations. Ariel is a minister of retribution, who is touched with a sense of pity at the woes he inflicts. Puck is a madcap sprite, full of wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those whom he misleads—‘Lord, what fools these mortals be l’ Ariel cleaves the air and executes his mission with the zeal of a winged messenger; Puck is borne along on his fairy errand like the light and glittering gossamer before the breeze. He is, indeed, a most Epicurean little gentleman, dealing in quaint devices and faring on dainty delights. Prospero and his spirits are a set of moralists; but with Oberon and his fairies we are launched at once into an empire of butterflies. How beautifully is this race of beings contrasted with the world of men and women 30 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. actors in the scene, by a single epithet which Titania gives the latter, “the human mortals | ?” Although the action of the piece takes place in Athens, the comedy, neverthe- less, is thoroughly English in sentiment. The Greek-named characters are Greek in name only; in thought and feeling they are decidedly English. Shakespeare most probably took the names of Egeus and Lysander, of Demetrius and Philostrate, from North’s translation of “Plutarch’s Lives,” published in 1579. Theseus and Hippolyta may also be found in Chaucer’s “Knight's Tale,” while, in the same story, Arcite assumes the name of Philostrate. Oberon is an important and powerful figure in the old French romance of “ Huon of Bordeaux,” which, at the request of the Earl of Huntingdon, was translated into English for the first time by Lord Berners, in 1540, although the earliest copy known to be in existence at present is dated 1601, “being now the third time imprinted, and the rude English corrected and amended.” Titania is apparently the invention of Shakespeare, whilst Puck, or “Pouke,” is an old English word for devil. Shakespeare was no doubt acquainted with the “Life of Robin Goodfellow,” a black-letter pamphlet of great scarcity, reprinted, from an early copy, in London, in 1628. In this tract Oberon is supposed to be the father of Robin Goodfellow. The comedy was first performed in or about the year 1594, when its author was thirty years old. It was first printed in 1600, when two editions of the play appeared; the first, and better one, was by a publisher, Thomas Fisher, to whom it was entered on October 8th. The second, and less accurate edition, from which the folio of 1623 is reprinted, was made by a printer, Thomas Roberts. “To the King's Theatre,” writes Mr. Pepys on September 29th, 1662, “where we saw ‘Midsummer-Night's Dream,’ which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.” What appeared insipid and ridiculous to good Samuel Pepys was made so by the un- suitability of so fanciful a sketch for the stage. “To offer an analysis of this subtle and ethereal drama would, we believe, be as unsatisfactory as the attempt to associate it with the realities of the stage,” wrote Charles Knight, thereby implying that it would be next to impossible to give even an adequate representation on the stage of this beautiful play. And Hazlitt, as I have already indicated, and as we shall presently see, could not tolerate the performance of this comedy. Yet the fairy piece has frequently been acted, though not always as Shakespeare left it. Thus, for instance, the story of Oberon and Titania formed the groundwork of a piece called “The Fairies; ” the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, converted into an opera, has been performed singly; and the comic scenes alone used often to be acted at Bartholomew Fair, and by strolling country companies, under the title of “Bottom, the Weaver.” Under the title of “The Fairy Queen,” with the addition of numerous songs, dances, and mechanical effects, it was produced in 1692, but though “the Court and town '' were much satisfied with it, “the expense attending it was so great that the company got very little by it.” One Leveridge, a bass A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT”S DREAM. 3] singer, derived, in 1716, a masque from “A Midsummer-Night's Dream ” entitled “Pyramus and Thisbe,” which, in 1745, became a comic opera with music supplied - by John Frederick Lampe. Ten years later, Garrick, with the aid of some Italian singers, presented a mutilated version of the play as “The Fairies.” The majority of the parts were acted by children, and several songs, by various writers, were introduced. Garrick wrote and spoke the prologue. George Colman, in 1763, made a similar venture, adding some thirty songs to the work and suppressing the greater part of the mock tragedy of “Pyramus and Thisbe.” This production was acted only once, when the spectators were uncommonly few and not in the best of temper. Respect for Shakespeare kept them silent, however, but they sympathised, nevertheless, with Lysander and Helena, Demetrius and Hermia, who, in One scene, were left in the supposition that they were fast asleep on the stage. Bishop's music was composed for Frederick Reynolds’ version of “A Midsum- mer-Night's Dream,” performed at Covent Garden on January 17th, 1816. It was this performance which aroused Hazlitt’s indignation, and concerning which the critic wrote thus:–“Even Titian never made a hunting-piece of a gusto so fresh and lusty, and so near the first ages of the world, as this: ‘It had been suggested to us that the “Midsummer-Night's Dream ” would do admirably to get up as a Christmas after-piece, and our prompter proposed that Mr. Kean should play the part of Bottom, as worthy of his great talents. He might, in the discharge of his duty, offer to play the lady like any of our actresses that he pleased, the lover or the tyrant like any of our actors that he pleased, and the lion like “the most fearful wild-fowl’’ living. The carpenter, the tailor, the joiner, it was thought, might hit the galleries. * The young ladies in love would interest the side boxes, and Robin Goodfellow and his companions excite a lively feeling in the children from school. There would be two courts, an empire within an empire, the Athenian and the Fairy King and Queen, with their attendants, and with all their finery. What an opportunity for processions, for the sound of trumpets and glittering of spears | What a fluttering of urchins’ painted wings; what a delightful profusion of gauze clouds and airy spirits floating on them ' ' Alas! the experiment has been tried and has failed, not through the fault of Mr. Kean, who did not play the part of Böttom, or of Mr. Liston, who did, and who played it well, but from the nature of things. The ‘Midsummer-Night's Dream, when acted, is converted from a delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was grand, but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled. Poetry and the stage do not agree well together. The attempt to reconcile them in this instance fails not only of effect but of decorum. The ideal can have no place upon the stage, which is a picture without perspective; every- thing there is in the foreground. That which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, becomes an unmanageable reality. Where all is left to the imagination, as is the case in reading, every circumstance, near or remote, has an equal chance of being kept in mind, and tells accordingly to the mixed 32 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. impression of all that has been suggested. But the imagination cannot sufficiently qualify the actual impressions of the senses. Any offence given to the eye is not to be got rid of by explanation. Thus Bottom’s head in the play is a fantastic illusion, produced by magic spells: on the stage it is an ass’s head, and nothing more ; certainly a very strange costume for a gentleman to appear in. Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted, and it is as idle to attempt it as to personate Wall or Moonshine. Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not shocking if they are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts appear at midnight, when apparitions stalk along Cheapside, then may the ‘Midsummer-Night's Dream be represented without injury at Drury Lane.” Mendelssohn’s famous overture was first published in 1826, the composer’s arrangement of the play, in accordance with the desire expressed by Tieck, was first performed on October 14th, 1843, at the New Palace, Potsdam, and repeated, a few days later, in Berlin. Shakespeare's text was first restored to the English stage at Covent Garden, on November 16th, 1840, when the comedy was acted with a fine cast and splendid scenic accessories. Mendelssohn’s overture was also performed then. Harley was Bottom, Bartley was Quince, Robert Keeley appeared as Flute, Mrs. Nesbitt was Hermia, Mrs. Walter Lacy appeared as Titania, and Madame Westris was the sprightly Puck. The mantle of Harley fell upon Samuel Phelps, who appeared as Bottom at Sadler's Wells in 1853, and remained in un- disturbed possession of the part until his death in 1878. The late Dutton Cook described this impersonation as “over-elaborate and over-deliberate, grotesque rather than humorous, needlessly repulsive, yet abounding in force, and well entitled to the distinction of originality and novelty of conception.” Edward Saker, who gave a quaint rendering of Bottom, produced a thoughtful revival of the comedy at the Alexandra. Theatre, Liverpool, on March 29th, 1880. The same production was presented at Sadler's Wells in the June following. A notable feature of this revival was the appearance of a number of intelligent and admirably trained children in the fairy parts, much of the poetry of the original being thus retained. Had Hazlitt seen this revival he might not have been so severe in his strictures upon it as he was on the Covent Garden production of 1816. “A Midsummer-Night's Dream ” was given at the Park Theatre, New York, for the first time in that city during fifteen years, on August 30th, 1841. The Oberon was Charlotte Cushman, her sister, Susan, playing Helena. It was at the Olympic Theatre (formerly known as Laura Keene's Theatre, where, on May 12th, 1858, the inimitable comedian, Edward Askew Sothern, first acted Lord Dundreary), in the same city, that the present Mr. Jefferson’s daughter, Cornelia—now the widow of a Mr. Jackson—bade farewell to the stage in the character of Titania. At the Olympic Theatre, also, in the winter of 1867, Joseph Jefferson prepared “A Midsummer- Night's Dream ” for the stage, and gave to it a panorama, painted by William Telbin, which he had brought from England. The late George L. Fox impersonated Bottom. The play then enjoyed a run of one hundred consecutive performances. - --~~ º º º º º tº- - - - - - -- - - * - - - -- - - - - - - - º º - º D GQ) ºr (0) \, US - ºf ºº º ºu * * *º º cº-ſº º º Cassell & Company limited - - *Ic ºy H. LaRNA-1). Enºrated by J. Swain. BOTTOM, AS PYRAMU.S. Pyramus. Come tears, confound ; Out sword, and wound The pap of Pyramus. “Midsummer Night's DREAM," Act 17, Scene I. 33 CORIOLANU.S. SHAKESPEARE took the plot of this play from North’s translation of Plutarch. Other plays on the same subject have been made by various writers, but with no permanent success. Three of these productions were brought out at Covent Garden. The first of these, by the author of “The Seasons,” was acted in 1748, but James Thomson was not a great dramatic writer, and his tragedy was a dismal failure. This failure, however, did not deter John Philip Kemble from adapting and adding to the piece, when he produced it, in 1806, at Covent Garden. At this house, also, a combination of Shakespeare and Thomson, made by Thomas Sheridan, the father of Richard Brinsley, was played with some success in 1755. Another alteration of Shakespeare and Thomson, made by Wrighten, the prompter, was performed by Kemble at Drury Lane in 1789. To think of this play is to call to mind the performances of a trio of remarkable actors—John Philip Kemble and Edmund Kean as Coriolanus, and Mrs. Siddons as Volumnia. The latter was one of the actress’s greatest achievements. When she was the Volumnia, Kemble equalled the highest hopes of acting. She had all the dignity of the Roman matron, but it was not the unbending pomp which an inferior actress would have affected. She knew when to lift her countenance into command- ing majesty, and when to fall into the familiarity of domestic ease. Her dumb- show, on coming down the stage in the triumphal entrance of Coriolanus in the second act, drew plaudits which shook the house. She came alone, marching and beating time to the music ; rolling, as it were, from side to side, swelling with the pride of her son’s triumph. The intoxication of joy which flashed from her eye, and lit up her whole face, was quite irresistible. She seemed to reap all the glory of that procession to herself. The spectator could not take his gaze from her. Coriolanus, banner, pageant, and all, went for nothing beside that splendid figure. Yet the Siddons could descend from her pedestal and assume the more familiar manner of ordinary life with surprising ease. In the scene where Volumnia sits sewing with Virgilia, and in the subsequent scene with Valeria, she was perfectly natural. Remble’s Coriolanus was a magnificent work of art, notable for taste and an imposing bearing, but lacking all fire. In this character he prevoked some severe strictures from Leigh Hunt for his eccentric pronunciation. In the lines “I will go wash : And when my face is fair, you shall perceive Whether I blush or no.” “The word ‘fair” might positively have been measured by a stopwatch; instead of being a short monosyllable, it became a word of tremendous elongation. We can E 34 SHAKE SPEAREAN SCIENIES AND CHARACTERS. describe the pronunciation by nothing less than such a sound as ‘fay-er-r-r,’ unluckily for our fastidious, or, as Mr. Kemble would say, our ‘fastijous’ ears; but it was in vain to expect any repose in Orthoëpy, when Mr. Kemble had gotten such a word as Aufidius to transmogrify. This he universally called ‘Aufijjus,” like a young lady who invariably talks of her ‘ojus lover, or the ‘ojus month of November.” Joseph Shepherd Munden, who played Menenius to the Coriolanus of Remble and the Volumnia of Mrs. Siddons, had a great deal of the humorous buffoon about him, but nothing of the patrician friend of Coriolanus. Kean was not seen to advantage as Coriolanus. The characteristics of the part were entirely opposed to his style. Wherever there was a struggle of feelings, a momentary ebullition of pity, or remorse, or anguish—wherever nature resumed her wonted rights—he was equal to himself and superior to every one else; “but,” wrote Hazlitt, “the prevailing characteristics of the part are inordinate self-opinion and haughty elevation of soul, that aspire above competition or control. Mr. Kean, instead of ‘keeping his state,’ instead of remaining fixed and immovable (for the most part) on his pedestal of pride, seemed impatient of this mock dignity, this still-life assumption of superiority. . . . The intolerable airs and aristócratic pretensions of which he is the slave, and to which he falls a victim, did not seem legitimate in him, but upstart, turbulent, and vulgar. Thus his haughty answer to the mob who banish him—‘I BANISH You’—was given with all the virulence of execration, and rage of impotent despair, as if he had to strain every nerve and faculty of soul to shake off their hated power over him, instead of being delivered with calm, majestic self-possession, as if he remained rooted to the spot, and his least motion, word, or look, must scatter them like chaff or scum from his presence. The most effective scene was that in which he stands for the Consulship, and begs for ‘the most sweet voices’ of the people whom he loathes; and the most ineffective was that in which he is reluctantly reconciled to, and overcome by the entreaties of his mother. This decisive and affecting interview passed off as if nothing had happened, and was conducted with diplomatic gravity and skill.” One would have thought that there was enough of procession and ovation in the play in Remble’s time, but other features of a similar description were introduced in Kean's day. . The American stage has seen two remarkable representatives of Coriolanus. The first of these was Thomas Sowerby Hamblin (1800–53). His Othello and Macbeth were bold, striking performances, but his Coriolanus was, perhaps, his best-remembered part. He was sometime manager of the Bowery Theatre, New York, and the idol of its not very cultivated audience. Edwin Forrest (1806–72) was great in King Lear, Othello, and Coriolanus. When he died, the Roman, so far as America is concerned, died with him, although the late John McCullough was no mean successor to him in the part. A statue of him, in this character, by Thounas Ball, is one of the chief points of interest in the Actors’ Home at Spring- brook, U. S. A. | .…………… |：|||：|| №. §. |× №.|× |× |× - - ） §.|- №.ſae |- |× .|- |- №. |- N // |- |- ſae N % // %ſ. % ſ'， º ---- ſae % · - ſ. | | |- ſae Q · ， %%%%%%% % |× --~~ º | ------ - -- --- -as-ELL - Cowpany, Lºren MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. “‘MUCH ADOE ABOUT NOTHING,’ as it hath been sundrie times publickely acted by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his servants—Written by William Shakespeare—London, printed by W. S. for Andrew Wise and William Apsley, 1600.” So reads the title page of the only quarto edition of this play known. It was entered at Stationers' Hall on August 23rd, 1600, and was not reprinted until it appeared in the folio of 1623. Its text is generally accepted as the standard authority. A novel by Belleforest, copied from another by Bandello, obviously furnished Shakespeare with the story. A play called “Ariodante and Geneura,” partially treating of the same subject as “Much Ado,” and taken from the fifth book of Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso,” was acted before Queen Elizabeth, by Mulcaster’s “Children of St. Paul’s,” in 1582–3. This comedy belongs to the author’s brightest and sunniest time, and is written in his happiest vein of humour. It is a striking example of Shakespeare’s wonderful art in interesting the spectator in the doings of his characters. The real story is the dastardly trick played by Don John, who makes the credulous Claudio believe Hero to be unfaithful. Yet Don John, the prime mover of the action of the play, appears very little in it, while the general observer has far more of delight in the bold, matchless wit of that brilliant couple, Benedick and Beatrice, than of sympathy for the sufferings of Hero. And the quaint conceits and extraordinary eccentricities of speech and manner of Dogberry, Verges, and the rest of the watch, attract far more attention than the career of the misled Claudio, his mistake, his subsequent sorrow, his doing penance at Leonato's monument, and his final reunion with the girl he had mistrusted and whom he believed to be dead. The story of the play proper is of far less importance to the spectator than the wit-fencing and banter of Benedick and Beatrice, who rail at and ridicule matrimony, only to be finally caught in its bonds by a simple and playful device practised upon both. The mode in which the innocent Hero, in the presence of her family and friends, and before the altar at the moment of her marriage, is put to shame by an apparently true and degrading charge, is, as Schlegel has already pointed out, a fine piece of theatrical effect in the true and justifiable sense. There are few more dramatic passages in the whole range of the Shakespearean drama than that where Hero, conscious of her own innocence, is accused of incontinence, and borne down with the weight of evidence against her:- “Claudio. No, Leonato, I never tempted her with word too large, But, as a brother to his sister, showed Bashful sincerity and comely love. Hero. And seem’d I ever otherwise to you? 3 6 SHAKESPEAREAN SOENES AND CHARACTERS. Claudio. Out on thy seeming ! I will write against it: You seem to me as Dian in her orb, As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown; But you are more intemperate in your blood Than Venus, or those pamper'd animals That rage in Savage sensuality. Hero. Is my lord well that he doth speak so wide P :*: :: $$ #: X; # Leonato. Are these things spoken, or do I but dream P John. Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true. FIero. - True ! O God | * After this dramatic scene—the accusation of Hero—an ordinary dramatist would have concluded his act, but sorrow is chased away by Shakespeare in the well-known love scene between Benedick and Beatrice, with Benedick's promise to challenge Claudio. Benedick and Beatrice are, in short, the principal personages in this play. And they are, moreover, Shakespeare’s own characters in every respect, no original for either of them having yet been discovered. These characters have been accu- rately sketched by Mr. William Winter, who says:– - “The manner characteristic of Benedick, as Shakespeare has drawn him, is a buoyant, brilliant, dashing, aggressive manner, largely based on well-nurtured animalism. He is not a man of sentiment, and there is no romance in his nature. Of his satirical perception and amused contempt of the romantic, lovelorn swain, his “Poor, hurt fowlſ now will he creep into sedges' is exceedingly significant. Before he loves Beatrice he has avowed the ideas and feelings and he has implied the customs of a sensual rover; and when at last he does come really to love her— being tantalised, nettled, and stung into the passion by her taunting indifference, her indomitable mirth, her bold, brilliant, physical beauty, and her almost insolent wit—his love stands at the farthest possible remove from anything like spiritual rapture or any sweet tumult whatsoever. It is a jubilant, militant, self-confident love, and, were it scorned and repulsed, the lover would still remain unhurt. Henry W., in his wooing of his French Kate, is not farther away from the mood of Romeo than Benedick is, in his wooing of Beatrice. “From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot,” says Don Pedro, “he is all mirth: what his heart thinks his tongue speaks.” The thought which should prompt caution as to positive de- finition of Benedick, however—or as to positive definition of Beatrice, either—is the thought that they may, perhaps, have been designed as pretenders to heartlessness, each intuitively suspecting the other, in this particular. They are very similar. “There are certain lines of the play which spring into the memory of every reader of ‘Much Ado,” the moment Beatrice is mentioned; and they help to elucidate her character. “A star danced,” she says, “and under that was I born.” ‘I thank my heart, poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care.” . . . ‘I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.” . . . “I have a good eye, uncle, I can |× ---- |- - \！ Drawn by F. Bakrward.Eaeraved by J. Swaelº. DOG BERRY AND THE WATCH. Dog’erry. Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years? “ Much Ado about Nothing," Acı / V., Scene II. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. - 37 See a church by daylight.” . . . “I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.’ And Hero, who knows her best snd loves her most, declares that ‘ her spirits are as coy and wild as haggards of the rock. Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, misprizing what they look on.’ “So far as a woman can be understood at all, Beatrice has commonly been understood as the image and essence of flippant vivacity, strong, bold, brilliant, exultant, but untender and devoid of woman-like gentleness. She is a female Benedick, but, like Benedick, she is sound and wholesome at heart. If she has not the softness of her sex, neither has she its weakness, its conventionality, its fickleness, nor is there any romantic element in her nature. When once it is touched her heart will glow with generous warmth, but her sense is paramount to her sentiment, and a passionate resentment of injustice, where her family affections are concerned, is the deepest feeling that she displays; for at the very moment when she owns her love for Benedick she pledges him to risk his life in a duel in behalf of another woman.” - In a note by Steevens on “Much Ado about Nothing,” it is said that on May 20th, 1613, John Heminge, then the chief actor in the King’s company of comedians, received the sum of £40, together with £20 more as the king’s gratuity, for performing this play and five others before King James the First at Hampton Court. This is the earliest mention known of the acting of the comedy. Both J. P. Kemble, and his brother, Charles, excelled in Benedick, and Garrick, in 1748, delighted the town by playing Benedick to the Beatrice of Mrs. Pritchard. It is somewhat strange that, frequently as “Much Ado’’ has been acted, its stage history has been greatly neglected. No authentic record has been left of the manner in which the older players acted the principal parts. In connection with this comedy, however, three revivals of it have been presented on the London stage within the last fifty years, and they deserve passing mention here. Macready revived the comedy, for his benefit, on February 24th, 1843, at Drury Lane. Besides Macready as Benedick, the cast included James Anderson as Claudio, Samuel Phelps as Leonato, John Ryder as the Friar, Miss Fairbrother as Margaret, and Mrs. Nesbitt as Beatrice. In the masque of “Comus,” which was played after the comedy, Miss P. Horton and Miss Helen Faucit (now Lady Martin) appeared as the Attendant Spirit and the Lady respectively. The last war in which the Italians were involved, while they were under the dominion of Spain, occurred in 1529, and Charles W. of Spain made a triumphal entry into Messina in 1535, to which time and circumstances the comedy relates. Dress shapes of the period of Henry VIII. of England, and Francis I. of France, and parti-coloured shapes such as were then worn in Europe, which were both rich and graceful, are, therefore, its suitable investiture. On the occasion of Macready’s revival the male characters were thus, for the first time, appropriately attired in close-fitting, parti-coloured suits, with short tunics. 