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 FROM THE 
 
 BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 1854-1919 
 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
B Cornell University 
 B Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026069074 
 
3 1924 026 069 074 
 
ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA 
 
ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR THEODORE MARTIN, K.C.B. 
 
 SECOND SERIES 
 
 LONDON 
 
 Printet tax pri&atj Cttculation 
 1889 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EACHBL, 1 
 
 LUDWIG HECK ON THE ENGLISH STAGE, . 61 
 
 WILLIAM CHARLES MACBEADT, 97 
 
 THEATRICAL RErORM. THE 'MERCHANT OF VENICE' 
 
 AT THE LYCEUM, 169 
 
 THE MEININGBN COMPANY AND THE LONDON STAGE, . 199 
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE, .... . ■ 230 
 
 IS THE actor's calling A WORTHY ONE? . . . 286 
 
 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 297 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 SPECIMENS OF BACON'S POETRY, 343 
 
 BEN JONSON'S SCDEBILOUS SONNET ON SHAKESPEARE, . 348 
 
 A BACONIAN ON SHAKESPEARE'S WOMEN, . . . 349 
 
EACHEL. 
 
 (Prom 'Blackwood's Magazine,' Sbptembbe 1882.) 
 
 T is already rather more than twenty-four years 
 since all that was mortal of Eachel was laid 
 to rest in the Jewish cemetery at Pfere la 
 Chaise. The streets through which the fu- 
 neral procession passed were thronged; and around her 
 grave on that bleak, dark, showery January day (11th 
 January 1858) were gathered all the Parisian men and 
 women of distinction in her own art. There, too, might 
 be seen all the leaders in literature and the fine arts, 
 whom Paris held most in honour, come to pay the last 
 sad homage to one whose genius had often thrilled their 
 hearts and stirred their imaginations as no other actress 
 of her time had done. How many blanks in that brUliant 
 array can even now be counted ! Of these, Eachel's great 
 teacher, Samson, to whom she owed so much, Monrose, 
 the elder Dumas, ViUemain, Scribe, Sainte Beuve, Alfred 
 de Vigny, Merim^e, Jules Janin, Hal^vy, ThfophUe Gau- 
 tier. Baron Taylor, EmUe de Girardin, are but a few of 
 
 A 
 
2 RAQHEL. 
 
 tlie most conspicuous. As one reads the record, the old, 
 old question starts up, "Wliere are they all, the old 
 familiar faces ? " Fading fast away, like the fame of her 
 whom they had met to mourn, into that dim. twihght of 
 memory, which for most of them will soon deepen into 
 unbroken night. 
 
 " Pauvre femme ! Ah, la pauvre femme I " were the 
 words that broke again and again from the old but ever- 
 young Dejazet, as she tried in vain to make her way 
 through the dense crowd in the cemetery to throw a huge 
 bouquet of violets into the grave. They are words which 
 were often used in Eachel's life by those who knew its 
 sad story. They are the words that rise naturally to our 
 lips, as we lay down the volume just published by M. 
 Georges d'Heylli, ' Eachel d'aprfes sa Correspondance,' ia 
 which it has been told in fuller detail and with a kindlier 
 spirit, than in any of the numerous biographies by which 
 it has been preceded. What a strange sad story it is ! 
 The years of childhood and girlhood spent in poverty, in 
 squalor, and privation, passing suddenly into a blaze of 
 European fame, — the homage of the leaders of society and 
 of thought laid at the feet of one whom they looked upon 
 as " a thing inspired," — wealth pouring in profusion into 
 her lap, — the passionate aspiration of the young spirit 
 after excellence in her art, and the triumphs there, which 
 were more to her than either wealth or the plaudits of the 
 theatre. Then the melancholy reverse of the picture ! A 
 life, wherein that which makes the main charm and glory 
 of womanhood is sought for in vain — the practice of her 
 noble ait, continued not from delight in its exercise, or 
 with purpose to raise and to instruct, degenerating into a 
 mere mechanical pursuit, swiftly avenged by the decline 
 of that power which had once enabled her to move men's 
 
RA CHEL. 3 
 
 hearts to their inmost fihres, and by the break-up of her 
 constitution, taxed as it was beyond endurance in efforts 
 to make as much money as possible in the shortest pos- 
 sible time. Then disease — acute bodily suffering — anguish 
 in the retrospect of a mistaken life, and in forebodings of 
 the eclipse of a fame which was the very breath of her 
 nostrils, yet which she knew too weU she had not laboured 
 honourably to maintain — death drawing nearer and nearer, 
 with none of the consolations either in looking backward 
 or forward that rob it of its bitterness, and relentlessly 
 closing its icy hand upon her heart, while that heart still 
 yearned after the scene of her former glories, and felt 
 some stirrings of the old power which had won them. A 
 sad life indeed, and anything but noble. It is not, how- 
 ever, without instruction, either for artist or critic ; for it 
 brings strongly home the too often forgotten truth, that 
 to rise to the level of great art, and to keep there, the 
 irmer life and the habits of the artist must be worthy, 
 pure, and noble. 
 
 Let us try, with the help of M. d'HeyUi's volume, and 
 some others which bear upon the subject, to present some 
 of its leading features. 
 
 In an auberge called the Soleil d'Or, in the small vil- 
 lage of Mumpf, near Aarau in Switzerland, Elizabeth 
 r^lix, the Rachel of the French stage, first saw the light 
 on the 28th of February 1820. Thither her mother had 
 come a few days before, unaccompanied by her husband, 
 Jacob F^lix, a Jewish travelling pedlar, with whom she 
 had for some time been moving about in Germany and 
 Switzerland. The kindness of some of the Israelites of 
 the village helped her over her time of trouble ; and a few 
 days afterwards she left the place, taking with her the 
 baby who, she little dreamed, was to bring back Eacine, 
 
4 RA CHEL. 
 
 ComeiUe, and Voltaire to the French stage. Years passed 
 in wandering tip and down with her parents, who plied 
 their vocation of pedlars with indifferent success, were not 
 favourahle either to the education or to the health of their 
 gifted child, or of their other children — for they had 
 several, — and prohahly laid the seeds of that delicacy of 
 chest which ultimately proved fatal to Eachel. This is 
 all the more prohable, if we remember that at Lyons, 
 where her parents went to reside in 1830, and subse- 
 quently in Paris, to which they removed in 1832, her 
 elder sister Sophie (afterwards known on the stage as 
 Sarah F^lix) and herself used to eke out the scanty 
 means of the household by selling oranges and by singing 
 at the cafes, upon the chance of earning a few sous from 
 the visitors. Sarah, a bright healthy blonde, found com- 
 pensation for the hardship of this Ufe in the coarse admi- 
 ration which her good looks excited. Eachel, pale and 
 plain, had no such consolation, and to her sensitive na- 
 ture the occupation was full of suffering. This, which no 
 doubt made itself felt in her looks, and the iateUigence 
 which must at all times have shown itself in her eyes, 
 attracted the notice of one who had even then given 
 promise of a great future, as the sisters were singing in 
 the Place Eoyale, and he dropped a five-franc piece into 
 the younger girl's hand. " That is Victor Hugo ! " said a 
 voice within her hearing ; and when Eachel had become 
 famous, and a friend of the great poet's, she was not 
 ashamed to relate the incident to her friends. 
 
 It was while plying this vocation that the sisters at- 
 tracted the notice pf M. Etienne Choron, a musician, who 
 devoted himself to the training of pupils for the musical 
 profession. Eachel's voice was a contralto, but Choron 
 soon found that the organ was of a quality too thin and 
 
RAGHEL. 5 
 
 metallic to give hopes of turning it to any good account. 
 But in the course of her training the young gicl had 
 shown qualities as a declaimer, which induced him to 
 recommend her to the notice of M. St Aulaire of the 
 Com^die Prangaise, who, although an indifferent actor 
 himself, was esteemed an admirahle iustructor in declama- 
 tion and the technical business of the stage. 
 
 Through very marked disadvantages of feature and per- 
 son, he recognised the latent genius of the artist. Her 
 voice, in later years most musical and fuU of charm, was 
 then harsh and somewhat vulgar in accent ; her figure, 
 afterwards remarkable for grace, was stunted and meagre ; 
 her face pale and unattractiva She thought that her 
 vocation lay in comedy, and laughed at those who told 
 her that ia tragedy she was to look for her future success. 
 Even at the age of fifteen she had shown something of 
 the power by which she was soon afterwards to thrill her 
 audiences with pity and terror. If we may judge from 
 the description of one who saw her at St Aulaire's 
 establishment in Ifovember 1834, somethinig of the grave 
 sweet nature, which distiaguished her bearing in soci- 
 ety a few years afterwards, must have been apparent. 
 "Everything about the child," he says, "was of the 
 cheapest and plainest description, but the ensemble con- 
 veyed an idea of neatness and even precision. With 
 those older than herself little Eachel was punctiliously 
 poUte ; grave and simple beyond her years, every feature 
 of the long childish face bore the impress of modesty and 
 even dignity, with which education had little to do." 
 
 Education had iudeed done little for her. What was 
 she likely to learn in the shape of culture in the nomadic 
 life and squalid home of her parents'! She could read, 
 but her literary knowledge was limited to portions of the 
 
6 BA CHEL. 
 
 plays of Comoille, Kacine, and Molifere, whicli were given 
 her to study. She could write, too, but her spelling then 
 and for years afterwards was as bad as it could well 
 be, and her language showed complete ignorance of the 
 simplest grammatical rules. 
 
 Under M. St Atdaire, however, she made rapid progress. 
 She had a quick and retentive memory, and was soon 
 grounded in all the old tragedies and comedies of repute. 
 Her master was in. the habit of exercising his pupils upon 
 the stage of an obscure bourgeois theatre, called the 
 "Thfeatre Molifere," in the Eue St Martin, where per- 
 formances were given upon Sundays. It was here, as 
 M. Samson mentions in his delightful Memoirs,^ that he 
 first saw the young girl, whose subsequent success was in 
 a great measure due to his instructions. 
 
 "She had been," he writes, "for some time making attempts in 
 tragedy at the theatre of M. St Aulaire, who, although a Soei^taire 
 of the Com^die Fran9aiBe, only occupied a modest place there. He 
 made his pupils perform, and gaye them tickets, which they under- 
 took to dispose of for money. This was the way he made his in- 
 come. The performances in which Rachel took part were the most 
 lucrative. She was frequently brought before the inhabitants of 
 this part of Paris, and she was applauded and made much of by 
 this homely public, and her renown had even spread beyond the 
 narrow sphere where she paved the way for more serious successes. 
 Some of my pupils, struck by her abilities, spoke of her to me, and 
 inspired me with the desire to judge of her for myself. I went to 
 hear her one day that she played in the' ' Don Sanche ' of ComeiUe. 
 She astonished me, I admit, in the character of Tsabella, Queen of 
 Castille : I was struck by the tragic feeling which she showed. 
 The sacred fire burned in this young and feeble breast. She was 
 then very little ; and yet, having a queen to represent, she dwarfed 
 by her grand manner the actors who surrounded her. These were 
 tall young men unaccustomed to the stage, and her ease of deport- 
 ment threw their awkwardness into stronger relief. Although 
 
 ' M^moires de Samson de la Comddie Franjaise : Paris, 1882. 
 
RA CHEL. 7 
 
 forced by her lownees of stature to raise her head to speak to them, 
 the young artist seemed to address them as from above. Still 
 there were here and there, if I may use the phrase, lacurus of in- 
 telligence ; the character was not perfectly understood — of this 
 there could be no doubt — but all through one felt the presence of 
 the tragic accent : the special gift was manifest at every point, and 
 one already saw by anticipation the great theatrical future of this 
 wonderful child. Between the pieces I went upon the stage to con- 
 gratulate her. By this time she had donned a man's dress for 
 Andrieux's comedy, ' Le Manteau,' which was to follow. As I ar- 
 rived, she wEis playing at some kind of game in which it was ne- 
 cessary to hop on one foot, and it was in this attitude that I sur- 
 prised the ex-Queen of Spain. She listened to my compliments 
 with one leg in the air, thanked me very gracefully, and resumed 
 her game." 
 
 A talent of so much promise was sure to attract the 
 attention of those whose business it was to find recruits 
 for the great national theatre. M. Vedel, the treasurer, 
 and snhsequently the director, of the Comeidie Franjaise, 
 saw her play Andromaque at the same little theatre, and 
 was so deeply impressed, by a distinction of manner which 
 triumphed over every disadvantage of an undeveloped 
 figure and shabby costume, as well as by the correctness 
 and purity of her elocution, that he procured for her an 
 admission into the Conservatoire. She was then only 
 fifteen years and a half old, but when she appeared 
 before the Areopagus of that great school — Cherubini, 
 d'Henneville, Michelot, Samson, and Provost — she ex- 
 cited their warmest admiration, producing upon them, 
 says M. Samson, " the same happy impression which she 
 had been in the habit of producing upon less competent 
 hearers." Samson recorded on the books of the school 
 his opihion of her in the words : " Physique grMe, mais 
 une admirable organisation th^ltrale." 
 
 Owing apparently to a slight being shown her by the 
 
8 BA CHEL. 
 
 directors of the Conservatoire in casting her for the small 
 part of Flipote, the servant, at a representation of Tartuffe 
 by the pupils of the establishment, Eachel retired from 
 this fine school of acting in disgust after a four months' 
 experience. But, through the intervention of her old 
 master St Aulaire, she was soon afterwards engaged upon 
 liberal terms by M. Poirson, manager of the Gymnase.^ 
 Here she made her debut on the 4th of April 1837, in a 
 new drama called ' La Vendeenne,' by Paul Duport. 
 
 The piece, according to Jules Janin, "ephemeral and 
 slight, of the kind that are acted a few nights and then 
 sink into oblivion,'' held the stage, chiefly through the 
 interest created by the young debutante. It was acted 
 sixty times, but did not pay. It contained one fine scene, 
 an interview between the Empress Josephine and the 
 young Vendean peasant girl, who has made her way to 
 Paris on foot, like Jeanie Deans in ' The Heart of Mid- 
 Lothian," to plead for her father's life. Falling at 
 Josephine's feet, she tells her of a vision which inspired 
 her to undertake the task — , 
 
 " Et du doigt semble elle indiquer 
 Une Ville inoonnue, immense — 
 XJn eeul mot rompit la silence ; 
 ' Paris ! ' et puis elle ajouta, 
 Comme en riponse k ma prifere : 
 Vas y seule, k pied — oar c'est Ik, 
 Que tu pourras sauver ton p^re. " ^ 
 
 In the passionate earnestness with which these lines were 
 chanted the same note was struck which was afterwards 
 
 ^ It was now that Rachel discarded her first name "Elizabeth," 
 to be henceforth known by her second, "Eachel." 
 
 ^ Tears afterwards, when Rachel was lying on a couch in her 
 rooms in the Chaussfe d'Antin, surrounded by guests, "all de- 
 pressed," says Jules Janin, "by the sadness of the young actress, 
 
RA CHEL. 9 
 
 to be heard in its full power in PhMre, Camille, and 
 Hermione. " That little Jewish girl," Edwin Forrest, the 
 American actor, said to M. Poirson, "that little bag of 
 bones, with the marble face and the flaming eyes — there 
 is demoniacal power in her. If she Uve, and does not 
 bum out too soon, she wUl become something wonderful." 
 This child of fifteen, wrote Jules Janin, " acts with much 
 feeling, enthusiasm, and intelligence, but with very little 
 skUL She intuitively understands the part assigned to 
 her. There is no straining for effect, no exaggeration, no 
 cries, no studied attitudes, and, above aU, no coquetry ; 
 on the contrary, she is extremely quiet and dignified. 
 The child's voice is rough and hoarse, like the voice of a 
 child ; her hands- are red like a child's hands ; her foot, 
 like her hand, is scarcely formed ; she is not pretty, but 
 pleasing : in a word, there is a great future in store for 
 this young genius, and she receives a tribute of tears, 
 emotion, and interest from the as yet small audience that 
 come to do her honour." 
 
 Every theatre has its peculiar audience, and the audience 
 of the Gymnase cared more for light comedy than for 
 strong emotion. To bring them back to their favourite 
 haunt, Eachel undertook the part of Suzette in the 
 ' Mariage de Eaison.' For this she wanted the necessary 
 lightness and freedom of touch, and sufiered under the 
 disadvantage of being contrasted with Leontine Fay, 
 whose personal charms and flexible grace of style were 
 
 over whom the shadow of death had even then fallen, suddenly, 
 with her deep sonorous voice, she began chanting these lines, and 
 made them thrill by the expression she gave to the words : — 
 
 " Une Ville tnconnue, immense. 
 Paris ! . . . . 
 Vas y seule, h pied — car c'est 1^, 
 Que tu pourras sauver ton pfere. " 
 
10 RAQHEL. 
 
 already identified with the part. Eachel's appearances at 
 the Gymnase showed that a theatre devoted to drama of 
 everyday life was not suited to the severe and impassioned 
 tone, and the large style in which her genius found its 
 natural vent. Accordingly, her manager, whose faith in 
 her remained unshaken, recommended her to resume her 
 studies for the higher drama, with a view to appearing 
 upon the stage of the Th4S,tre Fran9ais. Then it was, 
 says M. Samson (' Mfemoires,' p. 306), " that I again saw 
 her, and in my own house, to which she had come once 
 before to bid me good-bye'' — no doubt, on her hasty 
 withdrawal from the Conservatoire. " I had preserved," 
 continues M. Samson, "a recoUeotion of her fuU of re- 
 grets, and was very glad to see her again. I became her 
 professor, and eight months afterwards she made her 
 debut at the Th^tre Fraii9ais in the part of Gamille in 
 'Les Horaces.'" 
 