38 SHARESPEAREAN SCIENIES AND CHARACTERS. | Charles Kean's revival took place at the Princess's Theatre on November 20th, 1858, and secured a success. Charles Kean was the Benedick, Mrs. Charles Rean the Beatrice, and John Ryder—the Friar of Macready’s revival—acted Leonato. Miss Heath (now Mrs. Wilson Barrett) was the representative of Hero in the comedy, which, by the way, is called by Mr. Cole, Charles Kean's biographer, “a coruscation of brilliancy.” Undoubtedly the most remarkable production of “Much Ado about Nothing” was that presented by Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre, on October 11th, 1882. Mr. Irving presented Benedick in the light of an odd, quaint, eccentric fellow, slightly saturnine, but invariably polished and courteous, an impersonation in which, as an acute critic has pointed out, he “substituted a complex nature, based on goodness, merrily pretending to cynicism, and having rich resources for the dashing, predominant, sonorous gallant ’’ hitherto known as the Benedick of the stage. And of Miss Terry’s Beatrice it was written that she “permeates the raillery of Beatrice with an indescribable charm of mischievous sweetness. The silver arrows of her pungent wit have no barb—for evidently she does not mean that they shall really wound. Her appearance and carriage are beautiful, and her tones melt into music. There is no hint of the virago here, and even the tone of sarcasm is superficial. Archness playing over kindness is the leading characteristic of Miss Terry's ideal of Beatrice. She is nothing harsher than a merry tease, and in the soliloquy after the arbour scene she drops all flippancy and glows into tender and loving womanhood. A more fascinating personality than this Beatrice could not be wished; and Miss Terry’s method of expressing it is marked with pliant, effortless power and absolute simplicity.” In these impersonations, Mr. Irving and Miss Terry apparently have chosen—partly with anxious design, and partly under the stress of inexorable temperamental conditions—to transfigure rather than to literally interpret the conception of Shakespeare as to Benedick and Beatrice. Mr. Irving presents a higher and finer character than Benedick is in | Shakespeare’s page, and Miss Terry presents a more tender and lovely woman than the Beatrice of the comedy. The play had a run of two hundred and twelve consecutive nights at the Lyceum. Mr. Irving and Miss Terry appeared as Benedick and Beatrice, for the first time in America, at Haverley's Theatre (now the Columbia), Chicago, on February 15th, 1884. They acted these parts, in New York, at the Star Theatre, during the following month. - The late Edward Saker's revival of the play at the Alexandra. Theatre, Liverpool, on April 22nd, 1878, should not go unrecorded in these pages. It was evidently the outcome of bright intelligence, and it was invested with excellent scenery and costumes. The Benedick was a young actor destined to afterwards make a name in London—Mr. E. S. Willard, now famous for his performance of Captain Skinner in “The Silver King,” Claudius in “Hamlet,” and other parts, at the Princess's Theatre. It should also be added that “ Much Ado ’’ was sumptuously staged by Edwin Booth, in New York, in 1873. OTHELLO. SHAKESPEARE first became acquainted with the story of “Othello” in an Italian novel by Giraldi Cinthio. There was formerly in Venice a valiant Moor, says the story. It came to pass that a virtuous lady, of wonderful beauty, named Desdemona, became enamoured of his great qualities and noble virtues. The Moor loved her in return, and they were married—despite the opposition of Desdemona’s friends. It happened, too, continues the story, that the Senate of Venice appointed the Moor to the command of Cyprus, and that his wife determined to accompany him thither. Amongst the officers in attendance on the general, was an ensign of agreeable person, but of the most depraved nature. The wife of this man was the friend of Desdemona, and the two women spent much time together. The wicked ensign became violently enamoured of Desdemona, but she, whose thoughts were wholly engrossed by the Moor, was utterly regardless of the ensign’s attentions. His love then turned to terrible hate, and he resolved to accuse Desdemona, to her husband, of infidelity, and to connect with the charge a certain captain of Cyprus. That officer was discharged from command, by the Moor, for having struck a sentinel ; and Desdemona, interested in his favour, endeavoured to re-instate him in her husband’s good opinion. The Moor said one day to the ensign that his wife was so importunate for the restoration of the officer that he must take him back. “If you would open your eyes you would see plainer,” replied the ensign. The Italian writer continues to display the perfidious designs of the ensign against Desdemona. He steals a handkerchief which the Moor had given her—employing his own child for the theft. He contrives, with the Moor, the murder of the captain, after he has made the credulous husband listen to a conversation to which he gives a false colour and direction; and, finally, the Moor and his guilty officer destroy Desdemona together in a most brutal manner. The crime is, however, concealed, until the Moor, betrayed by his accomplice, is put to the torture, exiled, and, at last, killed by his wife's relations. In most respects Shakespeare adhered strictly to the incidents related in the novel. The conclusion of the tragedy is his own. The characters of Iago, Desdemona, and Cassio, are almost identical with those of Cinthio’s story. The obscure hints and artifices of the villain are the same in the novel and the drama. In contrasting the character of Othello with that of Leontes in the “Winter's Tale,” Coleridge justly pointed out that in the Moor Shakespeare had portrayed the very opposite of a jealous man : he was noble, generous, open-hearted, unsuspicious, and unsuspecting, who, even after the exhibition of his wife's handkerchief as evidence of her guilt, bursts out in her praise. As for T)esdemona, “Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, In every gesture, dignity and love.” i. 40 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. Othello had no life but in her. “The belief that she, his angel, had fallen from her native innocence, wrought a civil war in his heart. She is his counterpart, and like him, is almost sanctified in our eyes by her absolute unsuspiciousness and holy entireness of love.” It is this innocence, this “unsuspiciousness” in Desdemona which has resulted in our artist’s illustration. | Desdemona understands a fury in Othello’s words, but not the meaning of the words themselves. \\ “Othello” was first acted in 1602 by the dramatic company from the Black- friars and Globe theatres, before Queen Elizabeth, at Harefield. Burbage was the first representative of the Moor. Betterton, famous for his Hamlet, excelled also as Othello. “Such an actor as Mr. Betterton,” wrote Addison, “ought to be recorded with the same respect as Roscius among the Romans. I have hardly a notion that any performer of antiquity could surpass the action of Mr. Betterton in any of the occasions in which he has appeared on our stage. The wonderful agony in which he appeared when he examined the circumstance of the handkerchief in the part of Othello, the mixture of love that intruded upon his mind on the innocent answers Desdemona makes, betrayed in his gesture such a variety and vicissitude of passions as would admonish a man to be afraid of his own heart, and perfectly convince him that it is to stab it to admit that worst of daggers—jealousy. Whoever reads in his closet this admirable scene will find that he cannot (except he has as warm an imagination as Shakespeare himself) find any but dry, incoherent, broken sentences. But a reader that has seen Betterton act it observes there could not be a word added, that longer speeches had been unnatural, nay, impossible, in Othello's circumstances. This is such a triumph over difficulties that we feel almost persuaded that the deficiencies themselves contributed to the success.” High praise, indeed but Betterton had a rival in this part in Charles Hart, who played at Drury Lane, under Killigrew’s patent, on the opening of that theatre in 1663. Othello was then in the hands of an actor named Burt to whom Hart played Cassio. But the superiority of the younger actor speedily asserted itself, and Othello was left to Hart. Pepys (who considered “Othello” a “mighty good play,” but thought it eclipsed by “The Adventures of Five Hours,” a translation from the Spanish of Calderon) once saw Burt act the Moor at the Cock-pit, in Drury Lane, when, he quaintly records, a very pretty lady that sat by him called out at seeing Desdemona smothered. Hart enjoyed the reputation of being the first lover of Nell Gwynn, and of having introduced her to the stage; certainly, he was favoured by my Lady Castlemaine. The next famous representative of Othello was Betterton’s successor, Barton Booth, the original of Addison’s Cato. Garrick, with all the resources of his genius and art, was unable to retain possession of this character in which he was excelled by Spranger Barry. But Booth, by the fervour of his love, the anguish of his jealousy, and the vehemence of his despair, eclipsed them both. In the fifth act of the tragedy, while Othello is listening to Emilia speaking to Desdemona, after she is strangled, so vivid was the expression on his face, with such art did he - ºn cº- ---- |E … |---- £ |- m. ！ |3 tö Mſ (0) \, . tº save ecº ºr " tº yozº worºs Jº Jº D) lº & D) N Q) ſºlºſ Jº Lºº (0) \, --- - - ITTF sº O *rcº wººd ºozºº wo º ºzees ſºon º'-º'- - ... ºenºzzº & ºv -2'- ºz º.o.º. tº wo - --- -- - - -- ------------- - --- - - OTHELLO. 41 listen, that he was invariably rewarded with a treble round of applause for the scene; and Hester Santlow, afterwards his wife, used to say that she “thought the audience were pleased that poor Desdemona was strangled out of the way.” Other Othellos of the Eighteenth Century were James Quin and Henry Mossop, who, like Betterton, Hart, Booth, Garrick, and Barry, acted the Moor with blackened faces. Even John Philip Kemble, when he played Othello at Drury Lane just a century ago, made up like a veritable negro. Boaden’s description of Kemble's performance in this character is somewhat ambiguous. He says that his “Othello was a high poetical impersonation, and from his first entrance to his last, he wrapped that great and ardent being in a mantle of mysterious solemnity, awfully predictive of his fate.” - - Mrs. Siddons, despite her solemn manner and imperious stature, excelled in the character of Desdemona. What most struck the spectator of this performance, was the familiar, almost playful persuasiveness with which she won over the Moor to Cassio’s favour. Few actresses have ever softened and sweetened tragedy as she did in this scene. It is said that on her first representation of this part she was allowed to lie upon a damp bed in the death-scene, and so contracted an attack of rheumatic fever. Miss O'Neill, another Desdemona of good repute and a noted Volumnia, Constance, Lady Teazle, and Juliet, followed Mrs. Siddons, but to compare her to the elder actress is like attempting to class a pearl of great purity. with a brilliant of the first weight and water. It was reserved for Edmund Kean, who appeared as Othello at Drury Lane on May 5th, 1814, to substitute a light brown for the traditional black in the make-up of the Moor. His representation has been described as a masterpiece of genius, definite and brilliant in conception, vigorous and impressive in execution, and abounding with an overpowering energy and pathos which swept the audience along in a stream of sincere sympathy. “Kean's delineation of Othello,” says Mr. Hawkins, “emanated from a mind whose native resources had been nourished to an extraordinary vigour by profound observation and study—from a skill that had a corresponding power of execution with the mind that applied it ; and his extensive physiological acquirement assisted in invigorating an expression of intellect still further empowered by a complete and undivided sway over the world ſ \ i of passion.” His Othello was, indeed, according to Hazlitt, his best character, and | the highest effort of that time of genius on the stage. The tone of voice in which he delivered the beautiful apostrophe, “Then, oh, farewell!” struck on the heart like the swelling notes of some divine music, like the sound of years of departed happiness. Again, the look, the action, the expression of voice with which he accompanied the exclamation, “Not a jot, not a jot,” were perfectly heart- rending. His vow of revenge against Cassio, and his abandonment of his love for Desdemona, were perfect expressions of the actor's art. His manner of saying to Cassio, “But never more be officer of mine,” was truly terrific, magnificent, and prophetic. F 42 SHAKESPEAREAN SOENES AND CHARACTERS. / Macready looked grand and tall enough for the part, but there were no sweeping outlines, no massy movements in his action. He startled the spectator | with sudden explosions of passion that were unnecessary. One of these sudden | outbursts was the haste with which he answered the demands of the senate for his services. The speech, “I do agnise a natural and prompt alacrity I find in hardness,” &c., was delivered by him as if he was impatient to exculpate himself from some charge, or wanted to take them at their word, lest they should retract. There is nothing of this in Othello. Moreover, he whimpered and whined once or twice and tried to affect his audience by assuming a pitiful sensibility incon- sistent with the dignity and masculine imagination of the character, as where, for instance, he repeated, “No, not much moved,” and, again, “Othello’s occupa- tion’s gone,” in a childish treble. He obtained most applause in such speeches as that addressed to Iago, “On horror's head horrors accumulate l’” His best ejaculation was, “Swell, bosom, with thy fraught, for ’tis of aspics’ tongues,” which was forcibly given, and as if his expression were choked with the bitter- ness of passion. There was also something fine in his uneasiness and inward starting at the name of Cassio, but the motion was too often repeated with a view to effect. He very injudiciously threw himself on a chair, at the back of the stage, to deliver the farewell apostrophe to Content, and to the “pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.” - - The great Italian actor, Tommaso Salvini, is inseparably connected with the rendering of Shakespeare’s Othello. Whatever exception may be taken to his conception of the character, there is only one opinion as to his execution of it— grand, magnificent, and eminently heart-rending. George Henry Lewes, who saw both Kean and Salvini as Othello, considered that, although in certain passages the Italian actor was manifestly inferior to Kean, yet his impersonation, as a whole, was of more sustained excellence. In this notice of living Othellos, it should be recorded here that on February 14th, 1876, at the Lyceum Theatre, Henry Irving appeared for the first time as the Moor, and in May, 1881, Irving and Edwin Booth | alternated the characters of Othello and Iago at the Lyceum, Miss Ellen Terry appearing as Desdemona. * | It was as Othello that Edwin Forrest made his first decided success. In 1826, he was engaged to act at the Bowery Theatre, New York, for one year, at a salary of twenty-eight dollars per week. In the interval which preceded the opening of the theatre, he appeared at another house, the Park, for the benefit of a fellow-actor, in the character of Othello. He made a pronounced success, his old manager who sat in front profanely but emphatically exclaiming, “By God, the boy has made a hit !” This was a great event, as the Park was at that time the leading theatre of America, and its actors the most exclusive and estimable. He opened at the Bowery Theatre, in the same character, in November, 1826, and made such a brilliant impression that his salary was promptly raised from twenty-eight to forty dollars a week. | | | | | " | | | --- - - | = | | | of . F. Dicksee, A.R.A., pet. QUESNEL, Scºtle. ROMEO AND THE APOTHECARY. Ap. My poverty, but not my will, consents. Atom. I pay thy poverty, and not thy will. * Romeo and Juliet," Act P., Scene /. 43 ROM E O AND JULIET. WITH the single exception of “Hamlet,” no play is more intimately associated with . the stage in England and America than “Romeo and Juliet,” the only tragedy written by Shakespeare on a love story. As the first-named piece will always attract when it is respectably acted, so the earlier-written play is sure to bring a good house when an actress capable of portraying the beauteous passion of Juliet is in the cast. So far back as the spring of 1662, when Sir William Davenant opened the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, we find “Romeo and Juliet ’’ a special feature of the season. The Romeo was Joseph Harris, a versatile actor who played this part, Sir Andrew Aguedheek, Cardinal Wolsey, and Henry W. equally well. Betterton was the Mercutio, and pretty Mistress Saunderson, afterwards Mrs. Betterton, the Juliet. Most memorable in the annals of the stage is the famous “Romeo and Juliet.” season of 1750–51, when David Garrick and silver-tongued Spranger Barry were the rival Romeos, Mrs. Bellamy and Mrs. Cibber the opposing Juliets. Barry, deserting Drury Lane, had gone over to Covent Garden. “Romeo and Juliet ’’ was produced at both houses on September 28th, 1750. At Drury Lane, Garrick was Romeo, Woodward, Mercutio, and Mrs. Bellamy, Juliet. At the other house, Barry was the Romeo, Macklin the Mercutio, and Mrs. Cibber the Juliet. On the first Inight, Barry spoke a prologue in which it was insinuated that the arrogance and selfishness of Garrick had driven him and Mrs. Cibber from Covent Garden. To this Garrick replied in a lively epilogue saucily delivered by Kitty Clive. The play ran for twelve successive nights at Covent Garden, Garrick, out of bravado, playing it thirteen. These, be it remembered, were long runs for those days. Barry was the handsomer, silver-voiced, tender lover, the critics lauding him for his harmony of feature, his melting eyes, and his unequalled plaintiveness of voice. The balcony scene, the garden scene in the fourth act, and the first part of the tomb scene were his most effective parts. Naturally enough, Garrick's great hits were with the friar and the apothecary. A good idea of the two Romeos may be gathered from the remark of a female critic who said: “Had I been Juliet to Garrick’s Romeo—so impassioned was he, I should have expected that he would have come up to me in the balcony; but had I been Juliet to Barry’s Romeo— so tender and seductive was he, I should certainly have jumped down to him.” During this season Barry acted Romeo twenty-three times, Garrick but nineteen. Garrick afterwards withdrew from the character, leaving the field to his younger rival. Garrick, it should be stated, altered the tragedy by making Juliet awaken before Romeo's death, and also by making Romeo in love with Juliet from the beginning. The latter innovation held the stage until Henry Irving's revival of the tragedy in 1882. r | 44 SHARESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. Charles Kemble was the ideal Romeo, passionate and graceful in the love ! passages, and dignified and pathetic in the tragic ones. Miss Murray, who | } | married Henry Siddons, son of the Siddons, was an excellent Juliet. Kean, | like the majority of tragedians, was not seen at his best as Romeo. The character, in his hands, had nothing of the lover about it. He was neither ardent nor voluptuous. In the balcony scene in particular, he was cold, tame, and unimpressive. Yet the splendid pathos of his scene with Friar Lawrence, and the truly tragic significance of his death-scene, fully made up for his lack of warmth. A notable representative of Juliet was Miss O'Neill, afterwards Lady Becher. In the silent expression of feeling, there have been few finer examples on the stage than her acting, where Juliet is told of Romeo's death, her listening to the friar's story of the poison, and her change of manner towards her nurse when she advises her to marry Paris. Her delivery of the speeches in the scenes where she laments Romeo's banishment, and anticipates her waking in the tomb, were marked by the fine play and undulation of natural sensibility, rising and falling in the gusts of passion, and at last worked up into an agony of despair, in which imagina- tion approaches the brink of frenzy. There is only space here to mention the names of Adelaide Neilson, the ideal Juliet of living memory; and of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, who appeared as Romeo and Juliet respectively at the Lyceum Theatre, on March 8th, 1882. The tragedy was then acted one hundred and sixty times under the management of Mr. Irving. On November 1st, 1884, the tragedy was again brought out at the Lyceum, with Miss Mary Anderson as Juliet and Mr. William Terriss as Romeo. Nor should notice be omitted of Charlotte Cushman, who will long be remembered as the only actress who has achieved celebrity in the character of Romeo. She played this part, for the first time in London, under the manage- ment of Benjamin Webster, at the Haymarket Theatre, on December, 30th, 1845, with her sister, Susan, as Juliet, and so great was her success that she continued acting the part for eighty consecutive nights. It was with “Romeo and Juliet.” that Booth’s Theatre, New York, was opened on February 3rd, 1869. Thanks to the intelligence and genius of Edwin Booth the play was then given in the original text of Shakespeare for the first time in America. The production was most elaborate, and it attracted immense audiences for sixty-eight nights, Booth and Miss M’Wicker—afterwards Mrs. Booth—appearing in the respective rôles of Romeo and Juliet. In the autumn of 1885, the tragedy was revived, with great scenic splendour, at the Union Square Theatre, New York, when Miss Margaret Mather made a success as Juliet. When Miss Anderson played this part at the Star Theatre, in the same city, in November, 1885, the occasion was made memorable, apart from the acting, by the artistic nature of the scenery. Who- ever looked upon the scenes here provided, “has listened,” it was said, “to the rustling of leaves in the scented air of the Southern night and heard the nightingale sing in the distant, dusky Italian woods.” - - - º | º - Cass--------------- 45 THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. TN this play, one of the earliest of Shakespeare's works in the domain of comedy, love, in its double relation of sexual love and of friendship, is the centre of the action. Love is here represented in its most diversified forms, but invariably as weak and frail, foolish and perverse. The groundwork is formed by the passion of Proteus for Julia, his double faithlessness to his mistress and to his friend, Walentine, and his sudden conversion. He is the embodiment of faithlessness in love. A mere look from Sylvia and he forgets the girl for whom he has just been sighing, and for whose absence tears are still lingering in his eyes; a glance from her makes him a traitor to his oldest friend, and also makes him deceive the Duke and the latter’s favourite, Thurio. In strong contrast to him we have Julia, exhibited at first in the capricious self-will of a girl in love, but coy, who will not accept her lover’s letter, and yet chides her maid because she has not forced her to read it, tears it to bits before she opens it, and then gathers up the pieces in order to try and spell out the contents of the missive. Suddenly, however, this coyness is quite forgotten, and casting aside all girlish shyness, she disguises herself in man’s attire and sets out after her faithless lover, carries his love letters to Sylvia, and after enduring all this mortification, throws herself into his arms. Launce is a purely Shakespearean creation; he is English, and, probably, of Stratford origin. And Speed’s manner of proving his master to be in love is a happy touch of the dramatist's pen — > * Valentime. Why, how know you that I am in love P . Speed. Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms like a malcontent; to relish a love song, like a robin-redbreast; to walk alone like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school boy that had lost his A. B. C.; to weep like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast like one that takes diet; to watch like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money; and now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, that, when I look on you, I can hardly think you my master. Of the serious passages in this play perhaps the best is Julia’s spirited answer to Lucetta, who advises her against following her lover in disguise— “The more thou damm'st it up, the more it burns. The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with the enamell’d stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge He overtaketh in his pilgrimage,” etc. 46 SHAKESPEAREAN SOENES AND CHARACTERS. This is a beautiful piece of poetry, and it is warmly praised by Hazlitt, who says if Shakespeare “had written only this and other passages in ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ he would almost have deserved Milton's praise of him :- - ‘Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warbles his native wood-notes wild.” But as it is,” he adds, “he deserves rather more praise than this.” The German critic, Ulrici, is of opinion that in this comedy Shakespeare wished to show that unbridled passion, weakly compliance with our own changeful feelings, inclinations, and desires, can occasion the fall of noble characters not only into unbecoming actions and dangerous complications, but into the deepest sloughs of immorality, into breach of faith and discipline, and into falsehood. “The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ is too incongruous and too indifferently constructed to be fitted for stage representation, so that it is not very surprising to find no trace of its production in the theatre until 1762. In September of that year a version of the play was made by Benjamin Victor, and produced, thanks to Garrick’s encouragement, at Drury Lane. Mr. Victor naïvely remarks in his “History of the London Theatres,” that he had the happiness to succeed in his “arduous undertaking so far as to obtain his [Garrick's] approbation, and the same favour from the public.” Mr. Victor, however, was sorry to find, after he had surmounted the difficulties of the scenery, and had successfully introduced Speed and Launce into the last act, that the story was “rather too weak to claim the due attention of an improved audience.” He modestly urges that this weakness was one that it was out of his power to amend. The version was performed for only five nights. It would have been represented six times, but its further performance was brought to a conclusion in a manner which, in view of the recent so-called “ organised oppositions” at London theatres, it may be interesting to relate. A company of young men, calling themselves “The Town,” banded together for the purpose of compelling the managers to admit them to the theatre, at the end of the third act, at half price to every performance, save in the case of a run of a pantomime. They commenced to put their resolution into practice on the sixth night of “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” although the performance on that might was announced for the benefit of “the author of the alterations.” Garrick, it was supposed, was the author, or some other night would have been chosen for the commencement of hostilities. The management, fearing the conse- quences of a riot, returned the money to those who had paid for admission, closed the house, and generously gave Mr. Victor a hundred pounds—a pretty good sum —for his alterations. - Remble altered “The Two Gentlemen of Verona, ’’ for Covent Garden in 1808. The play was last presented at the Vaudeville Theatre in the summer of 1885, by a company of young London actors and actresses known as the “Dramatic Students.” - | _ . ：. |------- ：： ： | | | №.|- （~~~~ |× R. R№. （№ ， -. |× § - Ź%% ！Źź. ? // º. ：% ：）|ſº，|（ Ź%%ZZZ %|№.|º.% %， ，ſºſ ， --~~~~ | ： |-№ ： -- ------------------ 47 KING RICHARD III. THIS play, first published in 1597, when Shakespeare was thirty-three years old, deals with the dominating love of ambition and the show and love of power as displayed in the character of Richard III. The drama accordingly opens with Richard announcing his intention of acquiring Supreme power, and with the account of the means he employs, and the paths he pursues, in order to attain this object. This endeavour proceeds not only from Richard’s ambition and his love of dominion, but also from his almost demoniacal desire to give forcible evidence of his dominion, his power over mankind and circumstances. The courtship scene with Lady Anne, shown in our picture, is one of the most dramatically effective passages in the Shakespearean drama. - : No play has suffered so much mutilation as this. Burbage was a famous representative of King Richard, and he must have represented the part as it was written by Shakespeare. Betterton also sustained the rôle, but it was in a poor production, called “The English Princess,” which owed nothing to Shakespeare. Colley Cibber's version of the drama, originally. brought out in 1700, held the stage until quite recently, and is, indeed, occasionally presented even now. Cibber's curious concoction professed to contain “the distresses and death of King Henry the Sixth ; the artful acquisition of the crown by King Richard; the cruel murder of King Edward the Fifth and his brother in the Tower; the landing of the Earl of Richmond; and the death of King Richard in the memorable battle of Bosworth Field, being the last that was fought between the houses of York and Lancaster; with many other historical passages.” Cibber, always a bad actor in tragedy, with his thin and piping voice, appeared as Richard in his garbled version of Shakespeare, and other actors who have followed in his wake are James Quin, Lacy Ryan, David Garrick, John Henderson, J. P. Kemble, Edmund and Charles Rean, and George Frederick Cooke. - - Garrick selected the character for his appearance on the metropolitan stage, The audience at Goodman’s Fields Theatre on October 19th, 1741, was neither great nor excited. The bill promised a concert, to begin at six o'clock, admission by tickets “at three shillings, 2s. and 1s.” Between the two parts of the concert, the bill further announced that the historical life and death of “King Richard the Third,” with the ballad-opera of “The Virgin Unmasked,” would be “performed gratis by persons for their diversion,” the part of King Richard “by a gentleman who never appeared on any stage.” The latter announcement was not strictly true, but the audience did not concern themselves about its veracity. “From the moment the new actor appeared,” says Dr. Doran, “they saw a Richard and not an actor of that personage. Of the audience he seemed unconscious, so | 48 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHAIRACTERS. thoroughly did he identify himself with the character. He surrendered himself to all its requirements, was ready for every phase of passion, every change of humour, and was as wonderful in quiet sarcasm as he was terrific in the hurricane of the battle scenes. Above all, his audience were delighted with his “nature.” Since Betterton’s day, actors had fallen into a rhythmical, mechanical, sing-song cadence. Garrick spoke not as an orator, but as King Richard himself might have spoken. His chuckling exultation of “So much for Buckingham l’ was long a tradition on the stage.” Garrick's success in Richard was, in short, complete. He made his way slowly at first, but having once aroused the attention of the town, he kept it securely during his long and brilliant career. “Hark ye, Black Jack, hang me if I don’t make you tremble in your pumps one day yet,” said George Frederick Cooke on Kemble’s complaining to him of his tipsily defective memory. And he kept his word. On October 31st, 1801, he acted Richard at Covent Garden. His Duke of Gloucester was a bold, malignant, fierce impersonation, and, as such, it won high favour. Cooke did not long enjoy his triumph, for he died in New York in 1812, and, two years later, Kean made a iſ startling and lasting impression as Richard, winning, in this character, the highest eulogium of Hazlitt. He was more refined than Cooke, and more bold, varied, and Original than Kemble in the same character. There was, at times, in this per- formance, an aspiring elevation, an enthusiastic rapture in his expectations of attaining the crown; and, at others, a gloating expression of sullen delight, as if he already clenched the bauble and held it in his grasp. His courtship scene with Lady Anne was an admirable exhibition of smooth and smiling villainy. His attitude on leaning against the side of the stage, before Richard comes forward to address Lady Anne, was one of the most graceful and striking ever witnessed in the theatre. It would have done for Titian to paint. The best character portrait of Kean represents him in this scene, smiling, and saying, “Take up the sword again or take up me.” |J unius Brutus Booth was also great in this character. | It is generally supposed that Henry Irving, in England, and Edwin Booth, in America, were the first to restore Shakespeare's text of “ King Richard III.” to the stage. This is not strictly true, but these actors were the first who were successful in the attempt, and they are deserving of all praise from lovers of the | Shakespearean drama for their efforts in this direction. In 1821, when Macready played Richard at Covent Garden, the original text was resorted to, but the attempt was not successful and the tragedy was shelved after two performances. And at Sadler's Wells twenty years later, under the management of Samuel Phelps, Shakespeare was restored, and, this time, more successfully. But in 1854, Charles Kean used Colley Cibber's version in his revival at the Princess's Theatre. Cibber's travestie ended its reign in this country on January 29th, 1877, when Henry Irving acted Richard, according to Shakespeare's text, at the Lyceum Theatre. （№.§. |×`. - - - - -- - - - - - - A-SELL & Cº Lºn. 49 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. SHAKESPEARE took the principal incidents in this piece from a collection of tales called “Il Pecorone,” written by Ser Giovanni, a Florentine notary, in 1878, and first published, at Milan, in 1558. Here he found the Jew and the Lady of Belmont, and the ring incident, and the marriage of the lady’s maid to Ansaldo, the Antonio of Shakespeare’s play. The casket story is taken from the popular “Gesta Romanorum,” and “The Ballad of Gernutus,” which embodies the incident of the bond, was probably known to Shakespeare. It is also conjectured that an old play, mentioned by Stephen Gosson in his “School of Abuse ’’ in 1579, exhibited at the Bull Theatre, and “representing the greedinesse of worldly chusers, and bloody mindes of usurers,” may have furnished Shakespeare with the story of the bond. “The Merchant of Venice” was first published in quarto in 1600; the first folio—printed from the second quarto—was issued in 1623. The unrelenting Jew is one of the most ancient characters of fiction. There is no comparison between Marlowe's Jew, Barabas, as exhibited in “The Rich Jew of Malta,” and Shylock. Marlowe's play is so full of horrors, and the Hebrew is painted in-such diabolical colours, that the piece occasionally borders on the ludicrous. It of course preceded Shakespeare's play, as it was acted at the Rose Theatre as early as February 26th, 1591, and at the Newington Theatre on June 12th, 1594. Charles Lamb describes Barabas, in the three last acts, as “a mere monster, brought in with a large painted nose to please the rabble. He kills in sport, poisons whole nunneries, invents infernal machines. He is just such an exhibition as, a century or two earlier, might have been played before the Londoners, by Royal command, when a general pillage and massacre of the Hebrews had been previously resolved on in the Cabinet.” Marlowe's play was made popular by the acting of Alleyn, then the best of players, and the founder of Dulwich College. Until 1741, when Macklin appeared as Shylock, the part was not treated seriously. Burbage, who wore a red wig, made it eccentric, and Thomas Doggett, an excellent comedian, who died in 1721, and whose “Coat and Badge” are still rowed for by Thames watermen, went a step further and made Shylock an i outrageously comic character. The house shook with laughter at his irresistibly comic rendering of the scene with Tubal which later actors have made so pathetic. This was in 1701, when Lord Lansdowne's version of the comedy was produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. In this version a banquet was introduced, in which Shylock, seated at a separate table, was made to drink to Money as his only mistress. The play was introduced by a prologue in which the ghosts of Shakes- peare and Dryden, crowned with laurel, were made to rise, and the progress of the second act was stayed while a masque called Peleus and Thetis, written by Lord G. 50 SHIAIXESPEAREAN SCENIES AND CITARACTERS. Lansdowne, was performed. These “improvements * were abolished from the stage on February 15th, 1741, the night that Charles Macklin first played Shylock. The house was densely crowded, for whispers had got abroad concerning the novelty of the Jew as Macklin intended to portray him. The play progressed without much applause until Shylock's scene with Tubal. Here Macklin’s pathos won the sympathies of the audience. From that moment he was secure. His triumph culminated in the trial scene, where he was natural, calmly confident, and so terribly in earnest that when he whetted his knife, “to cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there,” a shudder went round the house, and the remainder of the scene was followed with profound silence. At its conclusion, the pent-up feelings of the spectators found vent, and Macklin was rewarded with a perfect tumult of applause which shook the walls of “Old Drury.” / Since Macklin’s day the stage has seen many fine Shylocks—John Henderson, George Frederick Cooke, Edmund Kean, Macready, G. W. Brooke, and Henry Irving \om the English stage; the elder Booth, the elder Wallack, J. W. Wallack, jumr., Edwin Booth, E. L. Davenport, and Lawrence Barrett on the American ; and Seydelmann and Bogumil Dawison, on the German stage. Most famous of all, and jinseparably connected with the character of Shylock, is Edmund Kean, who, after long years of privation in the country, acted this part at Drury Lane on January 26th, 1814. The streets were covered with snow and slush, the cold was piercing, and the audience, before the raising of the curtain in the first act, was noticeable for its scanty appearance. On this night “Mr. Kean, from Exeter,” made his bow to a metropolitan audience. Unknown, unheralded, he literally came, was seen, and conquered. Leaving his wife and child at home, with his few properties tied up in a handkerchief, he tramped to the theatre and dressed quietly in a room with two or three other actors, who were surprised to see him don a black wig. No one spoke to him save genial Jack Bannister, who gave him a cheering word, and William Oxberry, who tendered him a glass of brandy-and-water together with a hopeful speech. At length he went on, with groups of actors at the wings jealously watching the first effort of the new actor. Dr. Drury, the head-master of Harrow, who took great interest in Kean, looked fixedly at him as he came forward. Shylock leant over his crutched stick with both hands, and looking askance at Bassanio, said, “Three thousand ducats?” paused, bethought himself, and then added, “Well?” “He is safe,” said Dr. Drury, . Let the remainder of the scene that night be told in Dr. Doran’s words:— “The groups of actors soon after dispersed to the green-room. As they reached it, there reached there, too, an echo of the loud applause given to Shylock’s reply to Bassanio's assurance that he may take the bond : ‘I will be assured I may !” Later, came the sounds of the increased approbation bestowed on the delivery of the passage ending with : “And for these courtesies, I’ll lend you thus much moneys.” The act came to an end gloriously ; and the players in the green- room looked for the coming among them of the new Shylock. He proudly kept THE MERCIIANT OF VENICE. 51 aloof; knew he was friendless, but felt that he was, in himself, sufficient. He wandered about the back of the stage, thinking, perhaps, of the mother and child at home ; and sure, now, of having at least made a step toward triumph. He wanted no congratulations; and he walked cheerfully down to the wing where the scene was about to take place between him and his daughter, Jessica, in his very calling to whom : “Why, Jessical I say,’ there was, as some of us may remember, from an after-night’s experience, a charm, as of music. The whole scene was played with rare merit; but the absolute triumph was not won till the scene (which was marvellous in his hands) in the third act, between Shylock, Salarino, and Solanio, ending in the dialogue between the first and Tubal. Shylock's anguish at his daughter's flight; his wrath at the two Christians—who make sport of his anguish; his hatred of all Christians, generally, and of Antonio in particular ; and then his alternations of rage, grief, and ecstasy, as Tubal relates the losses incurred in the search for that naughty Jessica, her extravagances, and then the ill-luck that had fallen upon Antonio. In all this, there was such originality, such terrible force, such assurance of a new and mighty master, that the house burst forth into a very whirlwind of approbation. “What now?' was the cry in the green-room. The answer was, that the presence and the power of genius were acknowledged with an enthusiasm which shook the very roof.” - Douglas Jerrold used to say that in this part Kean impressed his audience “like a chapter of Genesis.” “For eye, action, and expression,” wrote Hazlitt on the memorable night of Kean's first performance of Shylock, “no actor has come out for many years at all equal to him. The applause, from the first scene to the last, was general, loud, and uninterrupted. Indeed, the very first scene, in which he comes on with Bassanio and Antonio, showed the master in his art, and at once decided the opinion of the audience. . . . In giving effect to the conflict of passions arising out of the contrasts of situation, in varied vehemence of de- clamation, in keenness of sarcasm, in the rapidity of his transitions from one tone of feeling to another, in propriety and novelty of action, presenting a succession of striking pictures, and giving perpetually fresh shocks of delight and surprise, it would be difficult to single out a competitor. . . . It would be endless to point out individual beauties, where almost every passage was received with equal and deserved applause.” A few nights later Kean, who reminded Hazlitt of the descriptions of the “far-darting ” eye of Garrick, again appeared as Shylock, when the critic wrote that “for depth and force of conception ” he had seen actors whom he preferred to him in the character, but, “for brilliant and masterly execution, none.” Henry Irving played Shylock for the first time at the Lyceum Theatre, on * November 1st, 1879. He invested the character with such an intense sympathy, such dignity, and such a deep sense of Shylock's wrongs and the injury done to his tribe, as had not previously been seen on the stage. It was a noteworthy tribute to his impersonation that it aroused the admiration and enthusiasm of many Jewish •,| 52 SHAKESPEAR EAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. writers who seemed to view the performance as a vindication of their race. Mr. Irving’s pathetic exit at the conclusion of the Trial scene, where Shylock, utterly subdued, leaves the court where all his hopes have just been defeated, was, perhaps, the finest and most striking point in a personation of singularly impressive dignity, and deep, alluring pathos. Let it be added that Mr. Irving restored to the piece the fifth act, which had generally been omitted in representation, and thus gave play- goers an opportunity of witnessing the comedy in its full beauty. Miss Ellen Terry endowed the part of Portia with rare grace, and a radiant, matchless beauty. The revival attained the extraordinary run of two hundred and fifty consecutive per- formances. Mr. Irving and Miss Terry acted Shylock and Portia respectively, for the first time in America, at the Star Theatre, New York, on November 6th, 1883. In his “History of the American Theatre,” Dunlap says that on September 5th, 1752, at Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia, “the first play performed in America by a regular company of comedians, was represented to a delighted audience. The piece was ‘The Merchant of Venice.’” The honour thus implied certainly belongs to Shakespeare, but not to “The Merchant of Venice,” for this play was preceded, in New York, by “King Richard III.” and “Othello” in 1750. “The Merchant of Venice” was presented in New York, for the first time, in the autumn of 1753. Its most complete representation, in the United States, by an American company, was that given by Edwin Booth, at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York, in 1867. A famous Shylock of the American stage was Junius Brutus Booth. He read the Koran, and often attended the synagogues. He sympathised with the Jews as an oppressed and reviled race. For him they stood as an idea—the inexorableness of law; and the conception of a people selected as the guardian and minister of this law—as the arm of fate—affected his imagination profoundly. Why should not Shylock exact his usances? he argued. Why should he not demand the penalty and forfeit of his bond from the Christian dogs 2 Booth, in his impersonation, embodied all this gloomy grandeur of position, this merciless absoluteness of will. Yet, wrote a critic of the time, “Shylock’s more special personality—if we may so express it—his hatred of Antonio, not simply ‘for he is a Christian, but because he has hindered him in his usurious practices, was not merged and lost in his representative character. Booth kept the two distinct, skilfully using the former in order to throw out in darker background the shadowy presence of the latter. Finely in keeping with this rendering of the part, is the exit of Shylock from the machinery of the piece on the termination of the fourth act. The lighter and more graceful work of the play goes on ; but Shylock withdraws, and with him this grand, gloomy, cruel past, which he represents, while the light-hearted, forgiving, and forgiven children of the day bring all their wishes to a happy consummation.” It is worthy of record that on September 17th, 1818, Booth appeared as Shylock at Covent Garden, when he occasionally spoke the part in a Hebrew dialect, after the manner of a foreign actor. - W N \\ N N N wº W G. GOLDBERG sºul- N №ae, |（~）. W § \\ N MACJB)ETEſ |× ， （） º 1-R-O-L-- PLN- |AJOY Zoº & º zºzzozºwº ºr Zºº &e ºesºzºzzzzzerzz. (AC. ºw. JBIETJG AN ID) Zºº ºr. _º -º-º-º-º-º: ------- 53 MACBETH. 1MACBETH,” the most weird, if not the grandest, of Shakespearean tragedies, was printed for the first time in the folio of 1623. Its story is taken from Holinshed’s “Chronicle.” It was certainly acted in 1610, when it was probably a new play, for on April 20th of that year Dr. Simon Forman, as may be learned from a MS. in the Ashmolean Museum, saw “Macbeth '' at the Globe Theatre, and went to the trouble of describing its plot, proving thereby that the piece was then a novelty. The diversity of opinions concerning this tragedy is not a little curious. Characte- rised by one critic as “the grandest conception of human genius,” Dr. Johnson, who thought the play possessed “no nice discriminations of character,” went on to say that “a poet who should now make the whole action of his drama depend on enchantment, and produce the chief events by the assistance of supernatural agents, would be censured as transgressing the bounds of probability, and be banished from the theatre to the nursery.” More recent critics, such as Coleridge, Schlegel, and Hazlitt, eulogise, not only the force and poetic insight and intensity of the dramatist here displayed, but also the construction of the play. Mr. Grant White says, “What the Sistine Madonna was to Raphael, it seems that “Macbeth was to Shakespeare—a magnificent impromptu ; that kind of impromptu which results from the application of well-disciplined powers and rich stores of thought to a subject suggested by occasion. I am inclined to regard Macbeth, for the most part, as a specimen of Shakespeare’s unelaborated, if not unfinished, writing, in the maturity and highest vitality of his genius. It abounds in instances of extremest compression and daring ellipsis, while it exhibits in every scene a union of supreme dramatic and poetic power, and in almost every line an imperially irresponsible control of language.” - - - In 1665, after “Macbeth ** had been neglected by the actors for several years, Sir William Davenant took the tragedy in hand and produced an “improved ’’ver- sion of it at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with Betterton as the Macbeth. He tried to bring it as near as possible to the taste of his day, and by making it more of an opera than a play, to recompense himself for a considerable outlay in new scenéry and costumes. For the music, he had the assistance of Matthew Lock, whose compo- sitions still survive. Dances of furies were arranged for the incantation scene of the fourth act, and until a hundred and fifty years ago, the best dancers were employed to enliven this scene. Had Sir William stopped here it would have been well, but he went a step further and altered the design of the play, and, moreover, provided it with a good deal of jingling rhyme which, in later days, was not to be tolerated. To Macklin’s credit, be it said, he was the first actor to dress Macbeth in a fitting costume. He wore an old-fashioned Scottish dress of a semi-military 54 SHAKE SPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. character. Garrick dressed Macbeth as a Scottish sergeant-major of his own day. The ladies’ dress of this period was marked by much incongruity. Mrs. Pritchard, for instance, instead of wearing a long robe girdled round the waist, and a full, flowing mantle, appeared as Lady Macbeth in a court skirt over huge hoops, and a train tucked up to the waist, with powdered hair surmounted by a forest of feathers; while Ann Crouch, as one of the witches, wore an elaborate fancy hat, cunningly calculated by a chronicler as “killing ” in effect, her hair superbly powdered, rouge delicately and effectively laid on, and her whole precious person enveloped in a perfect cloud of point lace and the finest of fine linen In the matter of costume, at least, we have considerably improved since those degenerate days. “Macbeth’’ was restored to the stage by Garrick, who abolished the Davenant alterations. One or two scenes from Shakespeare were omitted by him, others were cut down, and “Davy" made fewer additions than was his usual custom in dealing with the Bard. He did compose a long dying speech for Macbeth, but then, was he not the manager ? And Garrick excelled in the expression of con- vulsive throes and dying agonies, and would not lose any opportunity that offered of displaying his skill in this respect. Garrick's first scene in “Macbeth * was animated and consistent. He admirably expressed the awe-struck feelings of } Macbeth on meeting the witches and hearing their dread prophecy, and in the scene with Duncan, his mind appeared, to the audience, to be still agitated. For his murder scene, in the second act, we must go to the author of the “Dramatic Miscellanies,” 2 who says: “The representation of this terrible part of the play by Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, can no more be described than, I believe, it can be equalled. I will not separate these performers, for the merits of both were transcen- dent. His distraction of mind and agonising horror were finely contrasted by her seeming apathy, tranquillity, and confidence. The beginning of the scene after the murder was conducted in terrifying whispers. Their looks and actions supplied the place of words. You heard what they spoke, but you learned more from the | agitation of mind displayed in their actions and deportment. The poet here gives - only an outline to the consummate actor: “I have done the deed.