 M. Samson was the means of securing her an engage- 
 ment at this theatre so early as February 1838, but. she 
 did not actually appear tUl the 12th of June. In his 
 journal he records (6th February 1838) that as she was 
 " ignorant in the extreme, owing to the poverty of her 
 parents," he told her father to put her into the hands of 
 Madame Bronzet, the teacher of his own children, for 
 tuition in grammar and history. That lady offered to 
 undertake her instruction for twenty francs a-month, and 
 M. Samson continued as before to give his own lessons 
 gratis. Of the value of these some estimate may be 
 formed from the fact that, among the great number of 
 distinguished pupils whom he guided to a successful 
 career, were such artists as Mesdames Plessy, AHan, 
 Favart, Madeleine and Augustine Brohan, Eose ChM, 
 Judith, and Jouassain. 
 
RACHEL. 11 
 
 Samson was not the man to allow his pupil to venture 
 on the stage of the great theatre of the Eue Kichelieu, 
 until he was assured that she would prove herseK worthy 
 of its traditions, and an honour to her instructor. Be- 
 sides, she had not only to bear the always heavy ordeal of 
 the candidate before an exacting audience for the honours 
 won and worn by the favourites of the past, but also to 
 win back their attention to the tragedies of Eaciae and 
 ComeiUe, which had been thrown for some time into the 
 shade by Victor Hugo and the other writers of the Ro- 
 mantic School. The art of interpreting the great works of 
 the classical drama had for some years fallen iato disuse, 
 and they were voted slow by those who had never seen 
 their beauties developed by the histrionic genius, to which, 
 more than any other, dramatic work of the highest order 
 must always be in a great measure indebted for success. 
 Let us hear what M. Samson says on this poiat : — 
 
 "Talma, dying in 1826, seemed to have carried classic tragedy 
 away with him. Old gentlemen mourned at this ; but their regrets 
 were not shared by the new generation, whose wish was that ruin 
 should overwhelm what they regarded as having had its day. At 
 the moment when the crash of political storms was making itself 
 heard, a literary revolution was carried out. What have been 
 called ' the battles of Hernani ' set all minds on fire, and the stage 
 had also its 1830. ComeiUe, Racine, and Voltaire were only played 
 at long intervals, and to empty houses ; and these isolated repre- 
 sentations only served to show more clearly the public indifference 
 for works of this class, which, after two centuries of triumph and 
 glory, saw themselves relegated for the future to the silence and 
 the dust of libraries. But in 1838, twelve years after the death 
 of our great tragedian, an unexpected event occurred : a reaction, 
 which surprised even those by whom it was desired, brought back 
 to the great classic works a crowd tha,t could not be accommodated 
 within the theatre of the Rue Richelieu, which only yesterday had 
 been so unpeopled. The young and great artist to whom this 
 miracle was due was Rachel." 
 
12 RACHEL. 
 
 The time fixed for Eachel's debut was by no means 
 favourable, even if a tragedy of the old school had been 
 as attractive as at that epoch it certainly was not. It 
 was high summer. Consequently, writes M. Samson — 
 
 " She had to show herself for the first time amid the solitude 
 habitual on such occasions. The only people there were a sprinkled 
 few in the orchestra-stalls, regular subscribers, and those who had 
 free admissions, either as a rule or for the occasion. Besides the 
 spectators of this class, there were of course the never-failing 
 loungers of the foyer and the side-scenes. This by no means 
 numerous assemblage is composed of actors who are not playing, 
 and of certain friends of the establishment, who, having nothing 
 to do in the evening, drop in to enjoy behind the curtain the 
 pleasure of a chat and of the far niente." 
 
 The languid iaterest with which the audience had entered 
 the theatre hung upon them for a time. But, according 
 to M. Samson, it was soon dispelled : — 
 
 "In the first three acts the part of Owmille contains nothing 
 remarkable, except one scene between her and Julie. The young 
 tragedienne was listened to with interest. People noticed the appro- 
 priate emphasis of her elocution, the clearness of her articulation, 
 and, in her action as in her speaking, a noble simplicity to which 
 they had long been unaccustomed. In the fourth act her success 
 was brUliant ; and at the end of the celebrated curse, she was 
 covered with applause loud enough to have come from an audience 
 of 2000 spectators. " 
 
 There was one person present on the night of Eachel's 
 debut — Mademoiselle Mars — whose praise was enough 
 to outweigh a whole theatre of others. She had seen 
 the pale face and wondrous eyes, and heard the vibra- 
 tion of tone in the meagre half-grown pupil of St Au- 
 laire, two years before, and had then formed the opinion 
 that great things might be expected of her. Mars was 
 the daughter of Monvel, " a tragedian," according to M. 
 
RACHEL. 13 
 
 Eegnier, "of the school which set up nature and simr 
 plicity both in speech and action for their aim," as against 
 the artificial and exaggerated style, and declamatory sing- 
 song, which were then in vogue upon the French tragic 
 stage. Herself a mistress of the art of graceful utter- 
 ance and graceful motion, no one was better qualified 
 to measure the qualifications of the new candidate for 
 theatrical honours. M. de Varenne, who was ia the 
 box with Mars upon the occasion, says :— 
 
 "When Camille appeared upon the stage, Mars followed' her 
 attentively ; then, turning to me, she said, with a half nod and a 
 sign of satisfaction, 'She walks the stage well.' . . . Sati/ne ad- 
 dresses a few words to Gamille, when the latter appears on the 
 stage. Mademoiselle Rachel had not yet opened her lips, when 
 Mars turned to me again, and, regarding me with an air of personal 
 triumph, said, ' And she listens well.' Listening well is the height 
 of art, which few actresses attain — an art as difficult, more difficult, 
 perhaps, than that of speaking well. . . . Camille spoke in her 
 turn. She had scarcely uttered half-a-dozen lines, when Mars 
 exclaimed, ' Ah, I told you ! she does not declaim, she speaks ! ' 
 When the famous imprecation came, instead of the classic elevation 
 of the voice, and those noisy outbursts of grief which carry away 
 the audience and force applause. Mademoiselle Rachel, either 
 through fatigue, calculation, or disdain of received traditions, 
 uttered these words hoarsely, and with concentrated feeling, so 
 that the public, -who expected something very different, did not 
 applaud. ' Ah I ' remarked a young gentleman in the box, ' she 
 lacks strength ! ' ' But, sir,' Mademoiselle Mars exclaimed, turning 
 sharply to him, as if stung to the quick, ' surely you will allow her 
 to husband her strength ! Are you afraid she will not grow old 
 soon enough ? She grows taller, while she acts, this young girl.' 
 For my own part, adds M. de Varenne, though far from ill disposed 
 to the young actress, I could not summon up such an amount of 
 admiration, and was struck by Mademoiselle Mars's enthusiasm." 
 
 Eachel repeated the part of Gamille several times, and 
 always with increasing success. The receipts, however, 
 did not increase. At first, indeed, they were most miser- 
 
14 RACHEL. 
 
 able ; on the first night 753 francs, and on subsequent 
 repetitions of the play, 373, 303, and 595 francs respec- 
 tively. The last sum was reached on the 18th of August, 
 even although attention had by this time been called 
 to the exceptional qualities of the young actress by her 
 appearance in four other important parts of the classical 
 drama. The enthusiasm, however, says M. Samson, 
 " made up for want of numbers.'' 
 
 " Her second part," he continues, "was EmUie in 'Cinna.'^ I 
 remember well the amazement of the audience. As I write I see 
 before me all their eyes bent upon the young girl, all their ears 
 strained, the better to enjoy this utterance which seemed so novel, 
 and of which the originality consisted in its being at once natural 
 and grandiose. Her third part was Sermione, then EryphUe, then 
 Amenaide in ' Tancrfede.' Always the same success, but success 
 without rebound, since all the leaders of Parisian society were still 
 at the watering-places, and the few journalists who were left in 
 Paris, appalled by the word ' tragedy,' could not screw up courage 
 to cross the threshold of the Th^S,tre FranQais, At length came 
 the month of October, the number of spectators increased, and my 
 young pupil continued her representations to splendid houses. Oh 
 those glorious evenings ! 
 
 " Never shall I forget them, any more than the mornings conse- 
 crated to the stage education of my marvellous scholar. I number 
 them among the most delightful hours of my life. What quickness 
 of perception ! What nice accuracy in feeling and tone ! Bear in 
 mind that this child knew nothing ; that I had to explain to her 
 the character of the personage she had to represent, and in a 
 manner to go through a little course of history with her before our 
 lesson of declamation ; but when once she understood me, she 
 entered thoroughly into the spirit of the part. Nothing was 
 vague, nothing left to chance. We noted every point together. 
 From the very first her elocution was of the highest order, and 
 worthy to serve as a model. For Mademoiselle Mars, who — being, 
 
 ' This was played on the 16th of June, four nights after Rachel's 
 first appearance. She repeated the part on the 11th of July, but 
 not again till the 27th of September. 
 
RACHEL. 15 
 
 as she was, the daughter of Monvel, an actor renowned for truth 
 and perfect intonation as a speaker — was an excellent judge, came, 
 after hearing Rachel, to compliment me in the warmest terms, 
 adding these words : ' This is how tragedy ought to be spoken ; this 
 was the way my father treated it. '" 
 
 Eachel's greatest success with the puhKc in these early- 
 performances was m Amenaide, which she performed for 
 the first tim.e on the 8th of August. The house had been 
 filled by free admissions of people to whom her very 
 name was unknown. They soon felt that in her they 
 saw no ordinary novice. She was greatly applauded 
 throughout the piece, and was recalled at its close, when 
 a bouquet and wreath were flung to her — these were days 
 in which such recalls and floral tributes had a real sig- 
 nificance — ^but still the receipts showed no symptoms of 
 improvement. On this night they only reached 625 
 francs. Upon this, the lady who was entitled, by her 
 position in the theatre, to claim the parts in which 
 Eachel had made her trial performances, importuned the 
 director to bring them to a close. But M. Vedel was 
 firm. He believed that his novice possessed the sacred 
 fire, which must ere long attract the worship of the 
 Parisian public, and the representations were continued. 
 
 As the shortening days of autumn brought people back 
 to Paris, they heard of the new star that had begun to 
 shiae in the theatrical firmament. The leading critics 
 resumed their labours. Chief among them, Jules Janin, 
 the theatrical critic of the ' Journal des D^bats,' was per- 
 suaded to see her (4th September) in Hermione, the char- 
 acter of which the best judges had spoken as her master- 
 piece. He entered the theatre expecting to see only the 
 merely respectable promise, of which he had already seen 
 too much among juvenile debutantes ; he left it convinced 
 
16 RACHEL. 
 
 that the French stage possessed in this young girl a genius 
 worthy of its best days. His enthusiasm was expressed in 
 his next weekly feuilleton in the ' Dehats ' with so much 
 fervour, that public attention was arrested. Janin was 
 not likely to fail to remind the public that he had pre- 
 dicted, in the review of Eachel's performance in La 
 Vendemne, that "she possessed talent of no common 
 order, and that a great future lay before her." Now he 
 proclaimed her as the most marveUous actress his gener- 
 ation had seen upon the stage. People had refused to 
 believe what he foretold of her ; " now she is listened to 
 in. the great tragedies of ComeUle, Racine, and Voltaire, 
 encouraged, applauded." 
 
 " She haa found," he goes on to aay, " the legitimate development 
 of her precocious dramatic genius. It ia nothing short of marvel- 
 lous, this uneducated child, without art, without preparation of any 
 kind " — what must St Aulaire and Samson have thought of this ? 
 — " thus becoming the interpreter of our grand old tragedies ! She 
 blows their ashes into a flame by her genius and her energy ; and 
 remember she is small, decidedly plain, with a narrow chest, an in- 
 significant appearance, and common speech. Do not ask her who 
 TancrMp, Horace, Hermione are, or about the Trojan 'War, or 
 Pyrrhus, or Helen. She knows nothing ; but she has that which 
 is better than knowledge : she has that sudden illumination, which 
 she throws around her ; she grows ten inches taller- on the stage ; 
 she raises her head, and extends her chest ; her eye brightens ; she 
 treads like a queen ; her voice vibrates with the passion that agitates 
 her. . . . She is a priestess, a Pythoness, this child of seventeen. 
 The curse is the first revelation of Rachel's power. The storm 
 raging in this grief-stricken breast is terrific. We tremble before 
 it as something superhuman, godlike." 
 
 " She knows nothing." A startling but undoubted fact, 
 well known in the young actress's own circle, and upon which 
 some curious light has recently been thrown by the volume, 
 ' Autographes. Collection Adolphe Cremieux,' published 
 
RACHEL. 17 
 
 in 1885. Eachel's parents had introduced her in 1838 to 
 M. Cr&iieux (afterwards conspicuous as one of the Ee- 
 publican leaders in 1848), whose practice as an avocat 
 brought him much into contact with the Jewish fraternity 
 in Paris. Both he and his wife grew warmly attached to 
 Eachel, so much so, that she became a very " enfant de 
 la maison." Cr^mieux took her education in hand. Her 
 orthography, as already mentioned, was vUlainous. But 
 Eachel hated writing, or task-work of any kind. She 
 would begin to yawn after a few minutes' work with the 
 pen, and could not be got to fix her attention on spell- 
 ing or syntax or the formation of her letters. But talk 
 or read to her, and she was aU attention, and she never 
 forgot what she learned under the guidance of M. and 
 Mdme. Cremieux in this way. How much she had to 
 learn may be judged by her asking them, when read- 
 ing the first chapter of Genesis, what "the firmament" 
 was. 
 
 It was well for her social reputation in those days, that 
 she had such kind and intelligent friends to put her in 
 the way of repairing her educational deficiencies. How 
 awkwardly these sometimes placed her is well illustrated 
 by an incident which occurred at the Cremieux dinner- 
 table the day after one of her most successful first appear- 
 ances in ' Les Horaces.' Next her at table sat a young 
 man from Bordeaux, who spoke enthusiastically of the 
 rare good fortune by which he, a poor provincial, had 
 been able to see her. ""What a splendid creation is 
 your impersonation of CamiUe!" he exclaimed. "One 
 does not know when to admire you most j whether in the 
 curse, which was never given with such tragic fury, or 
 while you are listening to the story of the death of the 
 Horatii ! What marvellous pantomime at the moment 
 
18 RAGHEL. 
 
 of the QuOl mourutl"'^ At this Eachel whispered to 
 Cr^mieux, who sat on her other side — " What is it, this 
 Qu'il mowAt ? " " flush ! " replied Cr^mieux, " say noth- 
 ing — later on I wiU teU you." When aU the company 
 had retired, Eachel, who had been the queen of the even- 
 ing, came up to her host. " Now, seriously," he said to 
 her, " Do you not know what the famous Qu'il mourut 
 is 1" "I assure you, I do not," was her answer. " What 
 then do you read when you learn a part ? " " My own 
 part, and the answers.'' 
 
 Had Cremieux heen learned in the ways of actors, he 
 would not have been so surprised at this revelation as he 
 was. Stage history tells of many eminent actors as well 
 as actresses, who, after the practice of years, have been 
 content to remain quite as much in the dark as to every 
 part of the plays, even of Shakespeare, except what they 
 had themselves to speak. Is this ignorance even now a 
 stranger to our own stage ? It is very strange, however, 
 that Eachel should not have been taught better things 
 by such masters as St Aulaire and Samson. M. Cremieux 
 did his best to correct the omission, and she proved an apt 
 pupU in seizing the whole features of the story which the 
 character she had to represent was intended to illustrate. 
 
 Encouraged by the criticism of Janin on Eachel's Her- 
 mione, those who had seen the debutante were emboldened 
 to give voice to the admiration which they had felt, but 
 had hitherto feared to express. The effect was seen in a 
 
 ' ' Les Horaces,' act iii., scene 6, the famous reply of the elder 
 Horatims to Julia, when his invective against his third son for hav- 
 ing fled from the field is met by the question, " Que vouliez tous 
 qu'il fit contre trois ? " GamiUe is present throughout the scene, 
 but has not to speak. Hence Rachel's ignorance of what Voltaire 
 calls " ce trait du plus grand sublime, ce mot auquel il n'en est 
 aucun de comparable dans toute I'antiquit^." 
 
RACHEL. 19 
 
 great increase of the receipts the next night. Another 
 article hy Jules Janin a fortnight later (24th September 
 1838), written in still more enthusiastic terms, effectually 
 roused the Parisian public. The theatre became thronged 
 to an extent hitherto unknown. People spent hours in 
 waiting for the opening of the doors. Hundreds were 
 turned away disappointed. The new idol became the one 
 great topic of conversation in all societies. 
 
 From this moment the receipts of the house ran up to 
 a figure calculated to make every member of the Com^die 
 Frangaise happy. £25 a-night was the average return 
 of Eachel's first eighteen performances. For the next 
 eighteen it was within a fraction of £200 a-night, — a 
 receipt of which nothing would now be thought, but 
 which was then regarded as magnificent. In fact, M. 
 Vedel, the director of the theatre, himseK described it as 
 " colossal " ; and he proved his sincerity by raising 
 Eachel's salary, at the end of October, from 4000 to 
 20,000 francs. 
 
 Her father, ever thinking less of his daughter's art as 
 art than as a valuable commodity for sale, two months 
 afterwards demanded that it should be raised to 40,000, 
 or exactly ten times the modest £160 a-year which in 
 June, when they were living au sixikne in the Eue 
 Traversaire St Honor6, had been regarded by the family 
 as wealth. The demand was resisted, but only for a time. 
 The theatre found it could not get on without Eachel, 
 and she could therefore dictate her own terms, — an ad- 
 vantage which neither she nor those around her were 
 likely to forego. The 40,000 francs demand soon rose 
 to 60,000, and had to be conceded.^ 
 
 ^ This was the sum stipulated for by Rachel in 1840, when she 
 attained majority, and was free to act for herself. The exorbi- 
 
20 RACHEL. 
 
 But while papa and mama F^lix were thinking only of 
 making up for the privations of the past by raising the 
 family income to the highest possible figure, Eachel her- 
 self was straining every nerve, by unremitting study and 
 meditation, to gratify and to maintain the admiration she 
 had excited, adding several new parts to her repertoire, 
 and augmenting her reputation by them all. Among 
 these was Roxane in Eacine's ' Bajazet,' a character which 
 it wanted no small courage in a girl so young, and, of 
 necessity, so inexperienced in the passions by which it is 
 inspired, even to think of undertaking. But courage was 
 never a quality in which Eachel was deficient ; and with 
 the precepts of M. Samson to enlighten her, she yielded 
 to M. Vedel's request, and allowed herself to be announced 
 for the part on the 29th of November. 
 