—Didst thou not hear a noise P’ ‘Did not you speak 2 * * When?” The dark colouring given by the actor to these speeches makes the scene awful and tremendous to the auditor. The wonderful expression of heartfelt horror which Garrick felt when he showed his bloody hands, can be conceived and described only by those who saw him.” The banquet scene of the third act, where most Macbeths fail, was grandly supported by - the speaking terrors of Garrick's look and action. Mrs. Pritchard showed ad- mirable art in endeavouring to hide Macbeth’s frenzy from the observation of her guests by drawing their attention towards herself. She smiled on one, whispered to another, and distantly saluted a third. In short, she practised every conceivable artifice to hide Macbeth’s disturbed state of mind from the knowledge of her guests. Her reproving and angry looks, directed at Macbeth, were also mixed with marks of inward agitation and vexation. When at last, as if unable to support º % º º º \\ J. Quartley, Sculp. A. FREDERicks, Det. MACBETH AND MACDUFF. Macd. Turn, hell hound, turn Mach. Of all men else I have avoided thee: But get thee back; my soul is too much charg'd With blood of thine already. “Macbeth,” Act P., Scene VII. MAC BETH. 55 her feelings any longer, she rose from her seat and seized his arm with a half- whisper of terror as she said “Are you a man?” she assumed such a look of anger, indignation, and contempt as has not since been equalled, much less surpassed. Her effect in this scene is the more remarkable when we call to mind Dr. Johnson’s strictures on the actress: “Her playing was quite mechanical. It is wonderful how little mind she had. Sir, she had never read the tragedy of “Macbeth all through. She no more thought of the play out of which her part was taken, than a shoemaker thinks of the skin out of which the piece of leather of which he is making a pair of shoes is cut.” James Quin’s figure and countenance stood him in good stead in the character of Macbeth ; but he was deficient in animated utterance, and wanted flexibility of tone. He could assume neither the strong agitation of mind before the murder of Duncan, nor the remorse and anguish in consequence of it. Much less could he assume that mixture of despair, rage, and frenzy which mark the last scenes in the tragedy. During the whole representation, he hardly ever deviated from a dull, heavy monotony. Henry Mossop commanded attention and applause, thanks to his power of expression, in several of the situations, but he lacked variety of action and an easy carriage. Spranger Barry was not formed to express the terror of Macbeth, and he failed in the part. Kemble looked well as Macbeth, but he did not impress the spectator with the anguish and remorse of the character. He cut out Garrick’s “dying speech,” and published, in 1803, an acting version Of “Macbeth.” It was on February 2nd, 1785, that Sarah Siddons appeared for the first time as Lady Macbeth at Drury Lane, a character in which she created the greatest impression of her life. Other parts in the cast in this memorable performance were taken by Smith as Macbeth, Brereton as Macduff, Bensley as Banquo, and Parsons, | Moody, and Baddeley as the witches. Mrs. Siddons imagined Lady Macbeth to be a delicate blonde, who ruled by her intellect and subdued by her beauty, but to whom no one feeling of common, general nature was congenial; a woman prompt for wickedness, but speedily possessed with remorse; one who is horror- stricken for herself and her husband, who, more robust and less sensitive, plunges deeper into crime, and is less moved by any sense of compassion or sorrow than she. Mrs. Siddons fairly dethroned the older actress, Mrs. Pritchard, as Lady Macbeth, but not without hard striving against prejudice. Here, for instance, is Lord Harcourt’s judgment of her: “To say that Mrs. Siddons, in one word, is superior to Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth, would be talking nonsense, because I don’t think that it is possible; but, on the other hand, I will not say with those importial judges, Mr. Whitehead and Miss Fauquier, that she does not play near so well. That she has much more expression of countenance, and can assume parts with a spirit, cannot be denied; but she wants the dignity and, above all, the unequalled compass of Mrs. Pritchard. I thought her wonderful and very fine in the murder scene. She throws a degree of proud and filial tenderness into this speech, _- \ \ 56 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. “Had he not resembled my father,” etc., which is new, and of great effect. Her ‘Are you a man 9’ in the banquet scene, I thought inferior to Mrs. Pritchard’s, and for the parts spoken at a great distance, her voice wanted power. Her counte- nance, aided by a studious and judicious choice of head-dress, was a true picture, in the sleeping scene, of a mind diseased, and made one shudder; and the effect in that was better than it had ever been with a taper [Mrs. Pritchard always carried a candlestick in her hand in the sleep-walking scene], because it allows of variety in the actress, of washing her hands; but the sigh was not so horrid, nor was the voice so sleepy, nor yet quite so articulate, as Mrs. Pritchard’s.” Later on, a greater critic wrote: “If we have seen Mrs. Siddons in Lady Macbeth only once, it is enough. The impression is stamped there for ever, and any after experiments and critical inquiries only serve to fritter away and tamper with the sacredness of the early recollection. We see into the details of the character—its minute excellences or defects—but the great masses, the gigantic proportions, are in some degree lost upon us by custom and familiarity. It is the first blow that staggers us; by gaining time we recover our self-possession. Mrs. Siddons's Lady Macbeth is little less appalling in its effects than the apparition of a preternatural being ; but if we were accustomed to seeing a preternatural being constantly, our astonish- ment would diminish.” Stephen Kemble, sitting in the Garrick Club one night, was asked what was the special attraction of his sister in the sleep-walking scene. “Never moved, sir, never moved,” was his laconic but expressive reply. It was the still, statuesque figure of Lady Macbeth, her horror-struck eyes staring into vacancy, her terrible incapacity for action, which was the great feature of Siddons's interpretation of this scene, in which she thrilled every spectator. =~" Two notable actors who played Macduff to the gratification of their audience should not be forgotten here. In the touches of domestic woe which require the feelings of the tender father and the affectionate husband, Wilks had no equal. His skill in exhibiting the emotions of the heart with appropriate look and gesture, was universally admired. Lacy Ryan, in Macduff, had nothing against him but the harshness of his voice. He assumed such genuine terror and amazement in the second act, as became the man who had seen his royal master murdered, and, in the fourth act, his pathos moved the house to tears. The elder Wandenhoff was an elocutionary Macbeth, Macready gave a careful analysis of the character, Kean portrayed the passion of the part, the two Booths— Junius Brutus and Edwin–and Henry Irving, admirably brought out the gloom and anguish, the fearfulness of remorse, and the grand intensity of the character. Of these actors, and of Samuel Phelps and James Anderson, Edwin Forrest and Charles Kean, Ernesto Rossi and Tommaso Salvini, and of the Lady Macbeth of Helen Macbeth of Sarah Bernhardt, space can be given here only for the mere mention of their names in connection with the tragedy. |- （ ） · % ： ^， ^ -------------- -- a º ºw yozº (0) Iºſº D. - () iſ 0-ſº ſº º ºxº º avº. - ºf s. - --- --- - unveiling) - - - - --- º- ... ooº- tº rºtº-e- - - - -- -- ~ * -ºº º ºr rºº -º-º-º- ºr - - - - - - º - --- CA-S-L--COMPANY., ºr- TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL. THIS fantastic comedy was written about the year 1600. The exact date of its introduction to the stage has not been determined, but it was probably a new play in 1602, for on February 2nd of that year, John Manningham, a barrister of the Middle Temple, in a diary preserved in the Harleian MSS., went to the trouble of describing the plot: “At our feast wee had a play called “Twelve-Night; or, What you Will,’ much like the ‘Comedy of Errors,” or “Menechmi’ in Plautus; but most like and neere to that in Italian called “Inganni.” A good practice in it to make the steward beleeve his lady widowe was in love with him, by counterfayting a letter as from his lady in general terms, telling him what she liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, apparaile, etc. And then when he came to practice making him beleeve that they took him to be mad.” Whether Shakespeare borrowed the subject of this play from one of Bandello's novels or from Barnaby Rich’s translation of it, under the title of “Apolonius and Silla " in his “Farewell to Militarie Profession ” (1581), or to the Italian comedy “ Gl’Inganni,” to which Manningham refers, has not been decided. At any rate, he borrowed the serious portion of the story, and, as usual, the comic characters—Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguedheek, and the Clown—are his own. The whimsical nature of the plot has prevented this play from becoming a great favourite in the theatre. Occasionally, it is true, it is brought out on the theatric boards; but it has never attained a great degree of success on the stage. The first record of its public performance is contained in the “Roscius Anglicanus’’ of Downs, the prompter. Here we find that it was acted by Sir William Davenant’s company at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, soon after the opening of that house in the spring of 1662, when it obtained “mighty success by its well performance.” Betterton strangely elected to appear as Sir Toby Belch, leaving Malvolio to One Lovel, an elder performer. Joseph Harris was Aguedheek, and Cave Underhill the Clown. “The great and secret charm of ‘Twelfth Night,’ wrote Hazlitt, “is the character of Viola. Much as we like catches and cakes and ale, there is something we like better. We have a friendship for Sir Toby ; we patronise Sir Andrew; then we have an understanding with the Clown, a sneaking kindness for Maria and her rogueries; we feel a regard for Malvolio, and sympathise with his gravity, his smiles, his cross garters, his yellow stockings, and imprisonment in the stocks. But there is something that excites in us a stronger feeling than all this—it is Viola’s confession of her love.” The best Malvolio among the old actors was William Bensley, whose name will live in “The Essays of Elia.” He was a gentleman and a scholar, and before H '.\ 58 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. joining the stage had been a lieutenant in the marines. Born in 1738, he made his first appearance at Drury Lane, in 1765, as Pierre in “Venice Preserved.” His gait was uncouth and stiff, but in no way affected, and his voice was harsh, conse- quently he was not suited to many characters, but his physical peculiarities made him appear to more advantage as Malvolio. He left the stage in 1796 to accept the post of a barrack-master. For several years before his death, which occurred in 1817, he enjoyed a large fortune, bequeathed to him by Sir William Bensley, a baronet, and an East India. Director. Charles Lamb’s analysis of the character of Malvolio, and his description of Bensley in the part, are so masterly that they should find a place in full here:—“The part of Malvolio in “Twelfth Night’ was performed by Bensley with a richness and a dignity of which (to judge from some recent castings of that character) the very tradition must be worn out from the stage. No manager in those days would have dreamed of giving it to Mr. Baddeley or Mr. Parsons; when Bensley was occasionally absent from the theatre, John Kemble thought it no derogation to succeed to the part. Malvolio is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes comic but by accident. He is cold, austere, repelling, but dignified, consistent, and, for what appears, rather of an overstretched morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan; and he might have worn his gold chain with honour in one of our old Roundhead families, in the service of a Lambert or a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and his manners are misplaced in Illyria. He is opposed to the proper levities of the piece, and falls in the unequal contest. Still his pride, or his gravity (call it which you will) is inherent, and native to the man, not mock or affected, which latter only are the fit objects to excite laughter. His quality is at the best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible. His bearing is lofty, a little above his station, but probably not much above his deserts. We see no reason why he should not have been brave, honourable, accomplished. His careless committal of the ring to the ground (which he was commissioned to restore to Cesario) bespeaks a generosity of birth and feeling. His dialect on all occasions is that of a gentleman and a man of education. We must not confound him with the old, eternal, low steward of comedy. He is master of the household to a great princess; a dignity probably conferred upon him for other respects than age or length of service. Olivia, at the first indication of his supposed madness, declares that she ‘would not have him miscarry for half her dowry.” Does this look as if the character was meant to appear little or insignificant? Once, indeed, she accuses him to his face—of what? —of being ‘sick of self-love?—but with a gentleness and considerateness which could not have been if she had not thought that this particular infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke to the knight and his sottish revellers is sensible and spirited; and when we take into consideration the unprotected condition of his mistress, and the strict regard with which her real or dissembled state of mourning would draw the eyes of the world upon her house affairs, Malvolio might feel the honour of the family in some sort in his keeping; as it appears not that Olivia had any more - º É sº Dºwn ºy WILLIAM Ralston. MALVOLIO. Malvolio (reads). Fºrnvert by J. Quº Akrºy. Some are born great; some achieve greatness; and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. “Twelfth Night," Act //, Scene V. TWELFTH NIGHT; Olº, WHAT YOU WILL. 59 brothers or kinsmen to look to it—for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice respects at the buttery-hatch. That Malvolio was meant to be represented as possessing estimable qualities, the expression of the duke, in his anxiety to have him reconciled, almost infers: “Pursue him and entreat him to a peace.” Even in his abused state of chains and darkness a sort of greatness seems never to desert him. He argues highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas, and philosophises gallantly upon his straw. There must have been some shadow of worth about the man : he must have been something more than a mere vapour—a thing of straw, a Jack in office—before Fabian and Maria could have ventured to send him on a courting errand to Olivia. There was some consonancy, as he would say, in the undertaking, or the jest would have been too bold even for that house of misrule. “Bensley accordingly threw over the part an air of Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated; but his superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of worth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it was hollow. You might wish to see it taken down, but you felt that it was on an elevation. He was magnificent from the outset; but when the decent sobriety of the character began to give way, and the poison of self-love, in the conceit of the countess’s affection gradually to work, you would have thought that the hero of La Mancha stood in person before you. How he went smiling to himself With what ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold chain What a dream it was You were infected with the illusion, and did not wish that it should be removed You had no room for laughter | If an unseasonable reflection of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable infirmity of man’s nature that can lay him open to such frenzies; but, in truth, you rather admired than pitied the lunacy while it lasted—you felt that an hour of such mistake was worth an age with the eyes open. Who would not wish to live but for a day in the conceit of such a lady’s love as Olivia P Why, the duke would have given his principality but for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or waking, to have been so deluded. The man seemed to tread upon air, to taste manna, to walk with his head in the clouds, to mate Hyperion. Oh! shake not the castles of his pride— endure yet for a season, bright moments of confidence—‘stand still, ye watches of the element,’ that Malvolio may be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord | But fate and retribution say no. I hear the mischievous titter of Maria, the witty taunts of Sir Toby, the still more insupportable triumph of the foolish knight; the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked—and thus ‘the whirligig of time,’ as the true clown hath it, “brings in his revenges.” I confess that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, when Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic interest.” When it is remembered that this essay first appeared in the London Magazine in 1822, more than a quarter of a century after Bensley had left the stage, Lamb’s praise might, perhaps, seem extravagant ; but it must also be borne in mind that the naturally stiff, starch style of Bensley particularly suited him in this character, and 60. SHARESPEAREAN SCENES AND CITARACTERS. Bensley has also won praise for his acting of it from other writers. Lamb also praises his Iago highly. : * Charles Lamb also had the advantage and pleasure of seeing Dora Jordan before she took to the Nells and Hoydens of the stage, and before her voice had acquired a coarseness which disfigured it in later years. In those days, “it sank, with her steady, melting eye, into the heart. . . . There is no giving an account how she delivered the disguised story of her love for Orsino. It was no set speech, that she had foreseen, so as to weave it into an harmonious period, line necessarily following line, to make up the music—yet I have heard it so spoken, or rather read, not without its grace and beauty—but when she had declared her sister’s history to be a ‘blank,’ and that she “never told her love,’ there was a pause, as if the story had ended—and then the image of the ‘worm in the bud’ came up as a new suggestion—and the heightened image of ‘Patience’ still followed after that as by some growing and not mechanical process, thought springing up after thought, I would almost say, as they were watered by her tears. So, in those fine lines - “Write loyal cantons of contemned love. Halloo your name to the reverberate hills—' there was no preparation made in the foregoing image for that which was to follow. She used no rhetoric in her passion; or it was nature’s own rhetoric, most legitimate then, when it seemed altogether without rule or law.” - Another favourite of Lamb's, amongst the old actors, was James Dodd (1741– 96), who won much praise from the essayist for his performance of Sir Andrew Aguedheek. It has also been related by Charles Lamb that his “merry friend,” Jem White, had seen Dodd one evening as Sir Andrew, and recognising him the next day in Fleet Street was irresistibly impelled to take off his hat, and salute him as the identical knight of the previous evening, with a “Save you, Sir Andrew.” The actor, not at all disconcerted by this unusual address from a stranger, with a courteous, half-rebuking wave of the hand, put him off with an “Away, Fool!” Dowton, Liston, and the elder Farren have played Malvolio with success. Mr. Irving appeared in this character in his revival of the play at the Lyceum Theatre on July 8th, 1884, when Miss Ellen Terry acted Viola. Mr. Irving's Malvolio greatly resembled that of his predecessor in the part, Bensley. He was lofty, dignified, cold, austere; and he, too, seemed to have the honour of Olivia in his keeping. His rebuke to the foolish knights was thoroughly effective, and he rose to a tragic height not attained by other Malvolios in the final exit of the steward with his “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.” Miss Terry’s Viola was a sweet and graceful performance. The character of Viola was a favourite with Miss Neilson. She first acted it during a visit to the United States in 1877, when her success was phenomenal. The critics lost their heads in descanting on her merits. “The house,” said one, in writing of her Viola, “was literally in love with her. There is a fascination about her that is irresistible.” º º N º N º º - º - º ==> - - - - - -------, -, - - ------------------ KING JOHN. THIS play is founded on an anonymous drama entitled “The Troublesome Raigne of Ring John,” published in 1591. “Ring John ” was written in 1596, and it is mentioned by Meres in his “Palladis Tamia,” in 1598. It was first published in 1623. The treachery of King John, the sad death of Arthur, and the grief of Constance are painted by the dramatist most vividly. The extreme painfulness of the subject is relieved by the richness of imagination displayed, and the beauty of the language. The crucial test for the actor of King John is the scene in which the king suggests to Hubert the design of murdering Arthur. This is a masterpiece of dramatic skill, and there are few scenes in Shakespeare more touching than that in which Arthur pleads to Hubert not to put out his eyes. “Ring John ” is a play which is seldom acted. Indeed it is never seen on the contemporary stage. The first notice of the acting of this play is due, indirectly, to Colley Cibber. Having successfully mangled Shakespeare’s “Kingstºichard III.” out of all recognition, he thought fit to try his hand upon the same author’s play of “Ring John.” This time, however, he failed in his attempt to make his mutilation more like a play “than what he found it in Shakespeare.” In his “Papal Tyranny,” acted at Covent Garden in 1744, he pretended to “supply some of Shakespeare's deficiencies, but more especially the want of resentment in a king of England when insulted by a pope's nuncio.” His play, brought out at a time when the nation was in a state of excitement on a kindred subject, met with some applause. Cibber himself, although seventy-three years of age, appeared in the “Papal Tyranny ” as Pandulph, the papal nuncio, and, notwithstanding his great age, “ and the loss of several teeth, whereby his articulation must necessarily have been injured,” yet in his action there appeared a wonderful amount of grace and dignity, which won him the favour of the audience. The critics were very severe upon Mr. Cibber for his ill-usage of Shakespeare, whose tragedy they praised to the skies at the expense of “Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John.” John Rich, not unmindful of this circumstance, thought it a favourable opportunity to revive “King John.” So he forthwith produced the tragedy at Lincoln’s Inn Fields with Delame as the King, Lacy Ryan as Cardinal Pandulph, and Mrs. Hallam as Constance. The play was successfully performed for several nights, but the king was not remarkably well represented by Delane, who could not easily assume the turbulent and gloomy in tragedy. Remble was a noted representative of King John. He became the part well in look, costume, and gesture. In a certain sense he acted the part finely, but not by any means as Shakespeare wrote it, nor as it might be played. He did not harrow up the feelings, he did not electrify the sense, he did not enter into the nature of 62 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. the part himself, and consequently he did not move others with terror or pity. The introduction to the scene with Hubert was certainly excellent in his hands: the spectator saw instantly, and before a syllable was uttered, partly from his change of countenance, and partly from the arrangement of the scene, the purpose which had entered his mind to murder the young prince. But the remainder of this trying scene, though the execution was painfully elaborate, wanted the true master touches of genius, the deep, piercing, heartfelt tones of nature. “Through almost the whole scene,” wrote a critic, “this celebrated actor did not seem to feel the part itself as it was set down for him, but to be considering how he ought to feel it, or how he should express by rule and method what he did not feel. He was sometimes slow, and sometimes hurried; sometimes familiar, and sometimes solemn; but always with an evident design and determination to be so. The varying tide of passion did not appear to burst from the source of nature in his breast, but to be drawn from a theatrical, leaden cistern, and then directed through certain conduit- pipes and artificial channels to fill the audience with well-regulated and harmless sympathy.” His death scene was not to be compared to the tragic height which Garrick attained to in it. Mrs. *. Constance, was to Thomas Campbell “the embodied image of maternal love and intrepidity, of wronged and righteous feeling, of proud grief and majestic desolation. With what unutterable tenderness was her brow bent over her pretty Arthur at one moment, and in the next how nobly drawn back in a look at her enemies that dignified her vituperation. When she patted Lewis on the breast with the words, “Thine honour ! oh, thine honour !” there was a sublimity in the laugh of her sarcasm.” When she first appeared in this character—Drury Lane, November, 1783—she was supported by Kemble as King John in accordance with the desire of George the Third to see brother and sister act together. Smith was the Falconbridge, Bensley the Hubert, and Palmer the Pandulph. It was a boast of Mrs. Siddons that she gradually improved in every part she played. This was at least true of her Constance, which at first was not by any means a good performance. In Macready’s King John there was a want of the amenity with which Kemble reconciled this weak and odious monarch to the nature which his actions outraged and his weakness degraded; and some of the more declamatory speeches were given by him with a rapidity which rendered them almost unintelligible. The scenes where he suggests to Hubert the murder of Arthur, and that of his own death, were treated finely by him; the last scene, as a representation of death by poison, true, forcible, and terrific, yet without anything to disgust, was an extraordinary triumph of art. - Kean acted King John at Drury Lane on June 1st, 1818. His great triumph was made in the impressive scene between the King and Hubert, Here, and in the subsequent scenes, his fertility of invention and marvellous power of execution, were brought into play with wonderful effect, 63 ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. THE subject matter of this piece is not a very savoury one to modern minds. The pursuit of an unwilling man by a willing woman is always a difficult theme to touch, and though Shakespeare, as it must be confessed, has handled the story with rare delicacy, yet it stands unacceptable to the multitude. It is seldom seen on the stage, indeed I can find no record of its production this century, a fact which proves the want of proper elements to make the play popular. To render it fit for representation it would have to be mercilessly cut in many parts, and one scene, at least, of vital importance to the plot, would have to be entirely eliminated. The play teaches, if it can be said to teach anything at all, that a woman may have her own way even in the matter of marriage, if she possesses only a sufficient stock of perseverance, Helena is a dependent in the ancient family to which Count Bertram belongs. She loves Bertram, but the young soldier, “because he had been always with her in the house,” thinks not of Helena. Yet she puts aside all maidenly modesty and restraint, resolves to woo and wed him, and to have his love, and does so in spite of an apparently insurmountable obstacle, namely, the conditions imposed upon her by his letter after the outward ceremony of the marriage. Thanks to a prescription left her by her deceased father, a distinguished physician, she cures the king of an ailment thought to be incurable, and, in reward, asks for and obtains the hand in marriage of young Bertram. So far her plans succeed, but Bertram having no liking for the forced marriage, hies him to the wars, and is followed by Helena in the disguise of a pilgrim. Then the huntress adopts a subterfuge so unwomanly, so coarse, in order to win her husband, that she loses whatever charm of her sex she might, till then, have left. Her plot turns out as she wishes and she is finally united to Bertram. The latter character has been considerably assailed by Shakespearean critics, but to my mind Bertram is not quite so ignoble as some of them try to make out. Certainly he gives away his ancestral ring in order to win a woman, and he can lie considerably to suit his purpose. But beyond this there is nothing much to be said against him. He is a valiant soldier, belonging to an honoured house ; he is young and handsome, and should be left to choose a wife for himself. But a wife is thrust upon him and he naturally objects to the union. He has no affection for Helena and he turns from her in disgust at her forced love. Only in the end does he turn to her, and that merely because he finds himself in dire distress, mainly through Helena's machinations, and is obliged to accept what is offered to him. Neither Bertram nor Helena is a lovable person, but the better of the two, and more deserving of sympathy, is decidedly Bertram. Helena's long scene with Parolles in the first act is quite enough to deprive her of sympathy with most 64 SHAKESPEAREAN SCIENIES AND CHARACTEIRS. spectators. It is coarse and unmaidenly in the extreme. Occasionally, however, Helena is tender and womanly, and her character is partially redeemed by such a speech as this:– “Poor lord is't I That chase thee from thy country, and expose Those tender limbs of thine to the event Of the none-sparing war? and is it I That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou Wast shot at by fair eyes, to be the mark Of smoky muskets P O, you leaden messengers, That ride upon the violent speed of fire, Fly with false aim ; move the still-’pearing air, That sings with piercing, do not touch my lord Whoever shoots at him, I set him there; Whoever charges on his forward breast, I am the caitiſf that do hold him to it; And, though I kill him not, I am the cause His death was so effected. Better 'twere, I met the ravin lion when he roared With sharp constraint of hunger : better 'twere, That all the miseries which nature owes Were mine at once.” Helena evidently did not think of the truth, so beautifully expressed by Longfellow :— “Like Dian’s kiss, unask'd, unsought, Love gives itself, but is not bought.” Johnson expressed a cordial aversion to Bertram, and regretted that he came off in the end with no other punishment than possessing a virtuous wife. Coleridge, who took up the cudgels in favour of Bertram, very properly maintained that “he was a young nobleman in feudal times, just bursting into manhood, with all the feelings of pride and birth, and appetite for pleasure and liberty, natural to such a character so circumstanced. Of course, he had never regarded Helena otherwise than as a dependent in the family; and of all that which she possessed of goodness and fidelity and courage, which might atone for her inferiority in other respects, Bertram was necessarily in a great measure ignorant.” Parolles, Bertram's friend and follower, who is eventually exposed in all his knavery, is “a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality.” The comic part of the play turns on the folly, boasting, and cowardice of this parasite, the detection of his false pretensions to bravery and honour, forming a very amusing episode. He is first found out by the old lord, Lafeu, who says, “The soul of this man is in his clothes; ” and it is afterwards found that his heart is in his tongue, and that both are hollow. This character, and those of the Clown and the Countess, are of Shakespeare’s own creation. The rest of the characters, and the main incidents of the plot, he borrowed from the story of Giglietta di Nerbona pursuing Beltramo, which he found in “The Palace of Pleasure,” where it was taken from Boccaccio's “Decameron.” · & ■（） RŅI （~^ ， ，： s sº sculº- º ™Ē ```` §|-№§ ceive / Zove… you not / was the ºore de Mººſ' º | ```` |-§§ GIA M JLJET AN ID) (0. JºJº'ſ EJLIA - | w_--------- |× } ſae % HAMLET. THE story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was first told in Latin, in the “Historia Danica ’’ of Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish historian, who lived A.D. 1150–1220, and wrote his work between 1180 and 1208. The earliest known edition of it is that of Paris, 1514. The story as it there appears was incorporated in Francis de Belleforest’s “Histoires Tragiques,” the earlier volumes of which contained trans- lations from the Italian of Bandello, amongst them being the history of “Romeo and Juliet.” The story of Hamlet first appears in the fifth volume of these histories, which was printed at Paris in 1570. The story was thence translated into English. The only existing edition of this translation is that of 1608, and is in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The title of the book is “The Hystorie of Hamblet. London: Imprinted by Richard Bradocke for Thomas Pauier, and are to be sold at his shop in Corne-hill, neere to the Royall Exchange, 1608.” It was first acted in 1602. Burbage, as every one knows, was the first representative of Hamlet. No record of his acting in the part exists, and it is not until we come to the second noted Hamlet that we get any description of the interpretation of this sublime character. Betterton was a member of Sir William Davenant’s company at the Duke's Theatre, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, when that house was opened in the spring of 1662. Within a month from the date of opening, “Hamlet” was presented with Betterton, then only twenty-seven years of age, as the Prince. He made an immense hit in the part, and for several years afterwards no other play drew such large houses when Betterton appeared in it. Take, in proof of his popularity in the part of Hamlet, the following entries from the diary of good Mr. Pepys, who writes, a year after Betterton’s first appearance as Hamlet: “To the Duke’s house, and there saw Hamlett done, giving us fresh reason never to think enough of Betterton.” Still five years later, Pepys writes: “To the Duke of York’s play- house, and there saw Hamlet, which we have not seen this year before, or more; and mightily pleased with it, but above all with Betterton, the best part, I believe, that ever man acted.” Colley Cibber, who lamented his inability to describe the manner in which Betterton spoke, was enthusiastic about his acting as Hamlet. Betterton’s great success was made in the Ghost scene which, as Cibber chronicles, “he open'd with a pause of mute amazement then, rising slowly, to a solemn, trembling voice, he made the Ghost equally terrible to the spectator, as to himself and in the descriptive part of the natural emotions which the ghastly vision gave him, the boldness of his expostulation was still govern’d by decency, manly, but not braving ; his voice never rising into that seeming outrage, or wild defiance of what he naturally rever'd.” I j 66 SHARESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. Garrick acted Hamlet for the first time in Dublin, in the summer season of 1742, being then in the twenty-sixth year of his age, and the first flush of his success on the stage. Peg Woffington was his Ophelia. So great was the excitement aroused by him in the Irish capital that the citizens were affected with what was known as the “Garrick fever.” Here, also, he received for the first time the name of Roscius. On returning to London he repeated his impersonation and scored another success. Garrick, like Betterton, made his greatest effect in the scenes with the Ghost. When he first saw the vision, the fear with which he seemed to be filled immediately communicated itself to his audience. His ex- postulations, though warm and imperative, were yet restrained by a filial awe. The progress of his impassioned sensation, until the Ghost beckoned him to retire, was accompanied with an admirable mixture of terror and reverence. His resolution to obey the repeated invitation, by “courteous action,” of the Ghost to withdraw was determinate, but his following of the vision withal was full of awe and apprehension. When Garrick left the stage after Hamlet’s first scene with the Ghost, the deafen- ing applause of the audience continued until the impressive reappearance of the two characters. The great excellence of his Hamlet, as of all the characters he impersonated, proceeded from the manner in which he preserved the consistency of his part. His Hamlet was distinguished throughout the play by the note of filial piety struck in the first scene with the Ghost—a characteristic sign, of which the actor never lost sight. The soliloquies of Hamlet, so distinguished by their indications of the peculiar and pathetic feelings of the mind, and their varieties of sentiment, were delivered by Garrick with incomparable effect. The strong intelligence of his eye, the animated expression of his whole countenance, the flexibility of his voice, and his spirited action rivetted the attention of his audience. According to his biographer, Thomas Davies, he most excelled in the speech at the end of the second act: “Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I ?” His final exhortation to his mother, in the closet scene, was ardent and pathetic. In this scene, however, Roscius was excelled by Wilks and Spranger Barry. Passing over the Hamlet of the Bath Roscius, John Henderson, and that of G. F. Cooke, who failed dismally in the part, we come to the Hamlet of J. P. Kemble. He made his first appearance at Drury Lane on September 30th, 1783, in this character, when the curious announcement was made that the tragedy would be performed as it was written by Shakespeare. Necessarily, much of the lengthy original had to be omitted, but many absurdities which had gradually been en- grafted on the piece were then done away with. The fierceness and variety of the criticism brought about by this performance denote that, at least, an original actor had been found in Kemble. His novel readings of the text were severely commented upon, while the utmost objection that one critic could urge was that the actor was “too scrupulously graceful.” Hazlitt at first complained of a want of flexibility in the interpretation. “There is,” he wrote, “a perpetual undulation of feeling in the character of Hamlet, but in Mr. Kemble’s acting HAMILE T. 67 there was neither variableness nor the shadow of turning. He played it like a man in armour, with a determined inveteracy of purpose, in one undeviating straight line.” But Kemble improved in his acting as he grew older, and, later on, Hazlitt found much to admire in his Hamlet: “There he was, the sweet, the graceful, the gentlemanly Hamlet. The scholar’s eye shone in him with learned beauty; the soldier's spirit decorated his person; the beauty of his performance was its retrospective air, its intensity and abstraction; his youth seemed delivered over to sorrow. Later actors have played the part with more energy, walked more in the sun, dashed more at effect—piqued themselves more on the girth of a foil; but Kemble’s sensible, lonely Hamlet has not been surpassed.” When Dr. Doran wrote, there were still alive old playgoers who told him of a grand delivery by Kemble of the soliloquies; a mingled romance and philosophy in the whole character; an eloquent by-play, a sweet reverence for his father, a remembrance of the prince with whatever companion he might be for the moment, of a beautiful affection for his mother, and of one more tender, which he could not conceal, for Ophelia. Kemble's brother, Stephen, who occasionally played Hamlet for his benefit, was better suited in Falstaff which he played without padding, nature having provided him with so corpulent a frame that padding was not needed by him. Charles Kemble made his best success in Hamlet by the tenderness and depth of feeling displayed by Hamlet in the scene where Ophelia tenders him back his presents to her— the same scene chosen by our artist for his illustration of the play. Another noted Hamlet of this period was Charles Mayne Young (1777–1856), who belonged to the Kemble school of acting, though he possessed more natural feeling and anima- tion of style than the Kembles. His chief hits as Hamlet were made in the play scene, and in the fencing scene in the last act, where his nature was better suited than in the scenes with Ophelia and his mother. These lacked tenderness, and were given with a great show of irritability that was bad in contrast with the pathos and tenderness of previous Hamlets in them. And the lines, “Ah! who would fardels bear?”—“Give me the man that is not passion’s slave ”—“What a piece of work is man ” were delivered with undue passion and warmth. Young’s Hamlet was fiery and impetuous, but the actor maintained his position in the character during the twenty-five years he was on the London stage. When he retired, Mathews played Polonius, and Macready the Ghost, to his Hamlet. Kean appeared as Hamlet at Drury Lane, on March 12th, 1814, two months after his great hit as Shylock. He always considered Hamlet one of his best imperso- nations, although it is not to be ranked either with his Othello or his Shylock. His grace and earnestness throughout, and the tender tones of his voice when he addressed the Ghost, were especially noted in his performance. His general impersonation was marked by his tenderness for Ophelia, affection for his mother, a reverent awe of his father's spirit, and a determined resolution to accomplish the mission accorded him by that spirit. His kissing of Ophelia's hand was con- sidered by Hazlitt the finest commentary that was ever made on Shakespeare. It 6S SHAKE SPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. at once explained the character as one of disappointed hope, of bitter regret, of affection suspended, but not obliterated, by the distractions of the scene sur- rounding him. The force and animation which he gave vent to in the play scene also drew the highest praise from the same writer. “Its extreme boldness “bordered on the verge of all we hate,’ and the effect it produced was a test of the extraordinary powers of this extraordinary actor.” - : Macready represented Hamlet, for the first time in London, at Covent Garden, on June 8th, 1821. His Hamlet was studied and painfully correct. He succeeded most in those parts of the play where action and passion are appropriate : in the more subtle and refined passages he was cold and uninteresting. He appeared |to best advantage in the play scene, which he invariably acted with power, ; but he scolded Ophelia and ranted at his mother. Moreover, he was altogether too lachrymose and fretful, too fond of using a cambric pocket-handkerchief, to be really affecting. It is a singular proof of the popularity of “Hamlet” that during Macready’s visit to America, no play drew such large audiences as this tragedy. - The Hamlet of the elder Booth was a splendidly irregular, fitful, passionate performance. That of Charles Kean was careful, polished, and generally efficient. It was a skilful, energetic interpretation of the character, undeformed by any marked blemish to mar its general good effect. But the actor was occasionally effeminate, and the extreme slowness of his enunciation threatened, more than once, to draw down upon him disapprobation. His delivery of the soliloquies was pain- fully slow. He made no impression in the famous “To be, or not to be * speech. His greatest effect was made by his exclamation, “Is it the King P” in the closet scene after Hamlet has killed Polonius. But his death scene was needlessly protracted and painful. He threw no new light upon either the play or the character of Hamlet. His performance was a melodramatic rather than a Shakespearean One. - It may be added that in the dramatic performances given before Queen Victoria and the Royal Family at Windsor Castle, in 1848–9, under the direc- tion of Charles Kean, “Hamlet ’’ was one of the two Shakespearean plays pre- sented, “The Merchant of Venice” being the other. - Of the impersonation of Hamlet by other noted actors, there is not space to speak here. The mere enumeration of their names would occupy more room than can be accorded to them in this essay. I can but mention the elder and the younger Booth in the character, the flaxen-haired Dane of Charles Fechter, and of the impetuous, youthful Hamlet represented, in 1884, by Wilson Barrett. And it can only be barely recorded that the most tender, most thoughtful, and most human Hamlet the stage has ever known, appeared at the Lyceum Theatre, on October 31st, 1874, in the person of Henry Irving. - º º º º - º º - - - 69 MEASURE FOR MEASURE. THIS piece takes its name from punishment, though its true significance is the triumph of mercy over strict justice. Its most beautiful character is that of Isabella, who, on the point of taking the veil, returns to the world and the corrupt surroundings of Vienna, where the scene of the action is laid, in order to save her brother from the death to which he had been condemned by the Duke's stern deputy, Angelo, for having seduced his mistress before marriage. The two finest scenes in the play are the scene in which Angelo, hitherto cold and unbending, is won by the charms of Isabella, and offers to spare her brother’s life, on condition of her consenting to that very breach of the law for which her brother is condemned to death, and Isabella’s interview with Claudio, where the brother first of all applauds his sister's conduct, and then, overcome by a craven fear of death, beseeches her to consent to dishonour in order that his wretched life may be spared. Out of all this matter, unfit for most maidens’ minds, and out of the plot by which Angelo is made to marry Mariana of “the moated Grange,” Isabella comes untainted, her girlish innocence and purity unblemished, a rare and beautiful example of the matchless loveliness of maidenhood. Claudio is a weak and worth- less character: having wronged one woman and merited death by the law of the land for so doing, he seeks to obtain pardon for his crime at the sacrifice of his sister's honour. The corrupt deputy, Angelo, is little better than Claudio. Betrothed to Mariana, he instantly “swallowed his vows whole, pretending in her discoveries of dishonour,” on learning that her marriage dowry was lost; and then, being placed in high office, he abuses his power in order to gratify his passion. Even the Duke is not a very exalted or noble character. He has no strength of will, and is content to watch the world as it goes and to seek to govern his people by indirect measures. He acts the part of the Monk very naturally, and is content to spy upon his people, and, in the end, to pacify and forgive them one and all, the slanderous-tongued, frivolous Lucio not excluded. Schlegel, in his notice of this play, finds it “deserving of remark that Shakespeare, amidst the rancour of religious parties, takes a delight in repre- senting the influence of a monk, and always paints his influence as beneficial. We find in him none of the black and knavish monks, which an enthusiasm for Protestantism, rather than poetical inspiration, has suggested to some of Our modern poets. Shakespeare merely gives his monks an inclination to busy them- selves in the affairs of others, after renouncing the world for themselves; but with regard to pious frauds, he does not represent them as being very scrupulous. Such are the parts acted by the monks in “Romeo and Juliet' and “Much Ado About Nothing,’ and even by the Duke whom, contrary to the well-known proverb, 70 SHARESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. the cowl seems really to make a monk.” Shakespeare took his story from an old play called “Promos and Cassandra,” by George Whetstone, written in 1578, the probable source of which was Giraldi Cinthio's novel, “Hecatommithi.” “Measure for Measure; or, Beauty the Best Advocate,” an indifferent alteration of Shakespeare’s play, was produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1700, and, in 1803, J. P. Kemble published an acting version of the play. “Measure for Measure” is rarely played, and then only by an actress desirous of distinguishing herself as Isabella. It was in this part that Mrs. Siddons made her first success in a Shakespearean character in London. Her Isabella in “The Fatal Marriage” had won her great admiration, but surly critics prophesied a failure in the Isabella of Shakespeare. The scepticism as to her merits was ended on November 3rd, 1783, when “Measure for Measure” was presented at Drury Lane with the principal parts cast as follows: Duke, Smith; Angelo, Palmer; Claudio, Brereton; Lucio, Lee Lewes ; Clown, Parsons; Escalus, Aickin; and Mariana, Mrs. Ward. Mrs. Siddons’ success as Isabella marked an important epoch in her life, not only because it silenced the great actress's detractors, but because it united her name with that of Shakespeare in the most purely religious of his characters. Mrs. Siddons looked the novice of St. Clare perfectly. The simplicity of her dress might be described; not so, however, the simplicity of her demeanour, which brought the expression of lofty feelings in close succession to meekness, and made Isabella’s sternness towards her brother as becoming as her former simplicity and sisterly suavity. - - Miss Neilson appeared as Isabella, a character which she had previously acted in the United States, in April, 1876, at the Haymarket Theatre. “Measure for Measure” was then a novelty in London, for it had not been acted in the metropolis for nearly a quarter of a century preceding. On its first representation an enthusiasm was shown which was a direct compliment to the acting of all concerned in it. The Isabella of Miss Neilson was particularly admired, and at the conclusion of the prison scene the actress was called before the curtain three times and literally pelted with bouquets. “So highly intelligent and carefully studied a performance really deserved some eloquent and marked praise,” wrote a critic of the first performance, “and it is certain that our stage is not so rich in actresses capable of attempting Isabella that we can afford to dilute the success with many doubts as to the soundness of the verdict. . . . Isabella has been prettily sketched if not boldly painted. . . . If at any time it is urged that Miss Neilson’s Isabella is interesting rather than powerful, graceful rather than intense, unequal in sustained strength, and occasionally, as in the last act, inclined to fade and wane instead of burning brightly with a clear and undimmed light, it must be remembered that the actress still