 The house was crammed with an audience prepared to 
 admire. But when Eachel came to grapple with the part 
 upon the stage, she lost her nerve, her declamation showed 
 none of its wonted fire, her gestures none of their wonted 
 appropriate and spontaneous grace, and the sullen silence 
 which reigned through the house on the fall of the curtain 
 was only too significant of entire failure. Anxious to 
 mitigate the censure of Eachel's stanchest friend in the 
 press, M. Vedel visited Jules Jania the next day. They 
 were discussing the disaster of the previous night, when 
 Eachel herself was announced. " She was greatly agitated 
 
 tance of her demands then and subsequently made her very un- 
 popular with her associates of the theatre ; for although the re- 
 ceiptfi upon the nights she acted were very great, they feU off so 
 much on the nights she did not act, that the balance for general 
 distribution was kept very low indeed. So completely, in fact, did 
 the public reserve itself for Rachel, that the interests of the other 
 members of the establishment suffered rather than profited by her 
 success. 
 
RACHEL. 21 
 
 and embarrassed," writes M. Vedel, who told the story- 
 years afterwards. " She hung down her head, said 
 nothing, and looked for all the world like a culprit before 
 her judge." Janin received her most kindly, and tried to 
 cheer her, but told her plainly — ^for he was a man true to 
 his responsibilities as a critic — that notwithstanding aU 
 the interest and affection he felt for her, he could not 
 speak favourably of her performance. " Poor Eachel 
 wept scalding tears, like a scolded child. We did our 
 best to comfort her, Janin sparing no pains in this direc- 
 tion, but insisting nevertheless that she should not repeat 
 the part." On this point, however, he and M. Vedel were 
 by no means at one, for Vedel was satisfied that Eachel 
 would quickly retrieve her failure. , Accordingly, as he 
 drove her home he told her that, despite M. Janin, the 
 play should be repeated the next night but one ; and she 
 promised to be ready. This her father tried to prevent ; 
 but M. Vedel's resolution was not to be shaken. After a 
 stormy scene, in which papa Felix found his threat that 
 his daughter should not play fell upon deaf ears, M. Vedel 
 wrote to Eachel, urging her in the kindest terms not to 
 listen to her father, or to put her future in peril by vio- 
 lating the terms of her engagement. This brought the 
 following reply : — 
 
 " Ne auis-je a vos ordres ? Quand on aime les gens, on fait tout 
 pour lews plaire. Tout Ji vous.' — Eaohel." 
 
 ' Rachel'B grammar, like her spelling, was very shaky at this 
 time, and, indeed, to judge from her letters, was never perfect. 
 "You little pedant," she is reported to have said to her favourite 
 sister Rebecca, who had dropped something about the defects of the 
 great tragedian's grammar, " let me tell you, women such as I make 
 and unmake grammar as they please." 
 
22 RACHEL. 
 
 The next moming Jules Janin's article appeared. It 
 was remorseless : — 
 
 " What," it said, ' ' were people about in making her play Roxmne ? 
 How could this child diviae a passion of the senses, not of the soul ? 
 . . . This delicate girl, this puny overtasked frame, this unde- 
 veloped hosom, this troubled tone — could these suffice to represent 
 the stalwart lioness whom we call Eoxame? Mdlle. Eachel ap- 
 peared, and in an instant the house felt she was unequal to the 
 task : this was not the Roxane of the poet ; it was a young girl 
 astray in the seraglio." 
 
 No pleasant reading this for the director, still less for the 
 young actress. Putting the best face on matters which 
 he could, M. Vedel went to her dressing-room before the 
 play began. He found her ready, and looking superb in 
 her sultana costume. " Well, chUd," he exclaimed, " how 
 do you feel 1 " " Oh, well," she answered, smiling ; " I 
 have forced them to let me have my way, but it has cost 
 me no small trouble : I had a terrible struggle to face ; I 
 believe things will go better to-night." "You are not 
 afraid, then?" "No." "I like this confidence: it 
 augurs well. You have read Janin's article?" "Yes; 
 he pays me out finely. I am furious, but so much the 
 better. It has strung me up. Anger is sometimes a 
 useful stimulant." 
 
 " To strive, to seek, to fight, and not to yield " is the 
 creed of genius. With the young Eachel it was a law. 
 Accordingly, her performance that night completely eifaced 
 the impression of her former failure. It even threw all 
 her previous successes into shade. The audience were in 
 raptures. She was recalled at the end of the play with 
 frantic applause, and an avalanche of bouquets descended 
 upon her in such profusion that they had to be removed 
 by the servants of the theatre. After the play M. Vedel 
 
RACHEL. 23 
 
 repaired to her dressing-room, when, making her way 
 through the crowd of voluble admirers that filled it, she 
 threw herself into his arms, exclaiming, " Thanks ! 
 thanks ! I felt sure that you were right." 
 
 Prom this point Eachel's position as the foremost 
 actress of her class was secure ; and as she gained in 
 physical strength and in experience, her hold upon her 
 audiences became greater and greater — for in these early 
 days she prosecuted her studies with enthusiasm, and 
 her heart was filled with high aspirations after an exalted 
 ideal. 
 
 M. Samson's description of her person and style in 
 her early and best days, between 1840 and 1845, wiU 
 recall her vividly to those who had then the good fortune 
 to see her : — 
 
 " Rachel," he says, " was over the middle height ; her forehead 
 was arched, her eyes deeply set, and, without being large, very ex- 
 pressive ; her nose straight, with, however, a slight curve in it. 
 Her mouth, furnished with small teeth, white and well set, had an 
 expression at once sarcastic and haughty. Her throat was perfect 
 in its lines, and her head, small and with a low forehead, was set 
 gracefully upon it. She was very thin ; but she dressed with an 
 art so subtle as to make of this thinness almost a beauty. Her walk 
 and gestures were easy, all her movements supple, — ^her whole person, 
 in short, fuU of distinction. She had, to use a common expression, 
 the hands and feet of a duchess.' Her voice, which was a contralto. 
 
 ' This description ,may be compared with that given by Mrs 
 Fanny Kemble in her 'Records of Later Days,' vol. ii. p. 99, where 
 she speaks, writing in June 1841, of Rachel as " of a very good 
 height, too thin for beauty, but not for dignity or grace. . . . Her 
 face is very expressive and dramatically fine, though not absolutely 
 beautiful. It is a long oval, with a head of classical and very grace- 
 ful contour, the forehead rather narrow and not very high ; the 
 eyes small, dark, deep set, and terribly powerful ; the brow straight, 
 noble, and fine in form." As we write, we have before us a medallion 
 profile, life-size, of Rachel, and a cast of her hand, closed upon the 
 
24 RA OREL. 
 
 was limited in its compass; but thanks to the extreme accuracy of 
 her ear, she made use of it with exquisite skill, and drew from it 
 the finest and most deUcate inflections. When she began to speak, 
 her tones were a little hoarse, but this soon went off. 
 
 " When she first appeared at the Com^die Fran9ai3e, her figure 
 had not reached the development which it subsequently acquired : 
 there was in her small features, in her close-set eyes, a sort of con- 
 fusion, if I may be allowed the expression, and people said she was 
 ugly. Later on they said she was beautiful. In point of fact, she 
 was neither the one nor the other, but both, according to the hour, 
 the day, the expression which dominated her face. 
 
 " Ah," he continues, " how to give an idea of this admirable talent 
 to those who have not heard her ? I, who taught her for so many 
 years the secret of the art, am forced to avow how impotent are my 
 attempts to make her known. . . . The talent of the actor descends 
 to the grave with him, and the recollections which he has left with 
 his admirers — ^recollections always imperfect — ^fade away by degrees 
 from the memory, and perish at last with the generation that loved 
 and applauded him." 
 
 "We find an account of her, in wliat was the most in- 
 teresting period of her history, in a letter written in May 
 1839 hy Alfred de Musset to a female friend, which ap- 
 peared in the Tolume of his posthumous works puhhshed 
 in 1867. It is one of those vivid sketches which only a 
 poet could have written, and it places the young artist be- 
 fore us itt lines never to be forgotten. The "noble enfant," 
 as De Musset calls her, had played Amendide in ' Tancrfede ' 
 
 dagger she used as Boxame, — both gifts from herself, in 1841, to Helen 
 Faucit, who had gone to Paris to see the actress whose fame had 
 naturally created an interest in one who had herself lately risen, 
 while yet a mere girl, into the highest rank in her profession. They 
 met in the houses of some of the best families of the Quartier St 
 Germain. To beauty, in so far as that consists of finely balanced 
 symmetry of outline, Rachel could lay no claim ; but her features 
 had pre-eminently that " best part of beauty," due to play of ex- 
 pression, which, as Bacon has said, " no art can express." Her hand 
 was small and beautifully formed, and even in the cast shows how 
 intense was the nervous force which she threw into her action. 
 
RACHEL. 25 
 
 that evening superbly ; and in the great scene of the fifth 
 act she had seemed to De Musset to surpass herself. She 
 told him that she had herself been so much overcome by 
 emotion, her tears falling thick and fast, that she had 
 been afraid she would have broken down. Emotion so 
 strong, all great actors have said, is generally fatal to true 
 artistic effect.^ But Eachel was then young in her voca- 
 tion, and had not learned the self-control of the practised 
 artist. 
 
 She was on her way home from the theatre, with a 
 train of young friends of both sexes, when the poet met 
 her under one of the arcades of the Palais EoyaL " Come 
 home and sup with us," she said ; and home to her father's 
 homely apartment in the Passage V6to Dodat the party 
 went. They had scarcely sat down when Eachel dis- 
 covered that she had left her rings and bracelets at the 
 
 1 Thus Talma writes : "Acting is a complete paradox ; we must 
 possess the power of strong feeling, or we could never command 
 and carry with us the sympathy of a mixed audience in a crowded 
 theatre ; but we must, at the same time, control our sensations on 
 the stage, for their indulgence would enfeeble execution." So 
 again, M. Samson says ('Mdmoires,' p. 39): "An actor who should 
 regard his own emotions in any other light than as materials to be 
 made use of, or make the passions of his part his own, would run 
 the risk of a fiasco. Emotion stammers and sobs. It makes the 
 voice broken and unsteady. Indulged, it would cease to be articu- 
 late. The natural effect of passion is to deprive us of self-control. 
 The head goes ; and why should you suppose that one should do a 
 thing well rather than iU when one has ceased to know what one is 
 doing at all ? " The truth, according to the best authorities, seems 
 to be, that to be great, an actor or actress must, in studying a part, 
 feel all the emotions proper to it, be shaken by passion, weep tears 
 over it, live through its agonies, be transported by its joys, and do 
 this so completely that on the stage the right tone of feeling shall 
 pervade the impersonation, but be all the while held in check by 
 the controlling power of art. 
 
26 EA CHEL. 
 
 theatre. The maid-servant — the household had but one 
 — -was despatched to fetch them. Mama Eachel was 
 famishing — others of the guests were conscious of a void 
 that cried aloud to be filled. But, alas! there was no 
 servant to get the supper ready or to serve it up. Eachel 
 solved the difficulty. 
 
 "She rises," writes De Musset, "goes off to change her dresa, and 
 repairs to the kitchen. In quarter of an hour she Tetums in a 
 dressing-gown and night-cap, a handkerchief over her ears, pretty 
 as an angel, holding in her hand a dish, on which are three beef- 
 steaks, cooked by her own hand. She sets down the dish in the 
 middle of the table, saying ' Fall to ! ' Then she returns to the 
 kitchen, and conies back holding in one hand a soup-tureen full of 
 smoking houHlon, and in the other a casserole with spinach. Be- 
 hold the supper ! No plates or spoons, the maid having carried off 
 the keys. Rachel opens the buffet, finds a salad-bowl fiUed with 
 salad, seizes the wooden spoon, unearths a dish, and begins to eat. 
 
 ' But,' says mama, ' there are pewter plates in the kitchen.' 
 
 Off goes Rachel in search of them, brings them, and distributes 
 them to the guests. On which the following dialogue begins, 
 in which you have my assurance that I have not changed one 
 word :— 
 
 Mama. My dear, the beefsteaks are overdone. 
 
 Rachel. Quite true ; they are as hard as wood. In the days that 
 I did our housework I was a better cook than that. Well, it is one 
 talent the less. What would you have ? I have lost in one way, 
 gained in another. Sarah, you don't eat. 
 
 Sarah, No ; I can't eat off a pewter plate. 
 
 Rachel. Oh ! and so it is since I bought a dozen plated dishes out 
 of my savings that you are too fine to soil your fingers with pewter ! 
 If I grow richer, you will soon be wanting one servant behind your 
 chair and another before it. {Pointing with her fork. ) I vriU never 
 banish these old plates from our house. They have served us too 
 long. Isn't it so, mama? 
 
 Mama {viith her mouth fuU). What a child it is ! 
 
 Rachd {turning to me). Just fancy 1 when I played at the Theatre 
 Molifere, I had only two pair of stockings, and every morning 
 
 Here Sister Sarah began jabbering in German, to prevent her 
 sister from going on. 
 
RA GHEL. 27 
 
 Eachd. No German here I There is nothing to be ashamed of. 
 At that time I had but two pairs of stockings, and, to play at night, 
 I had to wash a pair of them every morning. That pair was hang- 
 ing up on a cord in my room whilst I was wearing the others. 
 
 /. And you did the house-work ? 
 
 Rachel. I rose every day at six ; and by eight all the beds were 
 made. I then went to market to buy the dinner. 
 
 I. And did you take toll upon the purchases ? {Faisiez-vous danser 
 I'anse du panier ?) 
 
 Sachd. No ; I was a very honest cook : wasn't I, mama ? 
 
 Mama {going on eating.) Oh, that's true. 
 
 Rachd. Once only I played the thief for a month. When I bought 
 for four sous, I counted five, and when I paid ten sous, I charged 
 twelve. At the end of a month I found myself at the head of three 
 francs. 
 
 I {sevet-dy). And what did you do with these three francs 
 mademoiselle ? 
 
 Mama (seeing thai Rachel was sUent). Monsieur, she bought 
 Molidre'a works with them. 
 
 /. Indeed ! 
 
 Rachd. Indeed yes ! I already had a Corneille and a Racine ; a 
 Molifere I sorely wanted. I bought it with my three francs, and 
 then I confessed my crimes." 
 
 This kind of talk bored the majority of the guests, 
 and three-fourths of them got up and left. De Musset 
 contiaues : — 
 
 "The servant returns, bringing the rings and bracelets. They 
 were laid upon the table. The two bracelets are magnificent — 
 worth at least four or five thousand francs. They are accompanied 
 by a crown in gold, and of great value. The whole lie higgledy- 
 piggledy on the table with the salad, the spinach, and the pewter 
 plates. Meanwhile, struck with the idea of the housemaid's work, 
 of the kitchen, of the beds to make, and the toils of the needy life, 
 I fix my eyes upon Rachel's hands, rather fearing to find them ugly 
 or injured. They are delicately small, white, dimpled, and tapering 
 off into fine points — a true princess's hands. 
 
 Sarah, who does not eat, continues to grumble in German. . . . 
 
 Rachd (replying to the Qerman growls). You worry me. I want 
 to talk about my young days." 
 
28 BA GHEL. 
 
 Supper ended, Eachel brews a bowl of punch for her 
 guests, amuses herself by setting fire to it ; has the candles 
 — much to the horror of the Argus-eyed mama, who ob- 
 viously had her doubts as to what De Musset might do in 
 the dark — put under the table, so as to heighten the effect 
 of the blue flames ; and when they are put back, and the 
 punch distributed, takes the little poignard from De 
 Musset' s cane, and uses it for a toothpick. 
 
 "Here," says the poet, " the common talk and childish pranks 
 come to an end. A single word is enough to change the whole 
 character of the scene, and to bring into this picture poetry and the 
 artistic instinct. 
 
 /. How you read the letter to-night ! You were greatly moved. 
 
 Bachd. Yes. It seemed as if something within me were going to 
 break. But that is nothing. I don't like the piece [Voltaire's 
 ' Tancrfede '] much. It is artificiaL 
 
 /. You prefer the plays of Corneille and Bacine ? 
 
 Sachd. I love Corneille dearly, and yet he is sometimes trivial ; 
 sometimes stilted. There is not the ring of truth in these passages. 
 
 /. Oh, gently, mademoiselle ! 
 
 Rachd. Let us see. When in ' Horace,' for example, Sabine says, 
 Ou pent changer d'amant, mais non changer d'ipoux; I don't like 
 that. It is coarse. 
 
 /. You will admit, at any rate, it is true^ 
 
 Rachel. Yes ; but is it worthy of Corneille ? Talk to me of 
 Eacine ! Him I adore. Everything.he says is so beautiful, so true, 
 so noble I 
 
 /. Apropos of Racine, do you remember receiving some time ago 
 an anonymous letter, which contained a suggestion about the last 
 scene of Mithridate ? 
 
 Rachd. Perfectly ; I followed the advice given, and ever since I 
 have been greatly applauded in this scene. Do you know who it 
 was that wrote to me ? 
 
 /. I do : it is the woman in all Paris with the largest mind and 
 the smallest foot. [This was a description of Georges Sand, well 
 known in Paris at the time.] What part are you studying just 
 now? 
 