shows traces of exhaustion and prostration from illness, and that the Isabella comes after many representations of Juliet and Anne Boleyn.” Miss Neilson’s Isabella naturally ripened into an admirable performance after the first Haymarket night. · ſae · |× №. · ſae §. -- E- --- - - - -- 71 KING LEAR. SHAKESPEARE took the story of King Lear and his daughters from that useful source, Holinshed’s “Chronicle.” It is just possible that he may also have found a few hints for his tragedy in an old play, “The True Chronicle Historie of King Leir.” In both Holinshed and the latter, the army of Lear and his French allies is victorious, and Lear is reinstated in his kingdom. It is further related by Holinshed that, after Lear's death, Cordelia's two nephews waged war against her and took her prisoner, when, “being a woman of a manly courage, and despairing to recover liberty,’” she slew herself. Readers of Shakespeare are familiar with the terrible ending of the play, as now presented, of Lear’s rushing forth with the dead body of the murdered Cordelia in his arms— “A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all ! I might have saved her; now she's gone for ever ! —the incident so rendered pictured in the late Val Bromley’s picture of the play— and of his grand, pathetic death. Upon the story of Lear, Shakespeare engrafted that of Gloster and his two sons. An episode of Sir Philip Sidney’s “Arcadia.” supplied characters and incidents for this portion of the play—Sidney’s blind king of Paphlagonia corresponding to the Gloster of Shakespeare. Here, too, the story had a happy ending, the Paphlagonian king being restored to the throne. The date of Shakespeare's play is 1605 or 1606. It was entered at Stationers' Hall on November 26th, 1607, “as it was plaid before the King’s Majesty at Whitehall upon S. Stephen's night, in Chrismas Hollidaies,” namely, December 26th, 1606. Professor Edward Dowden beautifully says of this play that in it “good and evil are clearly severed from one another—more so than in “Macbeth or ‘ Othello’—and, at the last,/goodness, if we judge merely by external fortune, would seem to be, if not defeated, at least not triumphant. Shakespeare has dared, while paying little regard to historical verisimilitude, to represent the most solemn and awful mysteries of life as they actually are, without attempting to offer a ready-made explanation of them. Cordelia, dies strangled in prison ; yet we know that her devotion of love was not misspent. Lear dies in an agony of grief; yet he has been delivered from his pride and passionate wilfulness; |he has found that, instead of being a master, at whose nod all things must bow, he is weak and helpless, a sport even of the wind and the rain; his ignorance of true love, and pleasure in false professions of love, have given place to an agonised clinging to the love which is real, deep, and tranquil, because of its fulness. Lear is the greatest sufferer in Shakespeare’s plays. Though so old, he has strength which makes him a subject for prolonged and vast agony; and patience is unknown to 72 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. him. \The elements seem to have conspired against him with his unnatural daughters : the upheaval of the moral world, and the rage of the tempest in the air, seem to be parts of the same gigantic convulsion. In the midst of this tempest wanders unhoused the white-haired Lear; while his Fool—most pathetic of all the minor characters of Shakespeare—jests, half-wildly, half-coherently, half- bitterly, half-tenderly, and always with a sad remembrance of the happier past. Everywhere throughout the play, Shakespeare’s imaginative daring im- presses us. Nothing in poetry is bolder or more wonderful than the scene on the night of the tempest in the hovel where the king, whose intellect has now given way, is in company with Edgar, assuming madness, the Fool, with his forced and pathetic mirth, and Kent.” One of the most audacious and absurd adaptations of Shakespeare ever perpetrated was that of his “King Lear” made in 1681, by Nahum Tate, and acted at the Duke’s Theatre. In his dedication to Thomas Boteler, Mr. Tate ingenuously remarks: “I found that the new modelling of this story would force me sometimes on the difficult task of making the chiefest persons speak something like their character, on matter whereof I had no ground in my author. I found the whole to answer your account of it: a heap of jewels unstrung and unpolished, yet so dazzling in their disorder, that I soon perceived I had found a treasure.” Mr. Tate adds that it was his good fortune to light upon one expedient to rectify what was wanting in the regularity and probability of the tale. This “expedient’’ was the total eclipse of the Fool, who was forthwith cut out of the play. With the main story of the play Tate also interwove an under-plot dealing with the loves of Edgar and Cordelia, and he also altered the catastrophe by making Lear and Cordelia survive, with every prospect of becoming happy! Tate did not altogether escape censure for his mutilation of Shakespeare, concerning which Addison wrote : “‘King Lear’ is an admirable tragedy of its kind, as Shakespeare wrote it; but as it is reformed, according to the chimerical motion of poetical justice, in my opinion it has lost half its beauty.” Yet, despite its obvious defects, Tate's version of “King Lear” survived until comparatively recently. Betterton, Barton Booth, James Quin, Garrick, Spranger Barry, Kemble, Junius Brutus Booth, and Edmund Rean played in it. Lear was a favourite part of the last-named actor, who used to say that “he was very much obliged to the London audiences for their good opinion of him, but that, when they came to see him over the dead body of Cordelia, they would have quite a different motion of that matter.” As it happened, when he first played Lear in London, the audience had no opportunity of seeing him over the dead body of Cordelia, for he acted Tate's Lear, not Shakespeare's. Macready was the first actor to abolish Nahum Tate, and to play “King Lear” in the original text. His example was followed by Samuel Phelps and Charles Kean. In the season of 1755–6, Garrick and Barry played against each other in “King Lear,” Barry coming off but second in the contest this time. Mrs. Cibber was Garrick's Cordelia, Miss Rossiter acting the part to Barry's King. The latter KING LEAR. 73 player was dignified, pathetic, and impressive, but unequal. He failed in the mad scenes, which were over-acted by him, and in which Garrick excelled. Here, Garrick was sublime, natural, and affecting, without rant, violence, or grimacing. The weak, broken-down, but still royal, old man, was there : slow of emotion, vague of look, uncertain, forgetful of all things save the cruelty of his daughters. It was said of Barry as Lear that he was “every inch a king; ” of Garrick, that he was “every inch King Lear.” The wits of the time made the following epigram on the rival actors:– “The town has found out diff'rent ways, To praise the diff'rent Lears To Barry they give loud huzzas , To Garrick—only tears!” Garrick thus applauded, the followers of Barry were not to be outdone, as witness this praise of their friend :— “Critics attend and judge the rival Lears; While each commands applause, and each your tears. Then own this truth: Well he performs his part Who touches, even Garrick—to the heart.” The following season, Garrick ventured to introduce more of Shakespeare, and to do with less of Tate in “King Lear,” but he still kept the Fool out of the play. The chroniclers of stage affairs in the last century encouraged Tate at the expense of Shakespeare. “One situation of his,” writes a critic, “is particularly affecting: where the scene opens and discovers Lear with his head on Cordelia's lap, and the Ring, in his sleep, attacking the forces of his enemy. The bringing that action forward to the audience, which is only related in the old play, of Lear’s killing the two soldiers employed to murder him and Cordelia, is a circumstance that gives pleasure and exultation to the spectators. The half-breathing and panting of Garrick, with a look and action which confessed the infirmity of old age, greatly heightened the picture. To speak in Shakespeare’s phrase, this incident will be ‘locked in the memory' of those who have the pleasure to remember it. Barry, in this scene, was a lively copy of Garrick’s manner, and had the superior advantage of a more important figure. Who could possibly think of depriving an audience, almost exhausted with the feelings of so many terrible scenes, of the inexpressible delight which they enjoyed when the old King, in rapture, cried out, ‘ Old Lear shall be a king again l’” Who indeed? In the latter scene, Barton Booth, thanks to the full tones of his voice and the admirable manner with which he harmonised his words, was inimitably expressive. He made the character less terrible than Garrick. The latter got more thoroughly inside the part, and expressed the various passions of the character with such truth and energy that he invariably thrilled and delighted his audience. Undoubtedly he was the greatest representative of King Lear in the eighteenth century. - J | - ſ 74 SHAKESPEAREAN. SCENES AND CHARACTERS. Rean was not at his best as Lear. Almost the only passage in which he moved |his audience was in Lear’s interview with Cordelia, after he awakes from sleep, and has been restored to his senses — “Pray, do not mock me : I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward, not an hour more, nor less; And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks, I should know you, and know this man; Yet I am doubtful, for I am mainly ignorant What place is this; and all the skill I have Remembers not these garments; nor I know not Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me; For, as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia. Cordelia. And so I am; I am.” In uttering the last words, Kean staggered faintly into Cordelia’s arms, and his sobs of tenderness, commingled with his ecstasy of joy, drew streaming tears from the brightest eyes, - “Which sacred pity had engender'd there.” i The greatest Lear of the American stage was Edwin Forrest. In this part, i he was absolutely true to nature, and secured a triumph, thanks to an utter absence of mannerism, of affectation, of noisy declamation, and of striving after effect. The curse was powerfully and impressively delivered by him, and invariably drew thunders of applause from the audience. Another famous Lear of America is Edwin Booth. Lawrence Barrett and the late John McCullough have also appeared as King Lear. | Ernesto Rossi, to whom belongs the high honour of having made Shakespeare's principal tragedies known to the Italian public, has given singularly fine and thoughtful impersonations of Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. But his chief achievement as a Shakespearean actor is unquestionably his rendering of Lear, | at once the most powerful and pathetic interpretation of that onerous part which has yet been put forward by any tragedian—no matter of what nationality— since Macready’s retirement from the stage. Rossi’s Lear is a robust and ) masterful greybeard, proud, vain, and irascible, but deeply loving and intensely truthful—a kindly despot, capable of the careless cruelty that unrestricted and irresponsible power is apt to suggest to even generous natures. Under thick layers of self-consciousness and high temper lies a rich stratum of human kindness. Rossi indicates to his audience with extraordinary subtlety the contrasting cha- racteristics of the old King’s intellectual and psychical peculiarities—his naif. | almost childlike credulity and obstimacy of conviction; his womanly craving for | affection and his ungovernable fierceness; his infinite capacity for forgiveness and ! unappeasable vengefulness. Throughout the mad scenes, Rossi is never for a moment grotesque, but frequently intensely pathetic. In a word, his Lear is a masterly conception, every detail of which is carried out with supreme intelligence. - B - U - P ------ ºl- ----- - R & N JO) (CALIPG(U Jºº ſº a tº Caesar ºewe º are ºeyº º ºse. º º A &o ºr ºeº- --- º- - --> ----- -a----------------- 75 JULIUS CAESAR. THIs play suffers from the falling off of the action, hence it has not latterly been popular on the stage. Nothing could be more impressive than the first entrance of Julius Caesar attired in festal robes, when the music ceases, and all are silent while he speaks the few words which are regarded as Oracles. The conspiracy, with its stolen interviews in the dead of night, is admirably and impressively contrived, while the confused gathering of the conspirators before the assassination of Caesar, and the funeral procession and Mark Antony's oration are drawn with masterly skill. Thereafter, the action progresses slowly, though the character of Antony, “the noblest Roman of them all,” is sufficient to greatly atone for this defect. “His life was gentle; and the elements So mixed in him that Nature might stand up, And say to all the world, ‘This was a man l’” In the early days of the stage, “Julius Caesar’’ was frequently acted. In 1719, the play, as it was acted at Drury Lane, was published, “written originally by Shakes- peare, altered by Sir William Davenant and John Dryden.” Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, made two plays on the subject, one called “Julius Caesar,” the other “Marcus Brutus.” They are both indifferent works and were never acted. “Julius Caesar” was one of the three plays acted by the King's company during their first season at Drury Lane, in the summer of 1663, “Othello '' and “King Henry IV.” being the others. Major Mohun was Cassius, Hart Brutus, and Kynaston Antony. Mohun and Hart were celebrated actors of their day, and they were eminent as Cassius and Brutus respectively. Charles II. said that Mohun (whose name was pronounced Moon) “shone like the sun,” and “Hart like the moon.” The old critic, Rymer, in alluding to Hart, wrote that the eyes of the audience were prepossessed and charmed by his action, before aught of the poet reached their ears, and to the most wretched of characters he imparted a lustre which so dazzled the sight that the imperfections of author were unnoticed. Mohun excelled in the spirit and passion of tragic parts. He was particularly remarkable for his graceful deportment and his dignified manner of treading the stage. He won the praise of the Earl of Rochester, who reproached the comedians of the Duke's company for their vain attempts to ape his excellences, and for ridiculing his defects, the result of old age and infirmity:— “Yet there are they who durst expose the age Of the great wonder of the English stage, Whom Nature seem'd to form for your delight, And bade him speak, as she bade Shakespeare write; 76 |SIIAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. These blades, indeed, are cripples in their art, Mimic the foot, but not the speaking part, Let them the Traitor or Wolpone try : 3% :}; :}; #: Could they Rage like Cethegus, or like Cassius die P” Upon the union of the King's and the Duke of York’s companies, in 1682, Hart and | Mohun acted no more. “Julius Caesar’’ was played at this date with Betterton as Brutus, William Smith as Cassius, and Kynaston as Mark Antony. \ Robert Wilks (1670–1732) and Spranger Barry were famous Mark Antonys. |They were naturally both at their best in the oration over the body of the mur- : dered Caesar, though neither attained perfection in it. Wilks was easy and elegant, but his voice wanted that fulness and variety requisite to impress the sentiments and pathos with which the speech abounds. Barry’s fine person and pleasing manner made him specially suited to the character, but in recitation his utter- ance was not sufficiently sonorous, nor his voice flexible enough, to express the full meaning of the opening part of the speech. But when roused by passion, Barry excelled all speakers, consequently the conclusion of the oration, as he delivered it, was as warm and glowing as the commencement was cold and inefficient. Both these players were outstripped in Mark Antony by William Millward (— 1741), whose powers were perfectly adapted to this part. He rejoiced in a voice of exquisite beauty, and frequently sacrificed sense for the sake of sound. | But as Antony he appeared to great advantage; his personal appearance was good, his action and address were easy, and his deportment was graceful. He opened the preparatory part of the oration in a low, but distinct, audible voice, gradually rising to such a height as not only to inflame the populace on the stage, but to arouse his audience in the theatre to enthusiastic applause. When he uttered the lines:— - d “But were I Brutus, And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue In every wound of Caesar that should move The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.” the enthusiasm of the spectators knew no bounds. Garrick once thought of playing Casca, but for fear of swelling the consequence of Quin as Brutus, or from some other cause, he never carried out his intention, nor was the tragedy ever revived under his management. The elder Booth frequently acted Cassius. He appeared in this part, under the management of Elliston, at Drury Lane, in the autumn of 1820, with James W. Wallack as Brutus, and John Cooper as Antony. An interesting revival of the play was given at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York, on November 25th, 1864, with the three brothers Booth in the tragedy Brutus, and John Wilkes as Antony. Junius Brutus as Cassius, Edwin as ---- --- --- - ------------ 77 LOWE'S LABOUR 'S LOST. THIS is another of the lesser known and unacted plays of Shakespeare. It is too slight a work for the stage; and it is fantastical rather than interesting. It is one of the dramatist’s earliest works—a fact which is sufficiently attested by its frequent play upon words, and the sketchy and unsatisfactory nature of some of its characters, as, for instance, the fantastic Spaniard, Don Adriano de Armado, and the pedantic curate, Sir Nathaniel, and the priggish school- master, Holofermes. Again, the love interest is light, and the Princess and her companions fail to make much impression. Yet the object of the comedy is to show the futility of striving to turn one’s face from woman’s looks unto the dry subject of study. The young King of Navarre, and his three attendants, Biron, Longaville, and Dumaine, have entered into a compact with each other to study together at Navarre for three years, fasting one day in the week, and speaking to no woman. Their resolutions are speedily shattered by the arrival, on a diplomatic mis- sion, of the beautiful Princess of France and her train. Cupid is soon busy, and the King falls in love with the Princess, while his friends become enamoured of her companions. Each man fears to let his secret be known, so he betakes himself to making sonmets to his lady, and despatching lovelorn epistles to the object of his affection. One of these missives falls into the hands of the priggish schoolmaster, who sends it on to the King. It is Biron’s message; and the state of affairs becoming thus known, King and courtiers resolve to woo and win the ladies. But the latter, after the manner of their sex, are a little piqued at their lovers having held aloof, and, being warned that they come in disguise to woo them, also disguise themselves, so that the lovers whisper fond words in the wrong ears. In the end, the men win the women, though not with- out being saddled with a penance for their misdeeds. The King’s grace “is per- jured much, full of dear guiltiness,” therefore he is sent to stay in solitude until “the twelve celestial signs have brought about their annual reckoning” before he can come to claim the hand of the Princess. The King’s followers are doomed to wait a similar time; poor, witty, mocking, flouting Biron being condemned to “visit the speechless sick,” and “converse with groaning wretches,” trying “with all the fierce endeavour’ of his wit “to enforce the pained impotent to smile.” The best drawn character in the comedy is Biron. He it is who points out to the King the foolishmess and impracticability of their resolve to abjure female society, and he it is who is first entrapped in loving. “Love is a familiar: Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love,” he says petulantly. He is a manly, straightforward, honest fellow, and he consequently loves more deeply 78 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. than his weaker, milk-and-water companions. He is the first to defend the cause of love, and he does it bravely and beautifully when his verses to Rosaline are discovered. He says:– “love, first learned in a lady's eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain; But, with the motion of all elements, Courses as swift as thought in every power, And gives to every power a double power, Above their functions and their offices. It adds a precious seeing to the eye; A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind; A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound, When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd: Love's feeling is more soft and sensible Than are the tender horns of cockled snails: Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste : For valour, is not love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides P Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical, As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair: And, when Love speaks, the voices of all the gods Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.” But for Biron’s love, his “ day would turn to night,” and there is much satire in making him so deeply affected by the tender passion. He in love, forsooth ! he that has been love’s scourge, - “A very beadle to a humorous sigh; A critic, nay, a night-watch constable; A domineering pedant o'er the boy, Than whom no mortal so magnificent.” The other characters are insignificant beside Biron. The King and his other courtiers and the ladies are exceedingly mild personages of little intellectua worth; Armado is a grotesque excrescence, nor do Sir Nathaniel and Holofernes properly belong to the comedy, and Jaquenetta is merely a country wench of no great consequence. Shakespeare evidently did not care to prevent a cloud from dulling the sunshine of his comedy, and in “Love's Labour 's Lost,” he brought sadness to the merry-makers after their love-games and masquerading by the news of the death of the King, the Princess's father. Coleridge says that what Shakespeare wrote in this play “is of his earliest manner, having the all-pervading sweetness which he never lost, and that extreme condensation which makes the couplets fall into epigrams, as in the “Venus and Adonis,’ and the ‘Rape of Lucrece.” In the drama, alone, as Shakespeare soon found out, could the sublime poet and profound philosopher find the conditions of a compromise. In the ‘Love's Labour 's Lost,’ there are many faint sketches of some of his vigorous portraits in after life, as, for example, in particular, of ‘Benedick and Beatrice.’” By the latter remark, Coleridge of course meant that Biron and Rosaline were the predecessors of Benedick and Beatrice. ¿ |--------- |-------- E. Goºsººg scº Jº (0) IP A Tº R. A. NT (0) N. Y. &s (C. L. A. - ozze of the 272 races ºld tº at ts won and lost, Gºve ºne a lºss. § § |-… • |-S |-： § § § ：|- § （ ） • 3 • §S º （ 8 *: < …-- ĶĪ （ ， |× > ∞ ſ. ： · --- - - - - 79 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. ALTHOUGH Coleridge thought “Antony and Cleopatra, ’’ “by far the most wonder- ful” of Shakespeare's historical plays, and a formidable rival of “Macbeth,” “Ring Lear,” “Hamlet,” and “Othello,” it was not brought prominently before the public until Garrick revived it little more than a century and a quarter ago. Other plays on the same subject were, however, seen on the stage. The “Antony and Cleopatra, ’’ of Sir Charles Sedley—acted at the Duke's Theatre in 1677—was a feeble following of Shakespeare, and secured no success; but a better fate was accorded to Dryden’s “All for Love; or, the World Well Lost,” the plot and design of which were borrowed from Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra.” First produced at the King’s Theatre in 1678, it long enjoyed public favour. It is the dramatic masterpiece of Dryden, who said of it that “it was the only play he wrote for himself: the rest were given to the people.” “It is by universal consent,” said Dr. Johnson, “accounted the work in which he has admitted the fewest improprieties of style or character.” Barton Booth’s dignified action and forcible elocution attracted the public in the character of Dryden’s Antony. Booth had the advantage of being supported by an admirable Cleopatra in the person of Ann Oldfield who, to a powerful but harmonious voice, and a commanding personal appearance, added grace and elegance of gesture. Elizabeth Barry (1658–1713) was also a famous Cleopatra. Garrick restored Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra’ to the stage in 1758, when the tragedy underwent alteration and revision at the hands of Garrick and Edward Capell, a Shakespeare commentator. The play was handsomely mounted, but it failed to secure approbation, and was withdrawn after six representations. Garrick’s person, it is to be feared, was scarcely commanding enough for Antony, and Mrs. Yates, afterwards the celebrated tragic actress, was then young, and not sufficiently experienced to represent Cleopatra, while Mossop, as Enobarbus, lacked humour, which is the essential qualification for the part. The tragedy did not reappear till 1813, and then only in an adapted form, Dryden and Shakespeare being freely mixed together in a version which was ascribed to Kemble. Young was the Antony, and Cleopatra was played by a second-rate actress, Mrs. Siddons having declined the part for the prudish ) reason “that she should hate herself if she were to play it as she thought it should be played.” Macready represented Antony at Drury Lane in 1833, but his version contained many passages from Dryden. The original text was restored to the stage on October 22nd, 1849, when Samuel Phelps revived the tragedy at Sadler's Wells with extraordinary liberality and good taste. The representation was most successful, Miss Isabel Glyn winning much applause as Cleopatra. 