 Rachd. This summer we are going to play ' Marie Stuart ' and 
 then ' Polyeucte,' and perhaps 
 
RA CHEL. 29 
 
 I. WeU? 
 
 Sachel (strihmg the table emphatically). Well, I want to play 
 PhAd/re. They tell me I am too young, too thin, and a thousand 
 other ahsurdities. But I answer, it is the finest part in Kacine ; I 
 believe I can play it. 
 
 Sarah. Perhaps, dear, you are mistaken. 
 
 Sachel. That's my affair. If people say that I am too young, and 
 that the part does not suit me, pa/rbleu I they said heaps of things 
 ahout my playing lUmme ; and what did they all come to ? If they 
 say that I am too thin, I maintain this is sheer nonsense. A woman 
 who is possessed by a shameful love, but who dies rather than aban- 
 don herself to it ; a woman parched up with the fire of passion and 
 the waste of tears,^ such a woman cannot have a chest like Madame 
 ParadoL It would be contrary to all nature. I have read the part 
 ten times within the last eight days. How I shall play it I do not 
 know, but I tell you that I feel it. Let the papers say what they 
 please, they shall not change my mind on the subject. They are at 
 their wits' end to find things to annoy me, when they might help 
 and encourage me ; but I shall act, if it comes to that, for three 
 people. (Tummg towa/rds me.) Yes ! I have read certain articles 
 that speak out frankly and conscientiously, and I know nothing 
 better, more useful ; but there are some people who use their pen 
 to lie, to destroy. They are worse than thieves or assassins. They 
 kill the mind by pin-pricks. Oh, I feel as though I could poison 
 them ! 
 
 Mama. Kj dear, you do nothing but talk ; you are tiring your- 
 self. This morning you were up by six ; I can't imagine what you 
 are made of. You have been chatter-chattering all the day, and 
 played to-night, besides ; you will make yourself ill. 
 
 Rachd (with vivacity). No ! I tell you— no ! All this gives me 
 Ufe. {Then turning to me.) Would you like me to fetch the book ? 
 We shall read the play together. 
 
 /. Would I like it ? You could not please me more. 
 
 Swrah. But, dear, it is half -past eleven. 
 
 Sachel. Very well ; go to bed ! what prevents you ? " 
 
 Thereupon off goes Sarah to bed. Eachel rises and leaves 
 the room. Presently she returns with the volume of 
 
 1 Rachel was thinking of the line, " Tai langui, j'ai sdch4 dans les 
 feux, dans les larmes.'' 
 
30 RA GHEL. 
 
 Eacine in her hand ; her look and bearing have in them 
 something not to be described — something solemn and 
 devout, Kke that of an officiating priestess on her way to 
 the altar, bearing the sacred vessels. She seats herself 
 near De Musset, and snuffs the candle. Mama, with a 
 smile on her face, drops off into a doze. 
 
 " Sachd {opening the volwme with ma/rhed respect and bending over 
 it). How I love this man ! When I put my nose into this book, I 
 would like to stay there two days without drinking or eating. 
 
 " Rachel and I began to read the ' Phfedre, ' with the book placed 
 on the table between us. All the guests go away. Kachel, with a 
 slight nod, salutes them one by one as they leave, and goes on 
 reading. At first she recites in a kind of monotone, as if it were a 
 litany. By degrees she kindles. We exchange our remarks, our 
 ideas, on each passage. At length she comes to the declaration.^ 
 She stretches out her right arm upon the table ; with her forehead 
 resting upon her left hand, which is supported on her elbow, she 
 gives full vent to her emotion. Nevertheless she only speaks in a 
 suppressed voice. AH at once her eyes sparkle — the ^genius of 
 Racine illuminates her face ; she grows pale, then red. Never did 
 I behold anything so beautiful, so interesting ; never, on the stage, 
 has she produced such an effect upon me. 
 
 " The fatigue, a little hoarseness, the punch, the lateness of the 
 hour, an animation almost feverish on her small girlish cheeks, en- 
 circled by the night-cap, a strange unwonted charm diffused over 
 her whole being, those brilliant eyes that read my soul, a childlike 
 smile, which finds the means of insinuating itself through aU that 
 passes ; add to this, the table in disorder, the candle with its 
 fiickering flame, the mother dozing beside us,— all this composes at 
 once a picture worthy of Rembrandt, a chapter of romance worthy 
 of ' Wilhelm Meister,' and a souvenir of the artist's life which shall 
 never fade out of my memory, 
 
 "This went on till half -past twelve, when her father returned 
 from the opera, where he had been to see Mdlle. Judith make her 
 first appearance in 'La Juive." No sooner is he seated, than he 
 addresses to his daughter two or three words of the most churlish 
 
 ^ That is, the fine scene, act ii. sc. 5, in which PJiidre makes con- 
 fession to Sippolytnia of her love for him. 
 
RAO H EL. 31 
 
 kind, ordering her to cease reading. Rachel closes the volume, 
 saying, ' Disgusting ! I shall buy a match-box, and read in my bed 
 alone.' I looked at her ; great tears were standing in her eyes. 
 
 " It was indeed disgusting, to see such a creature treated thus. 
 I rose and took my leave, filled with admiration, with respect for 
 her, and profound sympathy," 
 
 Years were to elapse and the young actress to rise to 
 the height of her fame, hefore she realised her dream of 
 impersonating Phhdre. We see from De Musset's narra- 
 tive how early it had taken possession of her mind. She 
 had often dwelt upon the suhject with her friend M. 
 Cr^mieux, who had again and again dissuaded her from 
 the attempt, telling her she was too young and could not 
 understand the character. One morning she arrived at 
 his study in the highest spirits — "I know the part of 
 Phfedre now ; shall I repeat it to you 1 "' she said. Cr^- 
 mieux heard her, but felt sure, when she had finished, 
 that she could do much hotter. "Do you know," he 
 asked, "the story of this Phfedie, so guilty and so un- 
 happy 1 "When you say, 
 
 ' Ariane, ma smir, de qud amour llessie 
 Vous mourHtes aux hords oit vous fHies laiisie ! ' 
 
 have you present to your mind the woful destiny of 
 Ariane i Do you know into what shameful excesses the 
 fatal wrath of Venus plunged your mother ? In a word, 
 have they taught you the legend of that woful race, of 
 which you die 'la demifere et la plus mis&able'?" 
 "No!" replied Eachel, "pray teU it me, dear Papa 
 Cr^mieux." To refuse was impossible ; but how was 
 such a story to be told to ears which Cr6mieux believed 
 to be chaste and piu;e ? He managed to get over the task 
 with what delicacy he could. His pupil saw at a glance 
 the bearing of the tragic story. " Now," she said, when 
 
32 RACHEL. 
 
 he had done, "would you like me to recite my part 
 again ? " She did so, and seemed to be transformed into 
 that victim of a guilty passion inspired by the " haine de 
 Venus'' — which she was destined soon after to make a 
 living reaUty, which those who had the good fortune to 
 see it could never forget.^ But it was well for her repu- 
 tation that her appearance in the character was delayed 
 until her powers were fully matured, and she was able to 
 present it to the world as her masterpiece. 
 
 Meanwhile the pubHc of Paris were content to see her 
 again and again in the parts in which she had first won 
 their regards, with the addition of a few others — such as 
 Esther (Eacine), Laodice in ' Mcomfede ' (Comeille), Paul- 
 ine in 'Polyeucte' (CorneUle) — from the old classical 
 pieces, which had so recently been thought to have com- 
 pletely lost their hold upon the stage. 
 
 The favourite of the theatre became also the favourite 
 of the saloons, and the doors of the most exclusive houses, 
 even of the Quartier St Germain, were thrown open to 
 her. At none was she more welcome than at that of 
 Madame Eecamier, where she held her own with distinc- 
 tion amid the brilliant circle which clustered round that 
 fascinating woman. What Eachel was then, Madame 
 Lenormand describes in her Memoirs of Madame Eeca- 
 mier, with an accuracy for which those who met her in 
 society at this period can vouch. 
 
 "Whoever," she writes, "has not heard and seen Mdlle. Eachel 
 in a salon can have only an incomplete idea of her feminine attrac- 
 tions, and of her talent as an actress. Her features, a little too 
 delicate for the stage, gained much by being seen nearer. Her 
 voice was a little hard ; but her accent was enchanting, and she 
 modulated it to suit the limits of a salon with marvellous instinct. 
 
 Autographea. Collection Adolphe Cr^mieux, p. 141. 
 
EA GHEL. 33 
 
 Her deportment was in irreproachable taste ; and the ease and 
 promptitude with which this young girl, without education or 
 knowledge of good society, seized its manner and tone, was cer- 
 tainly the perfection of art. Deferential with dignity, modest, 
 natural, and easy, she talked interestingly of her art and her 
 studies. Her success in society was immense." 
 
 Wliat wonder ! In the poetical world in which, her 
 imagination was then and had for years been working, 
 she had lived in the society in which the simplicity, 
 earnestness, courtesy, and absence of self-assertion that go 
 to produce distinction of manner are best learned. 
 
 It was well known, from what a stock she had sprung 
 — ^how sordid were the habits and tastes of her parents — 
 how Httle she could possibly have seen of the refinements 
 which are the common possession of good society. To find 
 her what Madame Lenormand describes her to have been, 
 while it created general surprise, added immensely to the 
 fascination under which her triumphs on the stage had 
 already placed men and women of the highest culture, 
 as well as the leaders in literature and art, by whom her 
 society was eagerly sought. She had an air of perfect 
 breeding, simple, unpretentious, refined, holding her own 
 in circles where the play of wit, and the address and 
 sparkle of good conversation were most conspicuous. But, 
 sought after as she was, it was diflScult to conceal the 
 defects of orthography, which the answers that had to be 
 written to the numerous letters she received would have 
 betrayed. In this dilemma her friend M. Cr^mieux came 
 to her aid, and supplied her with the drafts of nearly all 
 the letters which she had to write. Often, writes his 
 biographer, people said to him, "What an extraordinary 
 creature is this Eachel! Not satisfied with being the 
 first tragic actress of the age, she writes like Madame de 
 
 c 
 
34 RA GHEL. 
 
 Sevignd Look at this charming letter I have just 
 received from her." And Cr^mieux read, without re- 
 mark, a letter, every word of which he had already the 
 best of all reasons for knowing. At the same time it 
 must he said that, however they might fail in orthography 
 or syntax, Eachel's letters to her friend, of which his edi- 
 tor gives specimens, are charming in feeHng and clever to 
 a degree, and give promise of the admirable letter-writer 
 which she afterwards became. 
 
 The echo of Eachel's fame, confirmed as it *ras by the 
 great cities of France, in the course of successful but most 
 exhausting tours in 1840, greatly excited public curiosity 
 on this side of the Channel ; and when she appeared at 
 her Majesty's Theatre in May 1841, she was received with 
 a warmth for which she was not prepared. In a letter 
 quoted ia M. d'Heylli's volume (17th May 1841), she 
 writes : — 
 
 "Here I am in London, — my success most brilliant, — for every- 
 body says they never witnessed anything to equal it. I made my 
 first appearance as Sermione in ' Andromaque,' and I assure you 
 that, when I went upon the stage, my feet shook under me, and I 
 believe I should have dropped down with fright, had not a tre- 
 mendous volley of applause come to sustain me, and to rouse me 
 to fuller consciousness of aU it behoved me to do to merit this 
 reception, which was mere kindness, and nothing but kindness, 
 since they had not yet heard me. The bravos and plaudits accom- 
 panied me to the close of my part, and then I was recalled. Hats 
 and handkerchiefs waved from the boxes, and a number of bouquets 
 fell at my feet. A magnificent engagement has just been offered 
 me for next season." ' 
 
 ' The company which Eachel brought with her to England was 
 a very weak one. She says of it, on recounting to M. Cr^mieux 
 the success of her first appearance, " Mon entoitrqge n'a iU que pour 
 me mieux fawe ressortir." This was to the last what she liked. 
 One day, when M. Cr^mieux expressed regret not to have seen her 
 
RA OH EL. 35 
 
 A few days further on (31st May), she writes to the 
 same friend : "The English journalists say quantities of 
 fine things about me, and, all unsoUoited {sans cartes de 
 visite). On Wednesday I am engaged to the Queen 
 (Dowager) at Marlborough House. All the Court will be 
 there ! I am so frightened ! " AU was not sunshine, 
 however. A bad attack of iUness interrupted her per- 
 formances, and she was surrounded exclusively by 
 strangers. Her sister Sarah came over from Paris. 
 "Ah," Eachel writes (15th June), "how glad I am I 
 made her come to London ! I was so sad far away from 
 aU those I love, and without the power even of speaking 
 of them ! I assure you this contributed greatly to my 
 eight days' iUness." 
 
 In the same letter she speaks of her triumphant success 
 in Marie Stuart, which was certainly not one of her best 
 parts. " Ten bouquets and two chaplets fell at my feet 
 with thunders of applause. The receipts mounted to 
 30,000 francs (£1200) and a few guineas. . . . 13,000 
 (£520) were sent to me next morning. I am content." 
 
 In England Eachel was received in the best society 
 
 play with Talma, she exclaimed, " I am heartily glad he did not 
 live till my time ! " Her English troupe on her first visit were 
 obviously of a low type, not presentable to her English visitors. 
 She writes to M. Cr^mieux that she took care " never to have them 
 with her till about nine in the evening, too late to be broken in 
 upon by gentle folks" {loe, s/wpra cit, p. 167). It was no doubt 
 one of this vulgar troupe who had the bad taste to tell a story of 
 her which has often been repeated to her disadvantage. She had 
 returned from the palace, where the Duchess of Kent, the night 
 being cold, had with her own hands placed a handsome Cashmere 
 shawl on Kachel's shoulders. Throwing it down upon a couch, she 
 exclaimed gaily, "Oh mes amis, que j'ai besoin de m'^ncanaiUer I " 
 After some hours of the icy restraint of a Court circle, the phrase 
 must not be judged too severely. 
 
36 RA OREL. 
 
 with, no less cordiality than she had been in Paris. She 
 still bore an unblemished reputation as a woman, without 
 which in those days her admission into good society would 
 have been impossible.-' The houses of the leading nobility 
 were opened to her. The Dowager-Queen Adelaide paid 
 her marked attention. She performed at Windsor Castle, 
 and was presented by the Duchess of Kent to the Queen, 
 from whom she received a handsome bracelet, with the 
 inscription, " Victoria Reine d, Mademoiselle Rachel." ^ 
 
 The parts in which she appeared were not of a kind to 
 endear her to our English tastes, for they had in them 
 little of the womanly tenderness and charm which Shake- 
 speare has led us to look for in our dramatic heroines, and 
 for which neither her voice nor powers of expression were 
 well suited. But these were of a kind that penetrated 
 even when they pained; for not in our time had been 
 seen such thrilling delineations of the passions enumer- 
 ated by Mrs Fanny Kemble as "the haunt and maia 
 region " of Eachel's genius — " scorn, hatred, revenge, 
 vitriolic irony, concentrated rage, seething jealousy, and 
 a fierce love, which seems in its excess allied to all the 
 evU which sometimes springs from that bitter-sweet root." 
 
 ' Our fine ladies had not as yet been so completely educated out 
 of the simplest rules of propriety as not to be startled by the an- 
 nouncement of an actress ushered into their drawing-rooms as 
 " Mademoisdle Sarah Bernhardt et son JUs." 
 
 " On receiving her Majesty's invitation to Windsor Caatle, Rachel 
 was delighted. But some of the people about the Court told her 
 that it would be proper for her to write to the Queen the next day 
 after her soirie there. " Mon oher Monsieur Cr^mieux," she writes 
 to her friend, " vms voyez que, malgri les granda progris que je fail 
 dans le style, U me faudra cette fois encore avoir recours d vos com- 
 plaiscmces etermUes,"—&n appeal not made in vain. In a letter to 
 M. Cr^mieux, Rachel gives a spirited account of the evening at 
 Windsor Castle. 
 
RA GHEL. 37 
 
 Her fine thougli somewhat peculiar voice was especially 
 fitted for the expression of these eihotions. Mrs Kemble 
 says of it, it was " the deepest and most sonorous " she 
 ever heard from, woman's lips. " It wants," she adds, 
 " hrUliancy, Taiiety, tenderness, tut it is like a fine deep- 
 toned heU." And it was managed with a consummate skill, 
 which turned its natural advantages to the fullest account. 
 The English critics complained of the want of the more 
 attractive femiiune qualities in Eachel's performances. It 
 was a want which no actress — no young one at least — 
 would he willing to own ; and in the hope of disproving 
 the charge, Eachel, in the following year, essayed the 
 character of Ghimhne in Comeille's ' Cid,' and of Ariane 
 in the same author's tragedy of that name. But these 
 impersonations only confirmed the judgments of those of 
 her critics, in Paris as well as in London, who denied to 
 her the power of touching " the sacred source of sympa- 
 thetic tears." Still, within her own pecidiar province she 
 stood alone; and when she returned to England in 1842, 
 she established that supremacy even more firmly hy an 
 ohvious improvement not merely in physical power, but 
 also in the resources of her art. Not the least in Eachel's 
 estimation of the trophies which she carried away from 
 this visit was a letter from the Duke of "Wellington, 
 assuring her of his great anxiety to be present at her 
 benefit, for which he had secured a box, which he will 
 not fail to occupy " si il lui devient possible " — the 
 French, it wiU be observed, is rather of the " Frenche 
 atte Bowe " kind — " de s'absenter ce jour Ik de I'assembl^e 
 du Parlement dont il est membre. II regrettera beaucoup 
 si il le trouve impossible ainsi d'avoir la satisfaction de la 
 voir et I'entendre encore une fois avant son depart de 
 Londres." 
 