80 SFIAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. Miss Glyn, indeed, appears to have been the only actress of this century who has excelled in the character of Cleopatra. The variety and fascination of the “serpent of old Nile ” were admirably brought out by her. The caprice, the grace, the pride of the famous charmer, were exhibited with a power which exceeded expectation. Indeed, the entire character was decisively and forcibly illustrated, and richly coloured. Those parts in which dignity and anger had to be expressed—such as the interview with the messenger after Antony’s second marriage—were given with a vehemence and power corresponding to the language which she was called upon to deliver. But it was in the fifth act, when Cleopatra is preparing for death, that the better phases of the character, and the more refined parts of the action, testified to the fitness of the actress for this assumption. Indignant majesty, compulsory resignation, heroic resolve, and tender memory, were all excellently expressed by her. Her death scene was a triumph of art. “Antony and Cleopatra, ’’ was afterwards occasionally produced during Miss Glyn’s engagements at other London theatres; but it was not again revived on any important scale until Mr. F. B. Chatterton produced it at Drury Lane in September, 1873, with James R. Anderson as Antony, and Miss Wallis as Cleo- patra. The lessee expressed a conviction, founded upon seven years’ experience as a theatrical manager, that “a play to be acceptable to all classes in a large theatre must appeal to the eye and the senses as well as the understanding; that the action must be accompanied by spectacle, and the play itself must be adapted to the dramatic fashion of the time in which we live.” The tragedy was accordingly operated upon by the late Andrew Halliday, who reduced it to about one half of its original length, and made it into four acts. Pantomime scenes were introduced, realising the description of Cleopatra's voyage in her burnished barge on the Cydnus, and introducing a Roman festival with proces- sions of Amazons, ballets, and songs of boys in honour of the nuptials of Antony and Cleopatra. And the battle of Actium, with the defeat of Caesar by the combined fleets of Antony and Cleopatra, was depicted with extraordinary ami- mation and completeness. The poetry of the play was mercilessly sacrificed in order to make way for scenic effect. “However,” the late Dutton Cook suggestively observed, “it seems the tragedy was to be presented on these terms or not at all. The spectators readily accepted Mr. Chatterton’s conditions, and ‘Antony and Cleopatra ' ruthlessly ‘docked * but gorgeously adorned, was welcomed with extraordinary applause.” “This is a very noble play,” says Hazlitt. “Though not in the first class of Shakespeare’s productions, it stands next to them, and is, we think, the finest of his historical plays, that is, of those in which he made poetry the organ of history, and assured a certain tone of character and sentiment, in conformity to known facts, instead of trusting to his observations of general nature or to the unlimited indulgence of his own fancy.” Aº º º º Jº J. Mſ (0) N () Jº A T G JE N. S. Hatº worthy Zºzozº.” Jºzº late ºodle ºaster ºve , ºce lºved to see two hoºt ºver-2 ---------- - assell & Company Limº 81 TIMON OF ATHENS. THIS is the most purely satirical of all Shakespeare's works. It contains some of the finest pieces of invective conceivable, both in the snarling, captious answer of the critic, Apemantus, and in the impassioned and terrible invectives of Timon against the ingratitude of men. “The latter,” says Hazlitt, “remind the reader of the force and swelling impetuosity of the moral declamations of Juvenal, while the former have all the keenness and caustic severity of the Stoic philoso- phers. The soul of Diogenes appears to have been seated on the lips of Apemantus. The churlish profession of misanthropy in the cynic is contrasted with the profound feeling of it in Timon, and also in the soldier-like and deter- mined resentment of Alcibiades against his countrymen who have banished him, although this forms only an incidental episode in the tragedy.” - The story is simply treated and definitely divided. In the first act the joyous life of Timon, his princely and hospitable extravagance towards a crowd of flatterers, poets, painters, lords and ladies, who “Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear, Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him Drink the free air.” are graphically depicted; in the second and third acts we are shown Timon's embarrassment, and the trial which he makes of his supposed friends, who all desert him in the hour of need; and in the fourth and fifth acts Timon’s flight to the woods, his misanthropical melancholy, his interview with the fawning poet and painter—as seen in our illustration—his digging his own grave, and the final resting of his body by the sea. Alcibiades, after reading his epitaph, says of him :- y “These well express in thee thy latter spirits: Though thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs, Scorn’dst our brain’s flow and those our droplets which From niggard nature fall; yet rich conceit Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye On thy low grave; ” thus “making the winds his funeral dirge, his mourner the murmuring ocean; and seeking in the everlasting solemnities of nature, oblivion of the transitory splendour of his life-time.” The hollow friendship of the Athenian lords, their evasive answers, their smooth professions and gross ingratitude, are admirably expressed. Nor does the lurking selfishness of Apemantus pass undetected amidst the coarseness of his sarcasms and his contempt for the pretensions of others. An exception to the general picture of depravity and ingratitude exhibited in this EC 82 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. play, is found in the old and honest steward, Flavius, to whom Timon pays a just tribute of tenderness. It is noteworthy that this play is absolutely devoid of female interest, all the characters even belonging to the male sex, with the exception of two women, mistresses of Alcibiades, who have no connection with the plot. There have been four versions of “Timon of Athens' made from Shake- speare's play. The first of these, by Thomas Shadwell, was acted at the Duke's Theatre in 1678. It was abridged from Shakespeare with an ill result. The second adaptation, a mingling of Shakespeare and Shadwell, was by James Love, and it was played with applause at Richmond, Surrey, in 1768. Richard Cumber- land’s adaptation of “Timon of Athens’ failed on its production at Drury Lane in 1771. Thomas Hull, a dramatist, actor, and poetaster, who altered Shake- speare’s “Comedy of Errors ’’ for the stage, tried his hand upon the same author’s “Timon of Athens,” which he acted for his benefit at Covent Garden on May 13th, 1786. The result, however, was not successful, although the astute adapter, perceiving the lack of female interest in the Shakespearean play, thought to improve matters by introducing an additional character in the person of a mistress of Timon’s. “Timon of Athens’ is not suited to the stage; but Edmund Kean appeared as the Athenian, at Drury Lane, on September 28th, 1816. His acting through- out was deep in feeling, intense, and varied. The first three acts were passed by with a feeling of languor, and it was not until he came to the vehement exclamations of Timon that his energy and brilliant genius flashed forth in their full force. He breathed the very soul of melancholy in the impressive words:— “But myself, Who had the world as my confectionary; The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men At duty, more than I could frame employment; That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves Do on the oak, have with one winter’s brush, Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare For every storm that blows.” But Kean's finest scene in the whole performance, according to Leigh Hunt, “was the one with Alcibiades. We never remember the force of contrast to have been more truly pathetic. Timon, digging in the woods with his spade, hears the approach of military music; he starts, waits its approach silently, and at last in comes the gallant Alcibiades with a train of splendid soldiery. Never was a scene more effectively managed. First you heard a sprightly quick march playing in the distance—Kean started, listened, and leaned in an angry manner upon his spade, with frowning eyes and lips full of the truest feeling, compressed, but not too much so; he seemed resolved not to be deceived, even by the charm of a thing inanimate.” The encounter of the squalid misanthrope with the young and splendid Alcibiades was, as played by Kean, the clash of despair with hope. |---- |-R |№ | № | № ！ \, | ！ R， |（~~~~ |×N |× （~~~~ § R | . ： ） -№ae,- 83 KING HENRY IV.- PART I. THE eight plays of English history by Shakespeare, which commence with “King Richard II.” and end with “Ring Richard III.,” embrace also the first part of “King Henry IV.,” “Ring Henry V.,” and the first and second parts of “Ring Henry VI.,” which are included in our illustrations. The careless rule of Richard II., and his injudicious treatment of his own relations, drew upon him the rebellion of Bolingbroke; his dethronement, nevertheless, was quite unjust, and in no case could Bolingbroke be considered the rightful heir to the crown. The founder of the House of Lancaster never, as Henry IV., enjoyed the fruits of his usurpation, his turbulent barons, who aided him in ascending the throne, allowing him not a moment’s repose on it. Again, he was jealous of his son, and this distrust induced the prince, in order that he might appear to have no ambition, to give himself up to dissolute society. These two circumstances form the subject- matter of both parts of “ King Henry IV.,” the enterprises of the discontented prince making up the serious scenes, and the wild frolics of the heir-apparent supplying the comic Ones. The first part of “ King Henry IV.,” with which we are more particularly concerned, has a brilliant contrast in the characters of its two youthful heroes, Prince Henry and Perey, the latter characteristically surnamed Hotspur. “All the amiability and attractiveness,” says Schlegel, “are on the side of the prince ; however familiar he makes himself with bad company, we can never mistake him for One of the same nature as his companions; the ignoble does, indeed, touch, but it does not contaminate him; and his wildest freaks appear merely as witty tricks, by which his reckless mind sought to burst through the inactivity to which he was constrained, for on the first occasion which takes him out of levity he distinguishes himself, in the most chivalrous guise, without effort. Percy’s boisterous valour is not without a mixture of rude manners, arrogance, and boyish obstimacy; but these errors, which prepare for him an early death, cannot disfigure the majestic figure of his noble youth; we are carried away by his fiery spirit at the very moment we would most censure it.” Shakespeare has admirably shown why so formidable a revolt against an unpopular and really an illegitimate prince was not attended with success: Glendower’s superstitious fancies respecting himself, the effeminacy of the young Mortimer, the ungovern- able disposition of Percy, who will listen to no prudent counsel, the irresolution of his older friends, the want of unity of plan and motive, are all characterised by delicate but unmistakable traits. - After the Restoration, Hart represented Hotspur and Burt the Prince of Wales. Betterton’s Hotspur has been celebrated by Sir Richard Steele in “The Tatler,” 84 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. and Colley Cibber ranked it among his most excellent performances. In his declining days, Betterton resigned the choleric Hotspur in favour of the humour and gaiety of Falstaff, a character in which he is said to have been admirable. Powell was Betterton's successor in Hotspur. Possessing the advantages of a pleas- ing person, a good voice, and perfect gesture, this comedian gave a striking imper- sonation of the part. The Hotspur of Barton Booth was one of the most perfect exhibitions of the stage. His strong, yet harmonious, voice reached the highest note of exclamatory rage without hurting the music of its tone. His gesture was ever in unison with his utterance, and his eye constantly combined with both to give a corresponding force to his passion. His action, in this part, was quick, significant, and princely. According to an agreement between Quin and Garrick, to assist each other with their mutual skill in several plays, Quin called on Garrick to exert his talents in Hotspur, “for you know, David,” quoth he, “Falstaff is so weighty he cannot do without a lever.” Garrick complied, but with some reluct- ance, for his person was not calculated to give a just idea of the gallant and noble Hotspur, nor could the fine flexibility of his voice entirely conquer the high rant and continued rage of the enthusiastic warrior. He had not then acquired that command over his voice which experience afterwards taught him. The critics of the time objected to his dress, a laced frock-coat and a Ramilies wig being thought too insignificant for the part. Spranger Barry’s Hotspur, from the actor's noble figure, rapid and animated expression, and lively action, was emi- mently pleasing, though he missed the military aspect of the character. The success which Quin made as the Falstaff of “The Merry Wives of Windsor’’ induced him to appear as the Falstaff of “King Henry IV.,” in the acting of which he was equalled only by John Henderson, the most celebrated Falstaff of the stage. The younger actor had many difficulties to contend with before he could get Falstaff within his grasp; neither in person, voice, nor countenance did he seem qualified for the part, but, thanks to his excellent judgment, he contrived to supply these deficiencies. In the impudent bravado of the character, Quin had no rival, but in the frolicsome, gay, humorous situations of Falstaff, Henderson was vastly his superior. John Philip Kemble and Joseph Shepherd Munden longed all their lives to play Falstaff, but were prevented from so doing by the remembrance of Henderson's excellence. Quin, in the “Merry Wives,” and Henderson, in “King Henry IV.,” appear to have been the most brilliant representatives of Falstaff yet seen on the English stage. The principal attrac- tion of Stephen Kemble's performance of Falstaff seems to have consisted in the fact that the actor could appear as the fat knight without the aid of padding. “The most difficult character I know to act without stuffing is a fillet of veal! I have seen it attempted, but it failed,” said Henry Luttrell, a famous wit, in allusion to Stephen Kemble's Falstaff, from which remark it may be gathered that Stephen Kemble's Falstaff was not a particularly brilliant effort On his part. Nº. CA-S-E-L-L-3 COMPANY LIMITEL. 85 KING HENRY V. HAZLITT trenchantly remarks of this play and its hero, “Henry V. is a very favourite monarch with the English nation, and he appears to have been also a favourite with Shakespeare, who labours hard to apologise for the actions of the king, by showing us ‘the character of the man,’ as the “king of good fellows.’ He scarcely deserves this honour. He was fond of war and low company; we know little else of him. He was careless, dissolute, and ambitious: idle, or doing mischief. In private, he seemed to have no idea of the common decencies of life, which he subjected to a kind of regal licence; in public affairs, he seemed to have no idea of right or wrong, but brute force, glossed over with a little religious hypocrisy and archiepiscopal advice. His principles did not change with his situation and professions. His adventure at Gadshill was a prelude to the affair at Agincourt, only a bloodless one; Falstaff was a puny prompter of violence and outrage, compared with the pious and politic Archbishop of Canterbury, who gave the king carte blanche, in a genealogical tree of his family, to rob and murder in circles of latitude and longitude abroad—to save the possessions of the Church at home. This appears in the speeches in Shakespeare, where the hidden motives that actuate princes and their advisers in war and policy are better laid open than in speeches from the throne or woolsack. Henry, because he did not know how to govern his own kingdom, determined to make war upon his neighbour's. Because his own title to the crown was doubtful, he laid claim to that of France. Because he did not know how to exercise the enormous power which had just dropped into his hands to any one good purpose, he immediately undertook (a cheap and obvious resource of sovereignty) to do all the mischief he could. Even if absolute monarchs had the wit to find out objects of laudable ambition, they could only ‘plume up their wills’ in adhering to the more sacred formula of the royal prerogative, ‘the right divine of kings to govern wrong,” because will is only then triumphant when it is opposed to the will of others, because the pride of power is only then shown, not when it consults the rights and interests of others, but when it insults and tramples on all justice and humanity. Henry declares his resolution, “France being ours, we'll bend it to our awe, or break it all to pieces —a resolution worthy of a conqueror, to destroy all that he cannot enslave; and what adds to the joke, he lays all the blame of the con- sequences of his ambition on those who will not submit tamely to his tyranny. “Such is the history of kingly power, from the beginning to the end of the world; with this difference, that the object of war formerly, when the people adhered to their allegiance, was to depose kings; the latter object, since the people swerved from their allegiance. has been to restore kings and to make common cause against h S6 SHARESPEAREAN SCIENES AND CHAIRACTERS. mankind. The object of our late invasion and conquest of France was to restore the legitimate monarch, the descendant of Hugh Capet, to the throne: Henry V. in his turn made war on and deposed the descendant of this very Hugh Capet, on the plea that he was a usurper and illegitimate. What would the great modern catspaw of legitimacy and restorer of divine right have said to the claim of Henry and the title of the descendants of Hugh Capet? Henry W., it is true, was a hero, a king of England, and conqueror of France. Yet we feel little love or admiration for him. He was a hero, that is, he was ready to sacrifice his own life for the pleasure of destroying thousands of other lives; he was a king of England, but not a constitutional one, and we only like kings according to the law; lastly, he was a conqueror of the French king, and for this we dislike him less than if he had conquered the French people. How, then, do we like him 9 We like him in the play. There he is a very amiable monster, a very splendid pageant. As we like to gaze at a panther or a young lion in their cages at the Tower, and catch a pleasing horror from their glistening eyes, their velvet paws, and dreadless roar, so we take a very romantic, heroic, patriotic, and poetical delight in the boasts and feats of our younger Harry, as they appear on the stage, and are confined to lines of ten syllables, where no blood follows the stroke that wounds our ears, where no harvest bends beneath horses’ hoofs, no city flames, no little children butchered, no dead men's bodies are found piled in heaps and are festering next morning—in the orchestra.” * One of the most remarkable passages in the play is the account of the death of York and Suffolk :- “Eveter. The Duke of York commends him to your majesty. Ring Hen. Lives he, good uncle? Thrice within this hour I saw him down, thrice up again, and fighting; From helmet to the spur all blood he was. Boxeter. In which array, brave soldier, doth he lie, Larding the plain; and by his bloody side (Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds) The noble Earl of Suffolk also lies. Suffolk first died; and York, all haggled over, Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteep’d, And takes him by the beard, kisses the gashes, That bloodily did yawn upon his face; He cries aloud, ‘Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk My soul shall thine keep company to heaven: Tarry, sweet soul, for mine; then fly abreast, As in this glorious and well-foughten field We kept together in our chivalry l’ Upon these words I came and cheer'd him up: He smil’d me in the face, raught me his hand, And, with a feeble gripe, says, “Dear my lord, Commend my service to my sovereign.” So did he turn, and over Suffolk’s neck He threw his wounded arm, and kiss'd his lips; And so, espous’d to death, with blood he seal’d A testament of noble-ending love.” | | | | HENRY W. AND KATHARINE OF FRANCE. Aºing Henry. O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. “HENRY V.," Act P., Scene II. IVING! HENRY V. S7 One of the most striking images in all Shakespeare is that instanced by Hazlitt as given of war in the first lines of the Chorus:– “O, for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention : A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold the swelling scene ! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leash’d in like hownds, showld famine, Sword, and fire, Crowch for employment.” The comic parts of “ King Henry V.” are vastly inferior to those of “King Henry IV.” Falstaff is dead, and without him Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph are no longer entertaining. The brave, good-natured, pedantic Fluellen, the Welshman, is the most laughable character in the piece. - Perhaps the most notable of the other plays of which the fifth Henry was the subject was that made by the Earl of Orrery, in 1664, and acted at the Duke of York’s Theatre with great success. Harris as King Henry, Betterton as Owen Tudor, and Smith as the Duke of Burgundy, wore respectively the coronation suits of the Duke of York, King Charles, and Lord Oxford on the occasion. Betterton, as Owen Tudor, laid the foundation-stone of his fame. Aaron Hill—poet, critic, amateur actor, playwright, and adapter from the French—made a play called “Henry W.; or, the Conquest of France by the English,” which was acted, for four nights only, at Drury Lane in 1723. The plot and language were in some places borrowed from Shakespeare, but Mr. Hill, after the fashion of his time, sought to improve his original by an underplot, consequent upon the intro- duction of a character called Harriet, a niece to Lord Scrope, who had formerly been betrayed by Henry. The lady appeared in men's clothes throughout, watch- ing over the king very faithfully indeed, presumably as a reward for his shabby conduct towards her. Kemble stands guilty to no less than three alterations from Shakespeare’s “ King Henry W.” The first of these was given at Drury Lane in 1789, the second, at the same house, in 1801, and the third at Covent Garden in 1806. Macready made the play the subject of a grand revival at Covent Garden in 1839, when he recorded his delight at being able, thanks to the panoramic paint- ings of Stanfield, to illustrate even the speeches of the Chorus. His example was duly followed by Samuel Phelps at Sadler's Wells, and Charles Kean at the Princess’s. The production at the Princess's was Mr. Kean's last Shakespearean revival. It was given for the first time on March 28th, 1859, and it ran for eighty- four nights. Mrs. Charles Kean appeared as the Chorus. The revival, as was usually the case when the manager touched Shakespeare, was made the occasion for what was then considered a great scenic display. The assault on Harfleur, which opens the third act of the play, the desperate resistance of the French garrison, the close conflict on the ramparts, the practice of the rude artillery of the day, 8S SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. with other besieging engines, and the final entry of the victorious assailants through the breach, “formed altogether the most marvellous realisation of war, in its deadliest phase, that imitative art has ever attemptcd.” Such, at least, is the opinion of Mr. Cole, Mr. Kean's biographer, who is nothing if not enthusiastic when speaking of his hero’s achievements. . The late Charles Calvert revived “King Henry W.” at Manchester, with great Scenic grandeur and completeness, in 1872, and this arrangement of the play was given at Booth’s Theatre, New York, three years later, Mr. Calvert crossing the Atlantic in order to supervise the production. His version was again used in November, 1879, when Mr. George Rignold appeared as Henry W. As Mr. Rignold is the only actor of to-day who is closely identified with this character it may not be amiss to quote Mr. Dutton Cook’s judicial summing up of his impersona- tion: “He possesses special qualifications for such a character as Henry W. Edwin Forrest, appearing in a modern Tragedy, “The Gladiator,’ by Dr. Bird, of New York, was required to say, at a particular juncture of the story, “I am here to fight !” From his tone and manner and the prodigious muscularity of his movements as he uttered these words it was unanimously agreed that he was very certainly the man to make good his speech. Something of the kind might be said of Mr. George Rignold. He is most heroically pugnacious of aspect; he looks a born leader of fighting men; he exhibits indefatigable vigour alike as swordsman and orator; he overwhelms his foes both by force of arms and strength of lungs. As, falchion in hand, clothed in complete steel, with a richly emblazoned tabard, he stands on that spot so prized by the histrionic mind, the exact centre of the stage, the limelight pouring upon him from the flies in its most dazzling rays, and declaims speech after speech to his devoted followers, he presents the most striking stage figure I think I ever saw. When he attempts great rapidity of utterance he is apt to become unintelligible; for his voice is strong and sonorous rather than flexible, and a ‘gabbling’ effect in this wise mars certain of his speeches. He is prone, too, to overlong pauses in the midst of his interlocutions, insomuch that the audience was sometimes tempted to think that his memory had suddenly betrayed him, while the prompter had strayed from his post. Mr. Rignold, however, rouses the house to great enthu- siasm; his performance of Henry was received with extraordinary applause. Of course, subtlety of interpretation was not required; Henry W. is not an intel- lectual character; on the stage it is sufficient if he is represented as chivalrous in bearing, manly of form, and sound of wind and limb.” And these conditions are amply fulfilled by Mr. Rignold in his well-known impersonation. “King Henry W.” was presented on the stage of the Queen’s Theatre, Long Acre, in September, 1876, with Mr. John Coleman as Henry, the late John Ryder as Canterbury, Mr. T. Mead as Pistol, and Miss Emily Fowler as Queen Ratherine. The play was well mounted, and, in its way, a success. sº * Y T --- OF *Icº … º.