38 RA GHEL. 
 
 The enthusiasm of Paris and London was, if possible, 
 surpassed by that of the principal cities of France and 
 Belgium. Some of Eachel's letters from Eouen, Bor- 
 deaux, and Marseilles, quoted in M. ,d'HeyUi's volume, 
 give a vivid picture of the heavy cost to the strength and 
 to the emotions of the young artist by which her successes 
 in the provinces were purchased, at the time when she 
 ought to have been seekiug repose. Thus, on the 11th 
 June 1840, she writes from Eouen to a friend : " True, I 
 have success, but not one friend. Here I never stir out : 
 I write all day long ; 'tis my only distraction. It seems 
 to me death were preferable to this life, which I drag 
 along as a convict drags his chain.'' Everywhere the 
 fatigue had to be encountered of receiving all sorts of 
 admirers, who quite forgot to consider whether their com- 
 pliments compensated for the inroads they made upon the 
 artist's hours of study and repose. "I am interrupted 
 every minute," she writes from Bordeaux (4th August 
 1841) to Jules Janin, " by people who constantly ply me 
 with the same phrases, and this without ever altering a 
 syllable." The odes and sonnets from young poets, which 
 rained upon her, provoked more of her mirth than of her 
 sympathy. "To-day," she writes a few days later, "I 
 received another set of verses from a young avocat ; people 
 are warm in the South, and declarations abound. These 
 amuse me, when they are written; but, par howihe, my 
 tragic air comes in to my assistance, and I make short 
 work of them.'' In the midst of aU these distractions, 
 Eachel reads and studies, and dreams of the new part of 
 Judith, on which Madame de Girardin is at work for her.^ 
 
 ' It was produced in April 1843, but played only nine times. 
 Even if it had been a stronger play than it was, it had no chance in 
 
RA CHEL. 39 
 
 But the strain was too heavy, and on the 19th of August 
 1841, we find her writing from Bordeaux : " Sooth to say, 
 I know not if I can live long in this way. I am ex- 
 hausted, sad, and were I to write longer, I should weep 
 hot tears." Rachel was still under age, and at the dis- 
 posal of her parents. They seem to have taken no ac- 
 count of her fatigue. The receipts she brought in were 
 superb. What more could their gifted daughter desire % 
 
 Deeply and fataUy as Eachel became infected in after- 
 years with the same greed of gain, it is obvious from her 
 letters that in these early years it had not deadened in 
 her the instincts of the artist. When playiag iu Mar- 
 seilles in June 1843, she read her audience a lesson which 
 our English audiences would be aU the better of having 
 occasionally read to them. Writing to Madame de Gir- 
 ardin, she says : — 
 
 " Let me tell you of a little stroke of audacity, which fills me 
 with alarm when I recall it in cold blood. In the middle of one of 
 the most stirring scenes of ' Bajazet,' some one took it into his head 
 to throw me a wreath, to which I paid no heed, desiring to keep in 
 the part {raster en siPimtion), while the audience shouted, ' The 
 wreath ! the wreath ! ' Atalide, thinking more of the audience than 
 of her part, picked up the wreath, and presented it to me. Indig- 
 nant at a barbarous interruption of this kind, truly worthy of an 
 opera audience, I seized the unlucky wreath with indignation, and 
 flinging it on one side, went on with Soxane. Fortune loves the 
 bold. Never was there a stronger proof of this axiom; for this 
 movement of unstudied impulse was hailed with three salvoes of 
 applause. " 
 
 So again, when writing to her young brother, Eaphael 
 F^lix, from Lyons (7th July 1843), her words of excel- 
 
 competition with the ' Phfedre,' in which Rachel had recently ap- 
 peared, and about which aU Paris was in ecstasy. 
 
40 MA OHEL. 
 
 lent advice show that her heart still burned with the 
 enthusiastic reverence for her art, from which she drew 
 her inspiration, and by which Alfred de Musset had been 
 so deeply fascinated. 
 
 "Now, my dear brother," she -writes, "tell me something of 
 your pursuits, your plana for the future, for it is time you were 
 up and doing. Tou will soon be a man, and you ought to know, 
 ' Q,ue I' habit ne fait pas le moime.' If, as I foresee, your inclinations 
 carry you towards the stage, try at least to look upon the actor's 
 vocation as an art ; treat it as a matter of conscience, not as some- 
 thing merely to make a position for you— as one does with a girl, 
 who is married off when she leaves the convent, in order that she 
 may have the right to dance at a baU six times instead of three — 
 but rather out of love, out of passion for those works which feed 
 the mind, and which guide the heart. . . . 
 
 " It is possible for a woman to attain an honourable position, 
 where she is esteemed and respected, without very possibly having 
 that polish which the world rightly calls education. Why ? you 
 will ask me. It is because a woman does not lose her charm, but 
 the reverse, by maintaining a great reserve in her language and 
 demeanour. A woman answers questions, she does not ask them ; 
 she never initiates a discussion, she listens. Her natural ooquet- 
 tishness makes her long for information ; she retains what she 
 learns, and without having a solid foundation, she thus acquires 
 that superficial culture which may upon occasion pass for real 
 culture. But a man ! what a difference ! All that the woman 
 cannot know, the man should have at his finger-ends, he has 
 occasion for it every day of his life ; it is a resource with which 
 he augments his pleasures, diminishes his pains, gives variety to 
 his enjoyment, and which, moreover, makes him be regarded as 
 'im homme d' esprit.' Think of this, and if the early days seem 
 to you somewhat hard, then refieot that you have a sister who 
 will feel pride and pleasure in your success, and who will cherish 
 you with all her soul. I venture to hope that this letter wiU not 
 have appeared to you too long to read, but on the contrary, that 
 you will often find time to re-read it,— and if not often, why, then, 
 at least every now and then. " 
 
 It is in this and other letters to her family that Eachel 
 
RA GHEL. 41 
 
 as a woman shows at her best. There is ahundanee of 
 good sense, of sprightliness, and of esprit in her other 
 letters — but in these she lets us see that she has a heart. 
 Love of kindred is no uncommon phenomenon even in 
 the most selfish, and it certainly does not deserve a place 
 among the higher virtues. But where a life is in all other 
 ways tainted with selfishness, we hail this as a saving 
 grace, and are fain to think that under happier conditions 
 it might have blossomed into qualities of a more generous 
 strain. 
 
 A strange family they must have been, vulgar, quarrel- 
 some, incapable of profiting by the opportunities of a more 
 refined life which Eachel's success had opened to them. 
 In a letter in the writer's collection from Rachel to her 
 sister Sarah, about the year 1848 — Eachel had the bad 
 habit of very rarely putting the date to her letters — one 
 sees how much disquietude their habits caused her. 
 
 " Papa," she writes, " has just received a letter from Eebecca, 
 telling him of a scene that has taken place between you, her mother, 
 and herself. My dear Sarah, it is high time you should change 
 your character, for Rebecca is no longer a child, and for her age, 
 let me tell you, not inferior to you in any respect. Doubtless I do 
 wrong to meddle in aU these quarrels, but the fact is, I have not 
 the sang froid to be indifferent to them, and I am humiliated by 
 seeing my family behaving to each other in a way that makes me 
 ask if God was not mistaken in pulling us out of the mire in which 
 we lived before I entered the dramatic career. Neither the one nor 
 the other of you are worthy of the good fortune Heaven has 
 showered upon you these last ten years. It is shameful, that the 
 whole family is not more grateful. In words they are more than 
 generous, in act they are ungrateful in the extreme. There are no 
 two families with less heart than ours. The Halle is not more 
 filthy than your tongues. My poor Sarah, learn to appreciate your 
 position better. . . . The advice I give you is that of a sincere friend. 
 In life, when one needs the aid of others, it is necessary to make 
 concessions, or at least not to repay them with insult." 
 
42 RACHEL. 
 
 Her father's name rarely appears in Eacliel's letters ; 
 tut both to and of her mother she always speaks with the 
 filial devotion of her race.^ She was warmly attached, 
 not only to her brother, but also to her four sisters, all of 
 whom had their way to success upon the stage paved by 
 her ; ^ but Eebecca, the youngest and most gifted, was 
 her especial favourite. Over her she watched with a 
 mother-like care ; and when the young girl was taken 
 from her by early death in 1854, just as she had begun to 
 give promise of becoming an ornament to the stage,' the 
 blow struck home. Thus when urged, after she was her- 
 self fatally touched by the same malady, consumption, to 
 go for her health to Eaux Bonnes in 1856, Eachel wrote, 
 
 1 In a letter to her mother, written 9th June 1857, a few months 
 before her death, Rachel says, very charmingly, — " On ne remeroie 
 pas une mfere des ennuis, des fatigues qu'on lui cause ; on I'aime, 
 et jamais on ne s'acquitte vers elle . . . et voil^ ! " Both father 
 and mother survived her, the former dying in 1872, the latter 
 in 1873. 
 
 2 Sarah, the eldest and least capable as an actress, left the stage, 
 and made a fortune by the sale of the Ewu de Fies, which still 
 keeps its place on many toilet-tables. She died at Paris in 1877. 
 Dinah and Lia Fffix still survive ; and the latter, we believe, ap- 
 peared till quite lately upon the stage of the Comddie Pranfaise. 
 
 ' Great hopes that Rebecca would equal her sister upon the stage 
 were at one time entertained. In a letter {30th December 1845) 
 now before me from a friend, who had been most helpful in in- 
 troducing Rachel to the best society in Paris, he writes,—" Poor 
 Rachel is very languishing, and, perhaps, dying. Her method of 
 life is so contrary to the necessities of her health I I have not seen 
 her since two or three years. I pity her so sincerely ! Siioh fine 
 endowments ! Such remarkable qualities ! Alas ! Alas ! Alas ! 
 Her young sister Eebecca played the other day in mj salon with an 
 incredible talent. Some of the distinguished spectators thought 
 that she is even superior to Rachel. That she is, no ! That she 
 will be, I am disposed to believe it. God grant her to have another 
 life than her sister ! " 
 
RACHEL. 43 
 
 " I should never regain my health there, where I saw my 
 poor darHag sister Eebecca die.'' And withia a few hours 
 of her own death, she found comfort ia the thought of 
 their reunion. "Ma pauvre Eeheooa," she exclaimed, 
 " ma chfere sceur, je vais te re voir ! Que je suis 
 heureuse ! " 
 
 From the glimpses which have been furnished to us of 
 the home in which Eachel was reared, there could have 
 been in it little to refine or elevate the moral nature. 
 There is a charming passage in Eabelais, where, borrow- 
 ing from Lucian, he makes Cupid teU his mother Venus, 
 that those who were wedded to the Muses were so 
 absorbed in their noble pursuit, that he unbandaged his 
 eyes, and laid down his quiver, and, ia very reverence 
 for their high and pure natures, sought not to infect them 
 with the sweet poison of his shafts. The apologue sprang 
 from a juster and nobler appreciation of the qualities of 
 the true artist, than the modern belief that to indulge the 
 sensuous appetites and passions is a characteristic and a 
 necessity of the artistic temperament. In the early days 
 of her triumphs, Eachel's heart seems to have been kept 
 pure amid many temptations by " the holy forms of young 
 imagination; " and had they continued to be cherished there, 
 her career would have gone on brightening to the close. 
 But it proved not to be of the kind which the Cupid of the 
 fable spares. To her infinite loss, she gave the jewel of 
 her honour to a man who, when she found him worthless, 
 and discarded him, took the incredibly base revenge of 
 making her weakness known to the world by publishing 
 her letters to himself.^ Straightway society turned its 
 
 ' When the rumours of this scandal first got abroad the Cr^- 
 mieux refused to believe them, and Rachel protested to them her 
 innocence. Details were made public. On this Madame Cr^mieux 
 
44 RA GHEL. 
 
 tack upon the erring sister whom it had believed to be 
 spotless ; and she, made reckless apparently by what had 
 happened, was at no pains to retrieve her damaged repu- 
 tation. Her " tragic air " no longer kept suitors at bay, 
 and she became twice a mother of sons : first in 1844, 
 and again in 1848, — Count Walewski claiming, and being 
 accorded, the honours of paternity in the first case ; whUe 
 in the second, the boy received, and now bears, only his 
 mother's name. Eachel, the great tragedienne, stiU 
 reigned supreme on the stage of the Com^die Frangaise, 
 but she was no more seen in the salons, where to be ad- 
 mitted was an honour; and good men there, who had 
 admired her genius and the charm of her manner in her 
 early days, spoke of her with a sigh as "pauvre Rachel 1 " 
 No cloud had as yet overshadowed her personal character 
 when, on the 24th January 1843, she made her first ap- 
 pearance as Phhdre. The character, like Juliet on our 
 stage, has always been regarded in France as the 
 touchstone of an actress's tragic powers. Champmesl^, 
 Adrienne Lecouvreur, Dumesnil, Clairon, Eaucourt, 
 
 then wrote to her. " Eaohel," ran her words, " my dear child, if our 
 prayers have any power over you, answer me, and say that you will 
 " do what we ask of you. You would not desire to he in Paris and in 
 London merely the woman people go to see as actress because of 
 her superior talent, you who up to this moment have been the child 
 so pure and charming, whom queens and personages of the highest 
 station were delighted to summon to their salons and palaces ; you 
 would not wish that young girls should shun you, you from whom 
 young girls of the highest distinction asked, and gave to you in 
 return, the title of sister. ... I prefer writing to you myself to 
 trusting to the pen of my husband. He is confounded ; he was far 
 from giving heed to this general outcry. On Monday, at one, he 
 will call for your answer. May it permit us to declare publicly 
 that you are always, as we know you are, the Eachel whom we 
 love with all the tenderness of our hearts ! " A servant was sent 
 for the answer, and was told by Eachel that there was none. 
 
RA an EL. 45 
 
 Georges, Duchesnois, all regarded it as trying their skill 
 to the uttermost ; and Clairon, who alone of them all was 
 able not only to act but to write well, says of herself in 
 it : "I am forced to admit that, even when I spoke and 
 acted my best, I always fell far short both of the author 
 and of my own ideal." How true was young Eachel's 
 conception of the part is apparent from De Musset's de- 
 scription. But in having M. Samson's guidance ia this, 
 as in 'her other most important characters, she was 
 peculiarly fortunate, for he had heard Talma read it at 
 the Conservatoire. 
 
 "I see him," he writes ('M^moires,' p. 79), "I hear him Btill. 
 Destitute of all the means of illusion, without theatrical costume, 
 a chair between his legs, and an eye-glass in his hand, he was as 
 tragic as upon the stage, and made us thrill as he spoke to us the 
 verses of And/romaque or of Pliidre. In the declaration of PMd/re 
 to Hippolytus, I hear the rising passion of bis tones, as he delivered 
 the words, 'Mais fidMe, maisfier, et mime un peu farouche.' The 
 way also in which he said, ' Cette noble pudewr colorait son visage,' 
 made the line stand vividly out, and gave it a grace not to be ex- 
 pressed. ' No straining for effect ! Let not a trace of anything of 
 the kind be seen ! ' he said to a PMdre of his class who did not ap- 
 pear to comprehend him. 'Bear in mind that PMdre, who has 
 been consumed for a long period by her passion, has passed three 
 days vrithout food and three nights without sleep. Does not 
 CEnone say to her — 
 
 " Les ombres par trols fois ont obscuroi les cieux, 
 Depuis que le sommeil est entre dans vos yeux, 
 Et le jour a trols fois chassS la nuit obscure, 
 Depuis que votre corps languit sans nouiriture " ? 
 
 " ' Phkdre's life is the fever that bums her up and the dream that 
 haunts her : she is not on the earth, she is in the clouds,' and the 
 voice of the great professor grew muffled, like his look, as he made 
 the wife of Theseus speak." 
 
 To an artist of Eachel's intelligence, a record such as 
 this, enforced by voice and action as M. Samson would 
 
46 RA CHEL. 
 
 enforce it, must have been of priceless value. Those who 
 saw her play Phhdre in her best days — ^for it lost much of 
 its weird charm in the latter part of her career — will re- 
 member the same shrinking look and the same muffled 
 voice throughout the avowal of her love for Hippolytus, 
 which so impressed her master in. Talma's reading. But, 
 indeed, the whole performance, from her entrance upon 
 the scene up to her death at the close, was a thing never 
 to be forgotten. There was something appaUijigly true 
 and terribly beautiful in this woman wasting away by 
 inches in the consuming fires of a passion which she ab- 
 horred, but which Venus herself was fanning in her veins 
 with pitiless persistency. It was real as life itself, but it 
 was reality steeped in the hues of poetry. The outlines of 
 the conception were broad and large; but every word, 
 every look, every movement, had a specific value. 
 
 Not aU at once, however, did this fine impersonation 
 reach this pitch of excellence. Eachel, on the night she 
 played it first, lost her nerve, as she had done on her dSbut 
 as Roxane. Her performance was without inspiration, 
 and the audience saw in her only the skilful artist, who 
 had calculated her effects with care, but who left their 
 hearts and sympathies untouched. Nevertheless the ideal 
 was clear in her mind. ISTor did she rest until she had 
 found the true means of expressing it. Each time she 
 played the part she grew nearer its embodiment, tUl in 
 about two years it became, what many like ourselves 
 must remember it, all that Eacine himself could have 
 desired.^ To this hour it stands out in solitary splendour ; 
 for the! attempts of Eistori and of Sarah Bernhardt in the 
 
 ^ In 1845 she writes to M. Samson : " I have been giving a deal 
 of study to PMdre; I will call to-morrow to ask you what my pro- 
 found researches have come to," 
 
RA GHEL. 47 
 
 part are unworthy to be named in the same breath. They 
 only served to mark how wide is the difference between 
 the merely picturesque and practised actress, and her in 
 whom the iatuitions of genius are disciplined and fortified 
 by the resources of art. The same contrast was no less 
 apparent between the Adrienne Lecouvreur of these ladies 
 and the Adrienne Lecouvreur of Bachel. In 1849, when 
 it was produced, Eachel's power had visibly declined ; yet 
 her treatment of this striking but painful character fur- 
 nished a standard, by which to measure the capabilities of 
 those who ventured to enter into competition with her, 
 that told severely against them. 
 
 Of the plays written for Eachel — ^fifteen in all — ' Adri- 
 enne Lecouvreur ' alone has kept the stage. The others, 
 either from being poor in themselves, or affording little 
 scope for her peculiar qualities, lived for but a few nights. 
 To this the ' Lady Tartufe ' of Madame de Giraidin is 
 scarcely an exception. The Madame de Blossae of Eachel 
 alone saved this impleasant play : and yet it was not until 
 the fifth act that it afforded any scope for the display of 
 her best powers. It was performed for thirty-five nights ; 
 but the fact that it had no vitality beyond what Eachel 
 gave it, was made apparent when it was revived in 1867 
 at the Com^die Franjaise, with Madame Plessy in the 
 part. For although that most attractive actress brought to 
 the performance aU the charms of a beautiful person and 
 a most refined talent, the play was performed to empty 
 benches, and for only six times. Two graceful little 
 pieces — ^Armand Barthet's 'Le Moineau de Lesbie,' and 
 the ' Horace et Lydie ' of Ponsard — which Eachel made 
 peculiarly her own by exquisite grace of manner and subtle 
 beauty of utterance, stUl survive in the recollections of 
 Parisian playgoers. But they are well content to forget 
 
48 BA GHEL. 
 
 her Thishe in Victor Hugo's ' Angelo,' her Messalina and 
 IddsTca in Maquet and J. Lacroy's detestable 'Valeria,' 
 and other parts wholly unworthy of her powers, which 
 she made the mistake of accepting. 
 
 Eachel had the idea that she could play comedy, and 
 even hankered, it seems, after the parts known on the stage 
 as soubrettes. The opinion was not shared by M. Samson 
 or her best critics : and although she played MoH^re's 
 Gelimkne in England and elsewhere, they prevented her 
 from perilling her reputation by doing so in Paris. She 
 was not by any means the only eminent tragic actress 
 who has failed in comedy. Mrs Siddons's Rosalind was 
 at onee commonplace and lachrymose ; and Miss O'NeOl's 
 Lady Teazle so lacked breeding, that although she was 
 then in the height of her reputation, she was not allowed 
 to repeat it. The woman as she is in herself, pure and 
 good, humorous and refined, or the reverse, as it may be, 
 speaks out ia comedy. If she be wanting in essential 
 ladyhood, the flaw is sure to make itself felt. It was felt 
 in Eachel's performances, where the incidents and passions 
 of the scene came near ordinary Ufe, and seemed to bring 
 to the surface the hard and tant soit peu Bohemian ele- 
 ments of her nature. The free play of movement, the 
 flexibility, the agUe grace, the playfulness veiling depth 
 of feeling, which make the charm of comedy, were not 
 within her command. She measured her own strength 
 perfectly when, writing to M. Legouv^ to explain why 
 she would not act his Medea, she said : — 
 
 " I see the part is full of rapid and violent movements ; I have to 
 rush to my children, I have to lift them up, to carry them off the 
 stage, to contend for them with the people. This external vivacity 
 is not my style. Whatever may be expressed by physiognomy, by 
 attitude, by sober and measured gesture— that I can command ; 
 
RA CHEL. 49 
 
 but where broad and energetic pantomime begins, there my execu- 
 tive talent stops. " 
 
 Bachel, as an artist, stood at her best between tbe years 
 1843 and 1847. From that time she sensibly fell off, and 
 the reason of her doing so is obvious. She had set her 
 mind more upon the improvement of her fortune than of 
 her skiU as the interpreter of the great dramatists of her 
 country. Her physical strength, never great, was lavishly 
 expended on engagements in all quarters where money 
 was to be picked up, and where she went on reiterating 
 the same parts until they lost all freshness for herself, 
 and, as a consequence, that charm of spontaneousness and 
 truth which they had once possessed. It was in vain, 
 that wise friends like Samson and Jules Janin warned 
 her against the ruin she was causing to her talent and to 
 her health. The simple, self-centred life, which they 
 urged her to cultivate, of the true artist, to whom the con- 
 sciousness of clearer perceptions and of finer execution, 
 developed by earnest study, brings " riches fineless," was 
 abandoned for the excitement of lucrative engagements 
 constantly renewed, and of new circles of admirers serviag 
 up the iucense of adidation in stimulating profusion. 
 
 To this there could be but one end, and that a sad one. 
 The strain upon the emotions of a great tragic actress, 
 under the most favourable conditions, is enough to tax 
 the soundest constitution. She must "spurn delights, 
 and live laborious days " to maintain her hold upon an 
 inexorable public, before whom she must always seem at 
 her best. As Eachel herself says in writing to Madame 
 de Girardin (2d May 1851), " On ne mange pas toujours 
 quand on veut, lors-qu'on a I'honneur d'etre la premiere 
 trag&lienne de sa majeste le peuple franfais." Long 
 seasons of rest for both body and spirit could alone have 
 
 D 
 
50 RAG H EL. 
 
 enabled her to be true to her own genius. These Eachel 
 would not take until too late. Thus we find her in 1849, 
 during three months that should have been given to repose, 
 playing in no fewer than thirty-five towns from one end 
 of Erance to the other, and giving seventy performances 
 in the course of ninety days. " Quelle route," she writes, 
 " quelle fatigue, mais aussi quelle dot ! " The day was 
 not far off when she was doomed to feel in bitterness of 
 heart how dearly this " dot " was pittchased. 
 
 The temptation of wealth, which her European fame 
 brought her, was no doubt great. The sums she received 
 in England, Belgium, HoUand, Austria, Prussia, and 
 Eussia, were enormous, and the adulation everywhere 
 paid to her might have made the steadiest head giddy. 
 At the staid Court of Berlin she was received in 1853 
 with courtly honours. The Emperor Mcholas of Eussia 
 approached her, after a private performance at Potsdam, 
 with all the chivalrous gallantry which sate so gracefully 
 upon him ; and when she offered to rise as he accosted 
 her, took her by both hands and pressed her to remain 
 seated, saying as he did so, " Asseyez vous, mademoiselle ; 
 les royautee com me la mienne passent, la royaute d'art ne 
 passe pas.'' And when, in the following year, she went 
 to Eussia for six months, she not only brought back 
 £12,000 as the solid gains of her visit, but such recollec- 
 tions of courtly homage paid to her, as she describes with 
 admirable vivacity in the following letter from St Peters- 
 burg to her sister Sarah : — 
 
 "Yesterday evening your humble servant was entertained like 
 a queen — ^not a sham tragedy queen, with a crown of gilded paste- 
 board, but a real queen, duly stamped at the royal mint. First of 
 all, realise to yourself the fact that here the Boyards aU follow 
 me, stare at me as if I were some strange animal, and that I cannot 
 
RACHEL. 51 
 
 move a step without having them after me. In the street, in the 
 shops, wherever I go, or may be caught a glimpse of, I am marked 
 and pointed at. I no longer belong to myself. 
 
 " To sum up all, the other day I was invited to a banquet, given 
 in my honour at the Imperial Palace — a fact, oh daughter of papa 
 and mama Fflix ! It came off yesterday. What a regale ! When 
 I reached the palace, lo, there were gorgeous footmen, all powder 
 and gold lace, just as in Paris, to wait upon and escort me : one 
 takes my pelisse, another goes before and announces me, and I find 
 myself in a saloon gilded from floor to ceiling, with everybody rush- 
 ing to salute me. It is a grand duke, — no less, — the Emperor's 
 brother, who advances to offer me his hand to conduct me to the 
 dinner-table — an immense table, raised upon a sort of dais, but not 
 laid out for many — only thirty covers ; but the guests, how select ! 
 The imperial family, the grand dukes, the Httle dukes, and the 
 archdukes — all the dukes, in short, of all calibres ; and all this 
 tra-la-la of princes and princesses, curious and attentive, devouring 
 me with their eyes, watching my slightest movements, my words, 
 my smiles, ^ — in a word, never keeping their eyes off me. Well ! 
 Do not imagine that I was in any way embarrassed. Not the least 
 in the world ! I felt just as usual — at least up to the middle of 
 the repast, which, moreover, was excellent. But everybody seemed 
 to be much more occupied with me than with the viands. At that 
 point the toasts in my honour begin ; and very strange indeed is 
 the spectacle which ensues. The young archdukes, to get a better 
 view of me, quit their seats, mount upon the chairs, and even put 
 their feet upon the table — I was about to say into the plates ! — 
 and yet nobody seemed the least surprised, there being obviously 
 some traces of the savage still even in the princes of this country ! 
 And then the shouts, the deafening bravos, and the calls upon me 
 to recite something ! To reply to toasts by a tragic tirade was 
 indeed strange; but I was equal to the occasion. I rose, and, 
 pushing back my chair, assumed the most tragic air of my repertoire, 
 and treated them to PhMre's great scene. Straightway a deathlike 
 silence ; you might have heard the flutter of a fly, if there be such 
 a thing in this country. They all listened devoutly, bending 
 towards me, and confining themselves to admiring gestures and 
 stifled murmurs. Then, when I had finished, there was a fresh out- 
 break of shouts of bravos, of clinking glasses, and fresh toasts, 
 carried so far. that for the moment I felt bewildered. Soon, how- 
 ever, I too caught the infection, and excited at once by the odour 
 
52 RACHEL. 
 
 of the wine and of the flowers, and of all this enthusiasm, which 
 had the effect of tickling what little pride I have, I rose again and 
 began to sing, or rather declaimed, the Russian national hymn with 
 no small fervour. On this it was no longer enthusiasm, but utter 
 frenzy ; they crowded round me, they pressed my hands, they 
 showered thanks upon me ; I was the greatest tragedian in the 
 world, and of aU time past and future, — and so on for a good 
 quarter of an hour. 
 
 "But the best things have an end, and the hour came for me to 
 take my leave. I effected this with the same queenly dignity as I 
 had managed my arrival, reconducted even to the grand staircase 
 by the same grand duke, who was very gallant, but maintained at 
 the same time all ceremonious respect. Then appeared the gor- 
 geous footmen in powder, one of them carrying my pelisse. I put 
 it on, and was escorted by them to my carriage, which was sur- 
 rounded by other footmen carrying torches to illuminate my 
 departure." 
 
 Triumphant, however, as in one point of view was 
 Eachel's visit to Eussia, it had its heavy drawbacks. 
 She returned to Paris more shaken than ever in health, 
 and the failure in vigour was quickly perceived when she 
 resumed her place upon the stage there. The public, 
 moreover, were out of humour with her for having for- 
 saken them so long — she had been away a year — and they 
 marked their displeasure by leaving her to play to com- 
 paratively empty houses. A new piece, ' Eosemonde,' in 
 which she sustaiued the principal part, was coldly re- 
 ceived ; and an epigram of the day tells the tale both of 
 her broken health and of the eclipse of her popularity : — 
 
 " Pourquoi done nomme-t-on ce drame Eosemonde ? 
 Je n'y vois plus de rose et n'y vols pas de moude." 
 
 The ' Czarine,' written for her by Scribe — the last of 
 the characters created, as the phrase is, by Eachel — in the 
 following year, was not more successful. The wrong she 
 had done to her body and to her great natural gifts was 
 
RA CHEL. 53 
 
 now to be avenged. " Glory," she writes to a friend even 
 in 1854, " is very pleasant, but its value is greatly lowered 
 in my eyes, since I have been made to pay so dearly for 
 it." Years before she had been warned. In 1847 she 
 had written, " I have had great success, but how 1 At the 
 expense of my health, of my life ! This intoxication with 
 which an admiring public inspires me, passes into my 
 veins and bums them up." But this alone would not 
 have wrought the havoc which by 1855 was visible in her 
 person and in her general powers. Things had come to a 
 serious pass with her, when in that year she wrote to M. 
 Emile de Girardin : — 
 
 " Houssaye told me it was he who gave you the little Louis XV. 
 watch, which you have arranged so daintily by replacing the glass, 
 through which one could see the entrails of the beast, by the enamel 
 in which they have had your humble servant baked. I think, and 
 so does Sarah, the lower part of my face too long. But enamels 
 ((maUs) or rather imavae — for everywhere there are des mmtx — can- 
 not be corrected once they have gone through the fire. In any case 
 I think it is a thing not to be worn except after my death. I 
 am BO shaky that perhaps this is not very far off. If Madame de 
 Girardin would write for me the part of some consumptive histori- 
 cal personage, if such there be — for I delight in a part with a name 
 to it — I believe I should play it well, and in a way to draw tears, 
 for I should shed them myself. It is aU very fine to tell me 
 this is only my nerves ; I feel very surely there is a screw loose 
 somewhere. We spoke of the watch ; when one turns the key too 
 strongly, something goes crach I I often feel something go crack 
 within me when I screw myself up to act. The day before yester- 
 day, in ' Horace,' when I was giving Maubant his cue, I felt this 
 c/radk. Yes, my friend, I cracked. This quite cnire nous, because 
 of my mother and the boys." 
 
 Conscious though she was of this perilous state of health, 
 Eachel was still so bent on makiag one more grand effort 
 to augment her fortune, that she entered upon an engage- 
 ment to play for six months in the United States. After 
 
54 RA GHEL. 
 
 performmg all her great classical parts in Paris during the 
 summer, she gave seven representations in London, and 
 sailed on the 11th of August from Southampton for New 
 York. Her success, however, fell far short of what she 
 had anticipated. ComeiUe and Eacine were not attractive 
 to American audiences; and although she supplemented 
 them with 'Adrienne Lecouvreur,' 'Lady Tartufe,' and 
 ' Angelo,' she did not estahlish any hold upon the public. 
 Li the course of forty-two representations, the total re- 
 ceipts were a little over £27,000, of which Eachel's share 
 was about haK; a very handsome return, but most dis- 
 appointing to Eachel, who had counted on gains even 
 beyond those which Jenny Liad had shortly before been 
 making across the Atlantic. So feeble was the impression 
 she produced, that it is quite certain Eachel would have 
 lost money had the engagement gone on. But her pro- 
 gress was cut short by a bad cold, followed by such an 
 aggravation of her pulmonary weakness, that she was com- 
 pelled to return to Europe at the end of January 1856. 
 To be back with those she loved — and with whom she felt 
 her stay could not be long — was all her wisL " J'ai port6 
 mon nom aussi loin que j'ai pu," she writes from Havan- 
 nah (7th January 1856), "et je rapporte mon cceur k ceux 
 qui I'aiment." 
 
 Next winter was spent in Egypt with no abatement of 
 the fatal symptoms. She returned to France, feeling that 
 her work in life was done, and that she would be " doomed 
 to go in company with pain " for whatever term of Hf e 
 might be vouchsafed her. In October 1857 she left Paris 
 for Cannet, two miles from Cannes, where the father of 
 M. Victorien Sardou had placed his villa at her disposal. 
 Before quitting Paris she wrote to her friend and fellow- 
 worker, Augustine Brohan : " Patience and resignation 
 
RA CHEL. ffS 
 
 have become my motto. I am grateful to you, dear Mdlle. 
 Brohan, for the kind interest you express; but let me 
 assure you, God alone can do anything for me ! I start 
 almost immediately for the South, and hope its pure and 
 warm air will ease my pains a little." Very touching are 
 the words of a letter to another friend, written at the same 
 time : — 
 
 " It sometimes seems as though night were settling down sud- 
 denly upon me, and I feel a kind of great void in my head, and in 
 my understanding. Everything is extinguished all at once, and 
 your Rachel is left the merest wreck. Ah, poor me ! That me of 
 which I was so proud, too proud, perhaps. Behold it to-day so en- 
 feebled, that scarce anything of it is left. . . . Adieu, my friend. 
 This letter wiU perhaps be the last. You who have known Bachel 
 so brilliant, who have seen her in her luxury and her splendour, who 
 have so often applauded her in her triumphs, what difficulty would 
 you not have in recognising her to-day in the species of fleshless 
 spectre which she has become, and which she carries about with her 
 unceasingly ! " 
 
 There could have been little in the solitary villa, away 
 from aU that had hitherto given zest to Eachel's life, to 
 support her spirits in her long hours of pain. Such, at 
 least, is the impression made by its now sad and somewhat 
 neglected aspect on those who make a pilgrimage to the 
 spot in memory of the great artist. There must have been 
 something in the house more attractive than its exterior 
 gives promise of, if we may judge from Matthew Arnold's 
 fine sonnet — 
 
 " Unto a lonely villa in a dell 
 Above the fragrant warm Provengal shore. 
 The dying Eachel in a chair they bore 
 Up the steep pine-plumed paths of the Esterelle, 
 And laid her in a stately room, where fell 
 The shadow of a marble Muse of yore, — 
 The rose-crowned queen of legendary lore, 
 Polymnia— full on her death-bed. 'Twaa well ! 
 
56 EA GHEL. 
 
 The fret and misery of our northern towns, 
 In this her life's last day, our poor, our pain. 
 Our jangle of false wits, our climate's frowns. 
 Do for this radiant Greek-souled artist cease ; 
 Sole object of her dying eyes remain 
 The beauty and the glorious art of Greece." 
 