º.º.º. -º-º-º-º-º- º º h | - º s… J. O` Ojº º R C & N ID) Cººlºº & Aºzzee ovº wavº colours one ºe waſ sº -- Zws Joaº ſº ºcelle Aaºzerº ºr woº ºnes: cºre ºrºgº ºstracts dazzº der Aºw s/… ºdºrow ººze ºr ºs sºccess º ----------- - - E FINLERT sºlº : | 89 KING HENRY WI.—PART I. THIS is a recast of an older play, “The Contention,” published in 1594. The only part of it which can be safely put down to Shakespeare is the Temple garden scene of the Red and White Roses. “King Henry VI.” is divided into three parts, the first of which, as Mr. Furnivall rightly says, “is broken and choppy to an intolerable degree.” No drama shows more distinctly than “King Henry VI.,” and its continuation, “Ring Richard III.,” how the two sides of comedy and tragedy meet in the historical drama, and become blended in a higher unity. Evil here invariably finds its own correction in evil; moral weakness and depravity, folly and vice, neutralise each other as in comedy. This is the grave significance of the trilogy which bears the name of “King Henry VI.,” and this thought, in various modifications, runs through each of the three parts. The life of Henry VI. forms the foundation of each part, although Henry actually does nothing. He merely suffers, entreats, prays; but all that happens recoils upon his own head, and his very inactivity is the chief cause of all the events and occurrences. Accordingly the interest is divided in various ways, the fortunes of the brave Talbot and his son in the struggle against France sharing, in the play under notice, a large amount of the interest. This first part of “King Henry VI.” forms the real conclusion to “King Henry V.,” for here it is that we have the termination of the war which was there represented. Of Joan la Pucelle, the Maid of Orleans, who takes so pro- minent a part in the play, Dr. Hermann Ulrici says that “she is, as it were, the soul of the rekindled war on the French side, as Talbot represents it on that of England. With her appearance the fortune of war turns from England to France, because she succeeds in arousing the French nation to enthusiastic patriotism by faith in a higher, a divine aid. The poet does not deny the exis- tence of this higher aid, which is represented in Joan, but, as a true Englishman, he looks upon it as the aid of ungodly, demoniacal powers. The enthusiastic rise of the French nation with the appearance of Joan la Pucelle he considers as a stirring of the night-side of nature, as an interference of the evil principle. He therefore becomes untrue to himself, and sins against the principle of the historical drama, which demands strict impartiality for the inner motives and great turning-points in the course of history. We have a proof of how this error—which was so much an error against the laws of poetry—takes its revenge, for the character of Joan is not only untrue, but also unpoetical. From the very fact of Shakespeare not being aware of this, from his having here entirely followed the English view and the English authorities in regard to the history of the time, one might infer (even were it not otherwise established) that the first L 90 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. part of “King Henry VI.’ is one of Shakespeare's youthful works, written at a time when he did not possess a clear idea of what an historical drama should be, in order to be free from the faults of blind patriotism and national prejudice. On the other hand, we have an excuse for the poet in the circumstance that Shake- speare's conception of the character of Joan of Arc was quite in keeping with the opinions of the English nation—nay, that it corresponded pretty closely with the general opinion of the whole age to which the history belongs. For an historical drama, which represents its substance as actually present, ought at the same time to depict the spirit and character of the age in which it moves. And, moreover, it was one of the features of the character of the age, that it was incapable of comprehending that which was great, pure, and noble—nay, that what was good and beautiful could not even keep itself pure.” Obviously the noblest character in the play, as the critic just quoted has pointed out, is the rough and vigorous knight, Lord Talbot. His life seems constituted in battle and war, knightly honour and bravery, and self-devoted patriotism. All higher ideas seem beyond him; he knows how to win a battle, but not how to carry on a war; he is an excellent soldier, but no general, no chief, because, although valiant, discreet, and prudent (as is proved by his inter- view with the Countess of Auvergne), he does not possess either presence of mind, creative power, or a clear insight into matters. This, together with the harshness and roughness of his virtue, which has in it something of the rage of the lion, is his weak point, and proves the cause of his death. His power was not equal to the complicated circumstances and the depravity of his age; he is the repre- sentative of the rage and ferocity of war to which he falls a victim because he is wholly engrossed in it, and therefore unable to direct it. The scene in which the Countess of Auvergne seeks to entrap him is remarkably spirited, and his description of his own treatment while he was a prisoner of the French is highly characteristic :-- “Salisbury. Yet tell'st thou not how thou wert entertain'd. Talbot. With scoffs, and scorns, and contumelious taunts. In open market-place produced they me, To be a public spectacle to all: ‘Here,” said they, ‘is the terror of the French, The scarecrow that affrights our children so.” Then broke I from the officers that led me, And with my nails digg'd stones out of the ground, To hurl at the beholders of my shame. My grisly countenance made others fly; None durst come near, for fear of sudden death. In iron walls they deem'd me not secure; So great fear of my name 'mongst them was spread, That they suppos'd I could rend bars of steel, - And spurn in pieces posts of adamant : Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had, They walk’d about me every minute-while : And if I did but stir out of my bed, Ready they were to shoot me to the heart.” RING! HENRY VI.-PAIRT I. 91 This poor play has no stage-history to speak of. Yet it appears to have been successfully acted before Elizabethan audiences. “How would it,” says Nash, in his “Pierce Pennilesse,” “ have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to think that after he had laid two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times), who, in the tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding.” The commentaries of the old critics on the authorship of this play are not a little curious. Malone has written an elaborate dissertation, full of “ingenious argument and curious comparative criticism,” to prove that it is not the production of Shakespeare, but of some older dramatist. Among the reasons adduced by him in his argument are the total absence of the “Shakespeareanisms” which distinguish the two other parts, and the peculiar versification, almost every line having a pause at the end. Steevens differs from his brother commentator, and justifies his dissent by an apt quotation from Rowe. Theobald points out various transgressions against history, events being shuffled backwards and forwards with- out regard to either time or place. This idea is also supported by Warburton, Farmer, Malone, Drake, and others. As already intimated, more recent com- mentators ascribe only the Temple garden scene of the Red and White Roses to the authorship of Shakespeare. The historical transactions contained in this play are taken from Holinshed’s “Chronicle.” The characters are, for the most part, faithfully represented, though the affection of Queen Margaret for the Duke of Suffolk is greatly exaggerated. Apropos of the character of Margaret, Mr. Furnivall, in his introduction to the “Leopold Shakspere,” says: “The ‘fairest beauty,’ Margaret, “soft as downy cygnets,’ was turned by ambition into a ‘she-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France, whose tongue more poisons than an adder's tooth,’ into one of the demonesses whom the French Revolution in later time reproduced. Her pride makes her level to the ground the pillar of the noble Humphrey, who is the sole support of her husband’s throne. His removal gives room for all the angry passions of the nobles, the designs of the crafty, hypocritical Gloster, to work. And soon the Queen, bereft of love, of child, of throne, of husband, has nothing to console her but the curses she can heap on the foes who have ruined her, and the eager watching for their fulfilment. From out the ruins of her life, on which she, cursing, sits, steps the striking figure of Richard, exulting with grim humour in his villainy and success. He has trod through blood to the throne, and he will pour out blood to hold it. But behind him is the gathering storm of the curses of Margaret and her sister-queens, the wail of murdered innocents mixing with the women’s wrath. And at last the storm bursts in lightning- flash, on battle-field, on the head of the guilty King, erect, defiant, fearing death as little as he feared sin. And the land is again in a strong man’s hand.” Schlegel says of this play: “The wonderful saviour of her country, Joan of 02 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. Arc, is portrayed by Shakespeare with an Englishman’s prejudices; yet he at first leaves it doubtful whether she has not in reality a heavenly mission: she appears in the pure glory of virgin heroism; by her supernatural eloquence (a circumstance of the poet's invention) she wins over the Duke of Burgundy to the French cause; afterwards, corrupted by vanity and luxury, she has recourse to hellish fiends, and comes to a miserable end. To her is opposed Talbot, a rough, iron warrior, who moves us the more powerfully, as, in the moment when he is threatened with inevitable death, all his care is tenderly directed to the saving of his son, who performs his first deed of arms under his eye. After Talbot has in vain sacrificed himself, and the Maid of Orleans has again fallen into the hands of the English, the French provinces are lost by an impolitic marriage, and with this the piece ends. The conversation between the aged Mortimer in prison, and Richard Plantagenet, afterwards Duke of York, contains an exposition of the claims of the latter to the throne: considered by itself, it is a beautiful tragic elegy.” - The same critic, after indicating how the main action of conflict may be most effectively suggested in the representation of war on the stage, points out how the heroic drama may develop into comedy: “A theatrical manager of the present day will have a middle course to follow : his art must, in an especial manner, be directed to make what he shows us appear only as separate groups of an immense picture, which cannot be taken in at once by the eye; he must convince the spectators that the main action takes place behind the stage; and for this purpose he has easy means at his command in the nearer or more remote sound of warlike music and the din of arms. “However much Shakespeare celebrates the French conquest of Henry, still he has not omitted to hint, after his way, the secret springs of this undertaking. Henry was in want of foreign war to secure himself on the throne; the clergy also wished to keep him employed abroad, and made an offer of rich contribu- tions to prevent the passing of a law which would have deprived them of the half of their revenues. His learned bishops consequently are as ready to prove to him his indisputable right to the crown of France, as he is to allow his con- science to be tranquillised by them. They prove that the Salic law is not, and never was, applicable to France; and the matter is treated in a more succinct and convincing manner than such subjects usually are in manifestoes. After his renowned battles, Henry wished to secure his conquest by marriage with a French princess; all that has reference to this is intended for irony in the play. The fruit of this union, from which two nations promised to themselves such happiness in future, was the weak and feeble Henry VI., under whom every- thing was so miserably lost. It must not, therefore, be imagined that it was without the knowledge and will of the poet that a heroic drama turns out a comedy in his hands, and ends in the manner of comedy with a marriage of Convenience.” ſae |× ： ··· ſº： · -- Bºº C GC - --- - - º - º G º - - (O) -- - D) ( . º º (Clº () is º zºº º - tº º º, ºver tº zerº. We - -- -- - - - º, ººº- - ----Yº - ºn Limited. - 93 KING HENRY VI.-PART II. THE second part of “King Henry VI.” shows us the whole wide tissue of party feuds, with their intrigues, struggies, and atrocities, in which the home policy of England had become involved, and of which the first part gives only an intima- tion, after France has been lost and the foreign war has ended. The enmity between Gloster and the Bishop of Winchester breaks out with renewed fury after a semi-reconciliation; the jealousy between the Dukes of York and Somerset continues and develops into actual hate. In addition to this, the Queen, through the instrumentality of Suffolk, forms a party for herself, and joins the Bishop of Winchester in order to bring about the ruin of Gloster. Richard, Duke of Gloster, throws aside his mask and appears openly as the pretender to the throne, and he is supported by the powerful Earls of Salisbury and Warwick. Thus the civil war commences in real earnest. Gloster, the mainstay of the tottering kingdom, is caught in the intrigue and assassinated. Northumberland, Clifford, Buckingham, and Stafford, the best men on the king's side, fall in battle, and the worthless Somerset also, the cunning Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, together with the scoundrelly Suffolk, also come to an untimely end. The only survivors are Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, with his adherents and sons—one of whom is the future Richard the Third—and the Queen. Jack Cade and his followers, the secondary characters in the play, are most naturally drawn. The reckless ferocity and vulgar assumed importance of the arch-rebel, Cade, are exhibited with infinite humour. His father, he says, was a Mortimer—“He was an honest man and a good bricklayer,” adds Dick, the butcher. His mother was a Plantagenet—“I knew her well,” cries Dick, “she was a midwife.” “His wife was descended from the Lacies,” asserts Cade, whereupon Dick ventures a quibble, rejoining, “She was, indeed, a pedlar's daughter, and sold many laces.” Cade proclaims his own valour—“Beggary is valiant,” whispers Smith, the weaver. He is able to endure much. There can be no question of that, for Dick hath seen him whipped three market-days together. He fears neither sword nor fire. “He need not fear the sword, for his coat is of proof.” says Smith. “But, methinks,” adds Dick, “he should stand in fear of fire, being burnt i' the hand for stealing of sheep.” When he is king, there shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; it will be felony to drink small beer; his palfrey shall go to grass in Cheapside; all shall eat and drink on his score; and he will apparel the people “all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship ’’ him as “their lord.” Was there ever such arro- gance Cade, moreover, has a mortal hatred of learning; the clerk of Chatham he finds guilty of treason, inasmuch as he makes not his mark like an honest, 94 SHAKE SPEAREAN SOENES AND CHARACTERS. plain-dealing man, but feloniously writes his proper name. The clerk is therefore condemned to be hanged, with his pen and ink-horn about his neck. The Lord Say, having corrupted the youth of the realm by erecting a grammar-school, and having, contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, built a paper-mill; and, moreover, having certain men about him that usually talk of a noun, and a verb and such-like abominable words; his lordship, for these, and sundry other high crimes and misdemeanours, is ordered to be beheaded, and his head, with that of his son-in-law, Sir James Cromer (whose house Cade has pillaged), is to be stuck up on two poles, and brought before his puissant self! “As regards the conception of the character of the Queen,” says Ulrici, “which is first revealed to us in this part, some commentators have blamed Shakespeare for having unnecessarily made her a hideous Megaera, and maintain it to be especially intolerable to see the pious, unfortunate king so openly repre- sented as a deceived husband. It is certainly true that in Margaret's character we have the echo of those gloomy sounds of the horrible which in ‘Titus Andronicus’ we had in the fullest reverberations, and this again proves with tolerable certainty that the last two parts of “King Henry VI.' likewise belong to Shakespeare’s earlier period. It is also true that adultery did not require to be added to the other crimes of the Queen. And yet, without it, we should not have received such a perfect insight into her character, which is so important for the whole play. For it is self-evident that such an energetic, violent, and thoroughly unfeminine nature, with such passionateness and heat of temper, could not have had any affection for the cold, womanly, effeminate King, or have remained faithful to him. This terrible energy and enormity, this shameless display of evil, such as is here exhibited in a woman, is no doubt more dramatic—nay, the very representation of it is more moral than the secret sin which creeps along in the darkness, and the unexpressed suspicion of which must be entertained by the spectators. In fact, the poet required an embodiment of the prevailing vices and crimes, a character in which was concentrated the whole demoralisation of the age, in order to give a description of the times, and to unfold the meaning and significance of the drama in its fullest manner. The fury-like Margaret has a worthy contrast in the devilish Richard; both characters complete each other; they learn of each other, and thus mutually become the mighty instruments of the fearful judgment which, at the end of the reign of Henry VI., bursts over England and its degenerate royal family. Lastly, the character of the King, which had become effeminate and womanly, required, as an organic contrast, a woman who had become masculine and depraved in character. For Henry’s disgrace as a deceived husband was the consequence of his own fault in having allowed himself, with the disposition he possessed, to take such a wife. This, his first and only active sim—his later sins are but errors of omission—had, accordingly, to be more prominently brought forward in order to show how even the smallest germ of evil shoots up like rank weeds and becomes incalculable in s - º º --- º º | Enºrmºved by R. S. MARRiott. Drawn by Will.i.am Ralston. JACK CADE AND LORD SAY. Cade (aside). I feel remorse in myself with his words: but I'll bridle it : he shall die. * HENRy. VI.,” PART II., Act IV., Scene PTI. ICING! HENRY VI.-PART II. 95 the mischief it produces. The Queen reigns in the King's place and turns bad into its very worst.” - g Bolinshed is again Shakespeare's authority for this play. The use of the “English Chronicles” for plays is alluded to by Nash –“ Nay, what if I prove Playes to be no extreame, but a rare exercise of virtue? First, for the subject of them; for the most part it is borrowed out of our ‘English Chronicles,” wherein our forefathers’ valiant acts, that have been long buried in rustic brass and worm- eaten books, are revived, and they themselves raised from the grave of oblivion, and brought to plead their aged honours in open presence; than which, what can be a sharper reproof to these degenerate days of ours?” The relation of the Duke of Suffolk's death is varied by Shakespeare. The “Chronicle’’ tells us that King Henry, to satisfy the nobility and people, who hated his favourite, con- demned him to banishment during the space of five years. In his passage to France, he was taken by a ship of war belonging to the Duke of Exeter, Constable of the Tower, the captain of which carried him into the Dover roads, and struck off his head. Whereas in Shakéspeare, he is taken by English pirates on the coast of Kent, who, notwithstanding the large ransom he offers them, resolve to murder him. One of them tells him that his name is Walter Whitmore; and observing him start, asks if he is frightened at death, to which he replies:– “Thy name affrights me, in whose sound is death: A cunning man did calculate my birth, And told me that by Walter I should die.” This circumstance is not mentioned in history. Probably the finest scene in this play is that of the death of Cardinal Beaufort, whose actual death has thus been described by an old historian:-‘‘During these doynges, Henry Beaufford, byshop of Winchester, and called the riche Cardymall, departed out of this worlde. This man was—haut in stomach and hygh in countenance, ryche above measure of all men, and to few liberal; disdaymful to his kynne, and dreadful to his lovers. His covetous insaciable and hope of long lyfe made hym bothe to forget God, his prynce, and hymselfe, in his latter dayes; for Doctor John Baker, his pryvie counsailer and his chapellayn, wrote that lying on his death bed, he said these words: Why should I dye, having so muche riches? If the whole realme would save my lyfe, I am able either by pollicie to get it, or by ryches to bye it. Fye, will not death be hyred, nor will money do nothynge? When my nephew of Bedford dyed, I thought myselfe halfe up the wheele, but when I saw myne other nephew of Gloucester diseased, then I thought to increase my treasure, in hope to have worn a trypple crowne. But I See now the worlde fayleth me, and so I am deceyved; praying you all to pray for me.” Shakespeare’s treatment of this scene is exceedingly fine. The Cardinal is discovered in his bed, raving and staring as if he were mad, surrounded by 96 SHAKESPEAREAN SCENES AND CHARACTERS. Ring Henry, Salisbury, and attendants. The murder of Duke Humphrey tortures his guilty imagination. His agony is described in a single expression of Warwick's:— “See, how the pangs of death do make him grin l’” The King conjures him to make some sign that he dies in hope of heavenly bliss:— “Lord Cardinal, if thou think'st on heaven’s bliss, Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope. He dies, and makes no sign. O God, forgive him l’” It is worthy of note that a play, compiled by Mr. J. H. Merivale from the three parts of “King Henry VI.,” was produced at Drury Lane on December 22nd, 1817, under the title of “The Duke of York; ” Edmund Kean playing the prin- cipal part. Not only were the identity and consistency of the original characters destroyed by the wholesale variations of the text, but all that is attractive in “King Henry VI.” was sacrificed in order to make Richard Plantagenet the chief stage-figure. The compilation, we are assured, abounded with vigorous action and striking situations, but it was decidedly destitute of the considerable charm of consistency and connection. And it was overburdened and borne down by the great quantity of incident contained in it. It opened in no hesitating manner with the scene in Temple gardens, the plucking of the roses, rapidly followed by the death of Mortimer in the Tower; the quarrels of Winchester and Gloster before the King ; a marriage procession to hail the arrival of Queen Margaret; Peter's appeal against his master, Horner, the armourer; the scene in York's garden; the greater part of Jack Cade's rebellion; the deaths of Gloster and Winchester; Margaret's grief for the loss of Suffolk, and the scene where the Queen upbraids the King for his weakness. These incidents, together with the premature and inglorious death of York, formed the chief episodes employed in the adaptation. Mr. Hawkins says that Kean, as the Duke of York, “had few opportunities of rendering the character worthy of himself. He had a soliloquy in the second act, where he described, with some very fine touches, the workings of a first ambition; and a speech of much feeling, not in the original, on viewing the dead body of Gloster. This, with the affecting parting with his son, Rutland, and the scene of his death, was all the opportunity afforded him of winning dis- tinction; and the care and study which he devoted to a character were never expended to such little purpose.” Jack Cade was humorously represented by Munden, Oxberry played Dick, the butcher. T. P. Cooke was the Earl of Bucking- ham, and the veteran actor, Pope, was the Cardinal Beaufort. TRINTED BY CASSELL & CoMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C. º: º, . º §§ sº sº º sº º §§ 3. §§As § :*:::::: THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN GRADUATE LIBRARY DATE DUE Axº §§ §: *ś § . 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