 As they bore her up those " steep pine-plumed paths " 
 — pine-plumed, alas ! no more — not aU the beauty of the 
 islanded hay or of the shifting lights upon the hills that 
 enclose it, could have reconciled her restless spirit to its 
 severance from the scenes of her triumphs and of her 
 ambition. She saw too clearly that the end of a life 
 in which the nerves had all along been kept under an 
 unwholesome strain, was not far off. The mild air 
 of the South somewhat lightened her pains, but could 
 not arrest the disease. Many sad thoughts of powers 
 wasted and unworthy aims pursued, must have darkened 
 the solitary hours when she was face to face with those 
 questionings of the spirit that will not be put by. Her 
 art, and all it might have been to her, were among her 
 other thoughts. How much greater glory might she not 
 have achieved, to how much higher account might she 
 not have turned her gifts, how much more might she not 
 have done to elevate and refine her audiences, had she 
 nourished to the last the high aspirations of her youth 1 
 Very fuU of significance is what she said to her sister 
 Sarah, who attended her death-bed : " Oh, Sarah, I have 
 been thinking of ' Polyeucte ' all night. If you only knew 
 what new, what magnificent effects I have conceived ! In 
 studying, take my word for it, declamation and gesture 
 are of little avail ; you have to think, to weep ! " 
 
 Eachel died upon the 3d of January 1858, conscious to 
 the end. She was fortified in her last moments by the 
 
RA OREL. 57 
 
 very impressive ceremonial of the Jewish Church, of 
 which she was a stanch adherent, and died ia the humble 
 hope of a blessed immortality. As we turn away from 
 the contemplation of a fine career, so sadly and prema- 
 turely closed, let us think gently of Eachel's faults and 
 faiUngs, due greatly, beyond all doubt, to the unfavour- 
 able circumstances of her life, and the absence of that 
 early moral training by which she might have been 
 moulded into a nobler womanhood. Pauvre Rachel/ 
 
 As an artist, the want of that moral element prevented 
 her from rising to the highest level. Had she possessed 
 it, she must have gone on advancing in excellence to the 
 last. But this she did not do. Even in such parts as 
 Phhdre and Hermione she went back instead of forward. 
 Impersonations that used to be instinct with life became 
 hard and formal. They were stUl beautiful as studies of 
 histrionic skill, but the soul had gone out of them. A low 
 moral nature — and sack assuredly was Eachel's — wOl 
 always be felt through an artist's work, disguise it how 
 he wUl, for, as Sir Thomas Browne says, " The brow often 
 speaks -true, eyes have tongues, and the countenance pro- 
 claims the heart and inclinations : " and, as we have already 
 said, it shone through the acting of Eachel whenever the 
 part was one in which the individuality of the woman 
 came into play.^ 
 
 1 " In that wonderful actress Eachel, whose face and figure, under 
 the transforming influence of her consummate dramatic art, were 
 the perfect interpreters of her perfect dramatic conception, an 
 ignoble low-lived expression occasionally startled and dismayed one 
 — the outward and visible sign of the inward and visible disgrace, 
 which made it possible for one of her literary countrymen and warm- 
 est admirers to say that she was adorable, because she was so ' de- 
 licierisement canaUle' — Emilie, Camille, Esther, Pauline — such a 
 'delightful blackguard.' " — Mrs Kemble's 'Eecords of Later Life.' 
 
58 BA OH EL. 
 
 It was this which made her range so limited. Attired 
 in classical costume, and restricted to a style of action 
 which masked that natural deportment which is ever 
 eloquent of character, her hard and unsympathetic nature 
 was for the time lost to view ; and the eye was riveted by 
 motions, graceful, stately, passionate, or eager, and the ear 
 thrilled by the varied cadences, the intense or vehement 
 declamation of her beautiful voice. But when her parts 
 approached ndSirer to common life — when the emotions 
 became more complex and less dignified — the want was 
 quickly felt. If, instead of Comeille and Eacine, Eachel 
 had been called upon to illustrate Shakespeare, with all 
 the variety of inflection and subtlety of development 
 which his heroines demaiid in the performer, she must, 
 we believe, have utterly failed. We in England thought 
 too little of this — and it is a mistake which we have made, 
 not in her case alone — in our admiration of a style which 
 to us was new and only half understood, and we placed 
 her on a pinnacle above our own actresses higher than her 
 deserts. Matthew Arnold shared this mistaken impres- 
 sion, when he wrote of her — 
 
 " Ah ! not the radiant spirit of Greece alone 
 She had — one power, which made her breast its home ! 
 In her, like us, there clashed contending powers, 
 Germany, France, Christ, Moses, Athens, Rome. 
 The strife, the mixture in her soul, are ours ; 
 Her genius and her glory are her own." 
 
 Had he known more than he did of the dramatic art, of 
 which his knowledge was in fact most Hmited, had he 
 seen more of Eachel on the stage than he did, he could 
 not have failed to see that this variety of suggestion and 
 of style for which, if his words mean anything, they give 
 her credit, was not justified. It could have made itself 
 
RA CHEL. 59 
 
 felt only through a much higher and more widely sym- 
 pathetic nature than fell to the lot of this Jewess of the 
 Jews. 
 
 "We fell into the same mistake, and less excusably, in 
 the case of Ristori, an artist of powers in every way in- 
 ferior. The Parisians, wiser than ourselves, found out 
 their mistate in this respect many years ago, so soon as 
 they saw Eistori in Lady Macbeth} Eachel was too accom- 
 plished an artist, and knew the limits of her own powers too 
 well, ever to risk her reputation by subjecting it to such a 
 test. She was essentially a declamatory actress ; she de- 
 pended but little on the emotions of the scene ; she cared not 
 at all how she was acted up to. She could not listen well, 
 in her later days at least, however true it may have been 
 of her, that in her early days Mdlle. Mars gave her credit 
 for excellence in this respect. She did not kindle by 
 conflict with the other characters. Nothing to our mind 
 more clearly indicates the actress of a grade not certainly 
 the highest. 
 
 The classical French drama demands this power less 
 than our own, but it does demand it in some degree. To 
 excel on our stage, however, it is indispensable that the 
 actress should possess the power of kindling, and, as she 
 kindles, of rising, naturally and continuously, through the 
 gradations of emotion and passion, which our more com- 
 plex dramatic situations demand, and of sustaining these, 
 so as to retain her hold upon the audience, after the voice 
 
 ' This lady opened the eyes of the English public at Drmy Lane 
 to the same fact, by playing this character in English. A trial of 
 the public patience so ill-advised and disastrous has rarely been 
 witnessed. It served, however, to show, even. to the uncritical, 
 how much of Madame Ristori's success was due, not to truth or 
 refined art, but to mere technical artifice. 
 
60 RA GHEL. 
 
 has ceased to speak. But to do tMs, something more than 
 the accomplishment of art is necessary; and this some- 
 thing is a deep and sincere sensibility, and a moral nature 
 which answers instiuctively to the caU of the nobler feel- 
 ings, that constitute the materials of tragedy, and also of 
 comedy of the highest kind. It is easy to see that Eachel, 
 with her lack of high iatellectual culture, and her undis- 
 ciplined moral nature, could never have met the demands 
 of the Shakespearian drama. If or, seeing what she was 
 as a woman, how little she possessed of the iiner and more 
 tender graces of her sex, can we wonder that she failed, as 
 she did, in parts in which Mars or Duchesnois had suc- 
 ceeded, and erred so frequently in accepting others from 
 which true taste and right womanly feeling would have 
 made her recoil. 
 
LUDWIG TIECK ON THE 
 ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 (Feom the 'Nineteenth Centuet' for December 1879.) 
 
 N May 1817, Ludwig Tieck, critic, dramatist, 
 and poet, visited England. He was then 
 forty -four years old ; his powers of mind and 
 hody at their best. Shakespeare was the one 
 great object of his worship ; and he justly regarded a per- 
 sonal acquaintance with the country and countrymen of 
 the poet as indispensable for the systematic study of his 
 works, and those of his contemporary dramatists, in which 
 he was then engaged. Probably no Englishman, then 
 living, was more conversant with the history of the Eng- 
 lish stage than Tieck. Of Burbage and Shakespeare's 
 other fellow-actors, of Betterton, Booth, Quin, Macklin, 
 Barry, Garrick, through whom its early traditions had 
 passed, he knew all that the scanty records of our theatre 
 had preserved ; and he came to England with the natural 
 hope that some traces of what their genius had done for 
 
62 LUDWIG TIEGK ON 
 
 the iUustration of the supreme poet might be fovmd in the 
 great theatres with which their names were identified. 
 It was hard — and it might well be so — for a German 
 enthusiast for the drama to believe, that the great his- 
 trionic power in the actors of Shakespeare's time, on which 
 our supreme dramatic poet had relied to interpret his 
 works to his coimtrymen, unaided by the splendour of 
 scenic appointments, should not have left its mark upon 
 their successors. In any case he might hope to see such 
 of the poet's works as kept their hold upon the stage 
 treated with the sympathetic reverence, which the loudly 
 proclaimed admiration by the English for their greatest 
 poet led him to expect, and which he had been accus- 
 tomed to see applied to the acting of Shakespeare on the 
 stages of Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, and Vienna. 
 
 Tieck's first inquiry on reaching London was, whether 
 the two great theatres of Covent Garden and Drury Lane 
 were still open. It was late in the season, but fortu- 
 nately for his purpose, he was not only in time to find 
 both theatres at work, but had come just as John Kemble 
 was playing a series of Shakespearian characters at Covent 
 Garden, previous to taking his final leave of the stage. 
 The great actor had begun these farewell performances on 
 the 22d of April, and had been playing on alternate nights 
 up to the 30th of May, when Tieck first saw him. Never 
 a very strong man, his health for some years had been a 
 good deal broken. A succession of thirty performances, 
 within less than two months, which included King John, 
 the Stranger, Goriolanus, Brutus in 'Julius Csesar,' Perir 
 ruddock in 'The Wheel of Fortune,' Hotspur, Cato, Hamlet, 
 Zanga, Cardinal Wolsey, and Octavian in ' The Moun- 
 taineers,' was enough to have exhausted the forces of a 
 much younger man. Tieck, therefore, saw him at great 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 63 
 
 disadvantage ; and in reading the German critic's remarks, 
 this circumstance must, in justice to Kemhle, be kept 
 steadily in view. Much of the languor and slowness 
 which he found in the great actor, was due not so much 
 to his habitual style, as to the constitutional asthma and 
 physical weakness, which compelled him. to husband his 
 resources. The passages in his impersonations which, 
 as we shall see, wrung from Tieck a reluctant admis- 
 sion of their splendour, would be sufficient evidence 
 of this, had we not known it from the lips and writ- 
 ings of others, who had the good fortune to be famUiar 
 with what £emble had been, and to know him as he 
 then was. 
 
 Tieck, whosQ own reading of Shakespeare subsequently 
 became famous, had studied the actor's art in the critical 
 school of which Lessiag was the founder. He had, more- 
 over, seen aU the best acting of the German stage at a 
 period rich in actors and actresses of great gifts and accom- 
 pUshments. He had a right, therefore, to speak with 
 authority; and before turning to what he has to say of 
 the English stage it may not be amiss to illustrate, by 
 his account of the great German actor Fleck,^ the high 
 standard of excellence to which he could refer in judging 
 of the leaders of the English school. 
 
 1 Johann Friedrich Fleck was born in 1757, appeared on the 
 stage in 1777, rose rapidly to the first rank in his profession, and 
 retained it till his death in 1801. He had the qualities of a fine 
 figure, eyes, and voice, and of an expressive face, without which no 
 actor of the poetic drama can be great. Humour, that other essen- 
 tial of the great actor, he seems also to have possessed in an eminent 
 degree. His distinction among the actors of his time was the 
 thoroughness of everything he did. He was not fine in passages, 
 but left upon his audience the impression of a great whole, — of 
 characters true to nature and consistent as Ufe itself. 
 
64 LUDWIG TIEGK ON 
 
 " Fleck was slender, not tall, but of the finest proportions; he had 
 brown eyes, whose fire was softened by gentleness, finely pencilled 
 brows, a noble forehead and nose, and in youth his head resembled 
 that of the ApoUo. In the parts of Essex, Tancred, Etli^df, he 
 was fascinating, especially so as the Infanta Dan Ped/ro in ' Inez de 
 Castro,' a part written, like the whole piece, very feebly and vul- 
 garly, but every word of which as spoken by him rang like the 
 inspiration of a great poet. His voice had the purity of a bell, and 
 was rich in fuU clear tones, high as well as low, beyond what any 
 one could believe, who had not heard them ; for in passages of ten- 
 derness, entreaty, or devotion, he had a flute-like softness at com- 
 mand. And, without ever falling into the grating bass, which often 
 strikes so unpleasantly on our ear, his deep tones rang like metal, 
 with a roll as of thunder in suppressed rage, and a roar as of a lion 
 in the unchecked tempest of passion. The tragedian for whom 
 Shakespeare wrote, must, in my opinion, have possessed many of 
 the qualities of Fleck ; for those marvellous transitions, those inter- 
 jections, those pauses, followed by a tempestuous" torrent of words, 
 no less than those side-strokes and touches of nature, spontaneous, 
 na/ive, nay, sometimes verging on the comic, which he threw into his 
 performance, were given vrith such natural truth as to make us 
 understand for the first time all the subtlety and peculiarity of the 
 poet's pathos. When he appeared in any of his great impersona- 
 tions, there was a halo of something supernatural about him, an 
 impalpable horror went with him, and every tone, every look went 
 through our heart. In the part of Lea/r I preferred him to the 
 great Schroder, for he dealt with it more poetically and more truly 
 to the poet, inasmuch as he laboured less visibly at the indications 
 of -coming madness, although when it came he exhibited it in all its 
 appalling sublimity. To have seen his Othello was a great experi- 
 ence. In Macbeth Schroder may have surpassed him, for he gave 
 the first act without sufficient significance, and the second act 
 feebly, and with a want of decision, but from the third onwards he 
 was incomparable, and in the fifth grand. His Shyloch was fuU of 
 a weird horror, never commonplace, bub on the contrary noble 
 throughout. Many of Schiller's characters were quite vnitten for 
 him : but the triumph of his greatness, however great he might be 
 in many of them, was the Bobber Moor. To this Titan-like creation 
 of a young and daring imagination he gave a terrible reality, a 
 noble elevation ; the ferocity was mingled with tenderness so touch- 
 ing, that the poet, when he saw it, must unquestionably have been 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 65 
 
 struck with wonder at his own creation. . . . Even the so-called 
 character parts in the drama of everyday life Fleck played with 
 distinction and spirit, infusing a humour into them, which made 
 them most attractive." 
 
 For the sake of dramatic history, as well as of Kemble's 
 reputation, it is a pity that so competent a critic as Tieck 
 should not have seen the actor at his best. His report 
 might then have claimed the same authority as the admi- 
 rahle account of Garrick in the last year of his puhlic life, 
 which is to be found in the letters of the German philo- 
 sopher and critic Lichtenberg from London to his friend 
 Boye. StiU, after making every allowance, there is " much 
 matter to be heard and learned " about Kemble and his 
 contemporaries from the sketches, composed in a great 
 measure from his London letters, which Tieck published 
 ia his ' Dramaturgische Blatter' in 1826, but which have 
 not hitherto been made known to English readers. 
 
 Barren although our stage unhappily is, for the time, 
 of the powers, natural and acquired, which can alone do 
 justice to the Shakespearian drama, Tieck's account of 
 what he saw is not wholly without consolation for us. 
 All was not so perfect in those so-called palmy days of the 
 English stage as some would have us believe. Bad acting 
 was not uncommon then any more than now; as indeed, 
 how can it ever be otherwise than common, the qualifica- 
 tions beiag so rare and the art so difi&cult as they are? And 
 although there were actors of great natural gifts, and who, 
 by a lifetime of study and observation, had trained them- 
 selves to grapple with the great characters of the poetic 
 drama, and to portray the "high actions and high pas- 
 sions " by which they lifted delighted audiences into that 
 ideal world, which after aU seems to be the only real one, 
 the stage of that period was far behind our own in this 
 
66 LUDWIQ TIEGK ON 
 
 — that liberties of excision and addition were taken with 
 the text of Shakespeare which would now be impossible, 
 and that those accessories which give life and variety to 
 the action of the scene were neglected to an extent as 
 culpable ia one way, as the excess in scenic splendour and 
 elaboration of costume to which we have of late years 
 been accustomed, is objectionable in another. 
 
 The first play which Tieck saw at Covent Garden (30th 
 of May) was ' Cymbeline,' which he justly caUs " the most 
 charmirig of the poet's dramas." 
 
 "I was prepared to find," he says, "owing to the length of the 
 piece, and want of capacity in the actors, who could not fill all the 
 parts, much less fill them all well, that I should not see the whole 
 play, and that much of what I should see would be performed in a 
 mediocre style, for we are accustomed to this sort of thing, even in 
 the case of weaker plays ; but that there should be an absolute 
 want of connection, and of illusion in many of the finest scenes — 
 nay, that not so much as an attempt at this should be made — for 
 this, I confess, I was not prepared. The whole was treated aa a 
 series of declamations, in which some things were spoken admir- 
 ably, many gracefully, and much, very much, as stupidly as could 
 be, without regard to the poet's meaning, or even to the elementary 
 rules of elocution. 
 
 " It frequently struck me as strange and ludicrous, that the per- 
 formers should have adopted costume of any definite kind, seeing 
 that they seemed altogether to ignore the fact that they were upon 
 a stage. I felt this chiefiy in the scenes, assuredly among the 
 finest which even Shakespeare has written — I mean, those of that 
 marvellous solitude, in which old Belarms, and the king's two stolen 
 sons, Ouiderius and Arviragus, appear. All the more that the poet 
 has given peculiar richness of colour and a glorious freshness to 
 these scenes, did one feel outraged by seeing these youths deport 
 themselves Uke two young Englishmen, who had dropped into the 
 theatre for their amusement from the nearest tavern. This revolt- 
 ing kind of commonplace made havoc of these scenes, but the audi- 
 ence appeared to be unconscious of anything amiss. 
 
 " The curtailments and alterations in the arrangement of the play 
 for the stage have been made in the most reckless way, according 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 67 
 
 to a prevailing usage with the English in such matters ; for since 
 adaptations of their poet (like Dryden's of the ' Tempest, ' and Shad- 
 weU's of ' Timon of Athens ') are no longer represented, they are con- 
 tent with arbitrary abridgments, in which the play often becomes 
 unintelligible, and the meaning of the poet is always sure to suffer. 
 A general knowledge of the work is assumed ; the most celebrated 
 passages are allowed to stand ; undue prominence is often given to 
 the leading actors ; unimportant scenes and speeches are taken 
 from their place, and given to some favourite. One scene is length- 
 ened out, by interpolations or dumb show, to very weariness, while 
 other scenes are shortened or wholly omitted, although they are 
 essential for carrying on the action — in short, such violence is done 
 to the author, that an unprejudiced observer finds it hard to recon- 
 cile this tyranny with the reverence and homage which the English 
 seem to pay to their great poet on all possible occasions." 
 
 Those whose studies have not shown them how deeply 
 the vice here denounced hy Tieck had penetrated into our 
 acted Shakespearian drama, will read his statements with 
 amazement. It was not, indeed, untU long afterwards, 
 when his management of Covent Garden, and subse- 
 quently of Drury Lane, enabled Mr Macready to intro- 
 duce a thorough system of reform, that the scandal was 
 effectively abated. When, among other revivals, ' Cymbe- 
 line ' was produced by him, the play was probably, for the 
 first time, seen upon the stage in something like its true 
 proportions. Local colour and correct costumes were intro- 
 duced, with a skilful reserve, to set off the fine acting of 
 his powerful company. How reverently and beautifully 
 the forest scene, alluded to by Tieck, with the two young 
 men of royal breed, was handled, must stUl be a delight 
 to many to remember. But to return to our chronicler. 
 
 " On his first entrance John Kemble reminded me, by his noble 
 presence, his stature, and speaking expressive face, of our excellent 
 Heinrioh Jacobi. . . . The English themselves admit thatj even 
 when he was young, the part of Poathurmia was one of hia weakest ; 
 
68 LUDWia TIEGK ON 
 
 how much more now I His voice is weak and tremulous, but full 
 of expression, and there is a ring of feeling and intelligence in every 
 word, only much tao strongly marked, and between every second 
 and third word there comes a pause, and most of the verses or 
 speeches end in a high key. ... In consequence of this tedious 
 style of delivery, the piece, even though probably one-half of it was 
 cut out, lasted an unusual time. This, so to speak, musical de- 
 clamation was incompatible with all real acting — nay, in a certain 
 degree made it impossible ; for when everything is made to depend 
 on little rmanees of speaking, and every monologue and every single 
 passage is sought to be rounded off into an artistic whole, any de- 
 lineation of character, of the ebb and flow of passion and feeling, is 
 out of the question. Here and there one saw the great master ; 
 for example, in the second act, when Ictchvmo after his return tells 
 how he has succeeded ; the despair, mingled with rage, the kind- 
 ling of fresh hope, and the falling back into comfortless anguish, 
 were admirably given, and one could see clearly, that if Kemble 
 had not succumbed to mannerism, and the dictates of a one-sided 
 school, he would have been a truly great actor." 
 
 The laehimo of the evening was Young, who threw, 
 says Tieck, no character into the part. He was probably 
 not actor enough to be a villain of a stamp so abhorrent 
 to his own honourable nature. Miss Foote was the 
 Imogen. "She was graceful," is Tieck's criticism, "in 
 the boy's dress; but she was not really equal to the part." 
 How could she be? She, the airy, graceful, fine lady of 
 comedy, how was she to depict all the pathos, ihe passion, 
 the ineffable mixture of womanly grace and power and 
 dignity of this paragon of Shakespeare's women? 
 
 Liston's Gloten, we are told, " was the part played with 
 the most spirit and intelligence. His stuttering bullying 
 manner was full of meaning, and the uncouthness of his 
 nature was extremely well expressed." But there follows 
 a qualification of a very serious kind. " The actor fell 
 into the mistake of not letting the somewhat heroic side 
 of the Prince peep out through his boorishness. He was 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 69 
 
 all through too thoroughly the clodpole. Thus," continues 
 Tieck, 
 
 " my longing to see a play of the great national poet performed in 
 London has been at length fulfilled, but not satisfied. Schroder 
 and Fleck, and their brother performers, did much more towards 
 adequately representing the poet ; and, fallen though at the pres- 
 ent moment the German stage is, were 'Cymbeline ' to be attempted 
 there, there are undoubtedly many places where a more complete 
 performance would be aimed at, and this wondrous poem would 
 not be so mercilessly mangled. If Shakespeare must be abridged 
 and cut to pieces, let those who set about the task remember what 
 Brutus says of Caesar : — 
 
 ' Let us be sacrificers, but no butchers, Caius ! 
 Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods. 
 Not hew him as a carcase fit for hounds.' " 
 
 The next night Tieck saw John Kemhle in Brutus. 
 
 "As my anticipations," he says, "were no longer vague, so was my 
 enjoyment greater. The play itself, too, being narrower in its 
 range, and more easily understood, was altogether better given. 
 Brutus, it is true, was not acted, but only declaimed with intelli- 
 gence. The celebrated quarrel scene between him and Cassius 
 (Mr Toung) produced but little impression ; for scenes of this kind 
 Kemble's voice is much too weak. The orations were well spoken. 
 Charles Kemble, brother of the famous actor, delivered his speech 
 afi Antony with great energy, only there was too much malignant 
 bitterness in his laugh at its close, when he saw the people roused, 
 showing a false interpretation of the poet's purpose ! Here was an 
 instance of what we often see — that an inferior talent infuses too 
 much of itself into the poet, and thereby drags him down to a 
 lower level. Much may be introduced well and properly in the 
 plays of other writers, which is quite out of place where Shakespeare 
 is concerned. 
 
 " The scene of the mob, with its rising turbulence and its calming 
 down again, was very well given. On this occasion, too, the cos- 
 tumes were satisfactory. " 
 
 Tieck had found great fault with the costumes in ' Cym- 
 hsHne,' which appear from his description to have been 
 
70 LUDWIG TIECK ON 
 
 ludicrously inappropriate. He also objects strongly to the 
 vastness of the stage, ■which seemed to him to make the 
 effective arrangement of groups upon it almost impossible. 
 And certainly he had good reason for this complaint, if no 
 more skill were shown in grappling with this difficulty 
 than ia the scene of Gcesar's assassination, as he de- 
 scribes it : — 
 
 " The stage was deep, and Ccesar sat upon a chair in the extreme 
 background. When the petition was presented, and rejected by 
 him, the conspirators arranged themselves in a well-defined pyramid, 
 of which Cceaa/r formed the apex, while Brutus stood well forward 
 in the proscenium to the left. Casca is the first to stab him ; then 
 Cmmr turns to the right and receives a second blow from the second 
 of his enemies ; again he staggers in affright to the left, a few steps 
 forward, and receives a fresh wound, then the same to the right : 
 now the free space on the stage grows larger, and this strange move- 
 ment of the mortally wounded man becomes more extraordinary 
 and unnatural, but he still goes on staggering across the stage five 
 or six times, so as to be stabbed by the conspirators, who remain 
 quietly standing, until he receives his death-blow from Brutus, and 
 falls forward, exclaiming, ' Bt tu, Brute/' This scene, arranged like 
 the most formal baUet, lost all dignity ; and it was rendered' out- 
 rageous by such pretentious solemnity, that it was even impossible 
 to laugh at it. . . . To what will not men become accustomed ! I 
 believe, of all the native audience there was not one who was dis- 
 turbed by this grotesque piece of stage business." 
 
 The first part of ' Henry IV.' was the next play in which 
 Tieck saw John Kemble, and his disappointment breaks 
 out in the following prelude to his criticism of the great 
 actor's treatment of Hotspur : — 
 
 " Again I let myself be deluded with the hope that I should see 
 real acting, real impersonation, penetrating truth, and grasp of 
 character, that infusion into noble poetry of life and action, which 
 by exalting all our faculties and rousing them into harmonious 
 exercise, offers to us perhaps the highest enjoyment which man is 
 capable of receiving from art. But all I got for my pains was to 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 71 
 
 hear eome passages finely spoken, with a total breakdown and fail- 
 ure, as a rule, in all that is most essential. . . . Where was the 
 humour of Hotspur, the young fiery hero, who is as brave as he is 
 unmannerly, who out of vanity hates vanity in others ; who, him- 
 self the head of the conspiracy, with the best resources in his hands, 
 has so little self-command that he scares away the most powerful 
 of his confederates, and who, as general, as husband, and as friend, 
 by his fiery temper and good humour, shows characteristics so 
 marked and peculiar that the most careless reader never fails to 
 have them vividly stamped upon his fancy ? John Kemble de- 
 claimed leisurely, intelligently ; making frequent efibrts at the hu- 
 mour of the part, but never grasping it. Here, too, he spoke quite 
 as slowly as in the parts I had previously seen, made two or three 
 considerable pauses, now drawled (klagte), now emphasised every 
 second or third word, one could not say why, and then ended so 
 frequently in a sort of sing-song in all, that I thought I was again 
 listening to one of those Protestant preachers whom one used to 
 hear twenty years ago in provincial places indulging in this wailing, 
 tedious tempo. Percy's first long story to the King Kemble seemed 
 to take as serious earnest, only exaggerated by youthful vehemence. 
 To this solemn, almost torturing slowness the ear became so accus- 
 tomed, that when Percy came to the passage — 
 
 ' In Richard's time — what do you call the place ? 
 A plague upon 't ! — it is in Gloucestershire — 
 'Twas where the madcap Dulce his uncle kept,' &c., 
 
 and he all at once spoke it with a quick, sharp utterance, like a man 
 who suddenly cannot call a name to mind, and seeks for it with 
 impatience, the whole house broke out into vehement applause 
 at the sudden drop of the voice and alteration of the tempo. It is 
 something noticeable when »■ thing of this kind, which is a mere 
 matter of course, and which can be easily hit off by the mediocre 
 actor, is received by the public with such marked admiration. This 
 mannerism, which often shows itself in Kemble, as in other actors, 
 capriciously and without cause, reminds one of the tragic recitation 
 of the French, who in every scene fling out some verses at a gallop- 
 ing pace in succession to passages spoken with measured and exag- 
 gerated emphasis." 
 
 1 Tieck, however, in summing up his criticism, is com- 
 pelled to admit that Kemble " gave a noble and manly 
 
72 LUDWia TIECK ON 
 
 portraiture of tke young and impetuous Prince, although 
 without the attractiveness and the gaiety of spirit which 
 the poet has assigned to his hero." In judging of this 
 criticism, One must keep ia view, that if the critic had 
 seen Kemble in. his best days, or even on some other 
 night, when he was less fatigued, or less out of health, 
 he might have found in his performance the very life, the 
 vivacity, the wayward charm, which he missed on the 
 evening in question. Actors are but mortals, and the 
 finer their sensibilities, the more apt are they to be at 
 times unstrung. Kemble, it is weU known, during these 
 last performances, taxed his powers unfairly. In Mr Mac- 
 ready's autobiography, an account is given of the perform- 
 ance of 'Macbeth,' two nights after Tieck saw him in 
 Hotspur, where the same flatness through much of the 
 play was obviously due to this cause. It was contrary to 
 Kemble's principles as an artist, as it was to those of his 
 great sister,'^ to slur any part of his work. Had he been 
 himself, he would never have languished through the first 
 four acts of the play, as we learn from Mr Macready he 
 did, in order that he might electrify his audience in the 
 fifth. 
 
 " Through the whole first four acts the play moved heavily on : 
 Kemble correct, tame, and ineffective ; but in the fifth, when the 
 
 ^ " You never, " are Charles Young's words, " caught her slumber- 
 ing through some scenes, in order to produce, by contrast, an exag- 
 gerated effect in others. She neglected nothing. From the first 
 moment to the last she was, according to theatrical parlance, in 
 the character. . . . There were no pauses protracted until they be- 
 came unintelligible. What was passing in her mind was read in her 
 changing countenance. Each character became a perfect picture, 
 in which, through all the changes of passion, a harmony was per- 
 ceived."— Campbell's ' Life of Mrs Siddons,' vol. ii. p. 383. 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 73 
 
 news was brought, 'The queen, my lord, is dead !' he seemed 
 fltruck to the heart ; gradually collecting himself, he sighed out, 
 ' She should have died hereafter ! ' then, as if with the inspiration 
 of despair, he hurried out, distinctly and pathetically, the lines — 
 
 ' To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," &c., 
 
 rising to a climax of desperation that brought down the enthusiaatio 
 cheers of the closely packed theatre. All at once he seemed carried 
 away by the genius of the scene. At the tidings of ' the wood of 
 Bimam moving,' he staggered, as if the shock had struck the very 
 seat of life, and in the bewilderment of fear and rage could just 
 ejaculate the words, ' Liar and slave ! ' then, lashing himself into 
 a state of frantic rage, ended the scene in perfect triumph. His 
 shrinking from Macd/uff when the charm on which his life hung was 
 broken by the declaration that his antagonist was ' not of woman 
 bom,' was a masterly stroke of art ; his subsequent defiance was 
 most heroic ; and, at his death, Charles Kemble received him in his 
 arms, and laid him gently on the ground, his physipal powers being 
 unequal to further effort." 
 
 The performance in whicli Tieck saw Kemble as Hot- 
 spur was for the benefit of Charles Young, who, following 
 a bad habit, which nsed to prevail on such occasions, of 
 playing a part that in an ordinary way the heneficiaire 
 never would have played, or been allowed to play, under- 
 took the character of Falstaff, which belonged to Fawcett 
 as the leading comedian of the theatre. 
 
 Little did Young imagine, that among the audience was 
 one of the most accomplished critics in Europe, who dis- 
 posed of him, no doubt, with entire justice, in a contemp- 
 tuous sentence. " Young made a dry jester, who laughed 
 at himself at every third word of Falstaff, the indescrib- 
 able, the wonderful, the never-sufficiently-to-be-admired 
 Falstaff." 
 
 "When a few nights afterwards (June 17), Tieck saw 
 Kemble in ' Henry VIII.,' he was compelled to acknow- 
 ledge that the genuine power of the actor threw the de- 
 
74 LUDWm TIECK ON 
 
 fects of his somewliat too measured and grandiose style 
 into the shade. 
 
 " lu the performance on this occasion," he writes, "there was far 
 more to praise than to blame, and John Kemble as WoUey was 
 admirable. My ear had at last become somewhat habituated to his 
 inordinately slow, wailing mode of speaking, and as most of the per- 
 formers spoke more rapidly than usual, especially the King, one 
 grew more readily reconciled to the solemn tones of the old car- 
 dinal ; and thus the play made the right impression as a whole. 
 Kemble showed himself to be a truly great artist, especially after 
 his fall, when the nobles, gathering round him, rejoice at his mis- 
 fortune, and he, in the pride of his grief, but stately to the last, 
 gives full vent to his emotions. The majesty in profound sorrow ; 
 the heart which ia already broken, but gathers itself together once 
 again in all its power to confront its malignant adversaries ; the 
 trembling of the voice, which, after a severe struggle, regains its 
 firm, manly tone, — all this was incomparably fine, and of consum- 
 mate excellence. And then, when the old man is left alone with 
 Cromwetl, and takes leave of this faithful servant, he breaks down, 
 and pours out as friend to friend the grief which now, despite his 
 efforts, overmasters him, and afterwards gives voice to the lessons 
 and warnings of experience with a father-like earnestness, consoling 
 himself in a grand way, and bidding adieu with genuine greatness 
 and composure to the stage, where among statesmen he had played 
 the foremost part. These fine scenes were performed throughout 
 in a way that left nothing to be desired, that satisfied the imagina- 
 tion to the full, and revealed to those who were most familiar with 
 the poet new beauties in nearly every verse. It is difficult to ex- 
 press the delight one feels when a great poet and a great actor come 
 together in this way." 
 
 It is difficult indeed, for the pleasure is the most in- 
 tense, the most satisfying that art can give. But all the 
 more is our gratitude due to the fine ohservation and the 
 skilful pen which has preserved such a picture for us as 
 this of the great actor in one of his most impressive 
 parts. 
 
 The mature years of Kemble (he was then sixty), which 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 75 
 
 were suitable to Wolsey, necessarily told against him ia 
 Hamlet, the next part in which Tieck saw him. 
 
 " It was obvious," are his words, " that the artist must have played 
 this part in his youth with very diEferent power, but no doubt he 
 played it then upon the same lines. It would hardly be possible 
 for any man of talent altogether to fail in this infinitely suggestive 
 character, which reveals almost every aspect of humanity, and gives 
 expression to the most diversified emotions in scenes of such various 
 interest. What Kemble brought prominently out was the sad, the 
 melancholy, the nobly suffering aspect of the character. He gave 
 way to tears much too often, spoke many of the scenes — that with 
 the players, for instance — admirably, and moved and bore himself 
 like a man of high blood and breeding. But, as usual, there was 
 almost no distinction between the lighter and heavier parts of the 
 play ; and then, again, the distinction between prose and verse was 
 nowhere marked. The great passionate scenes passed off almost 
 flatly,' at least that where the Ghost appears was quite ineffective. 
 In such passages as the opening of the first monologue — 
 
 ' Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt ! ' 
 
 Kemble lingers for some seconds on the ' Oh ! ' with a strongly 
 tremulous cadence. 
 " When Hamlet, speaking of the rugged Pyrrhus, says : 
 
 ' If it live in your memory, begin at this line ; let me see, let me 
 see! 
 
 The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast — 
 
 'Tis not so ; it begins with Pyrrhus ' 
 
 there was a general burst of applause throughout the house, because 
 this forgetfulness, this seeking after the beginning of the verse, was 
 expressed in such a natural way. And, indeed, when one has been 
 listening for a length of time to a slow, measured, wailing rhythm, 
 regularly interrupted by considerable pauses, and by a succession of 
 highly pitched inflections, one is quite taken by surprise on hearing 
 
 ' This, again, was manifestly due to the state of the actor's 
 strength. These scenes had never been accused of want of vigour, 
 when he was in full possession of his powers. 
 
76 LUDWIG TIECK ON 
 
 once more the tones of nature, and the manner of everyday con- 
 versation. 
 
 " I have seen nothing new in this impersonation, neither have I 
 learned anything except that ffwmlet, after he has stabbed the 
 King, while saying — 
 
 ' Here, thou incestuous, murd'rous, damned Dane, 
 Drink off this potion ! Is thy union here ? ' 
 
 thrusts the poisoned chalice to the King's mouth, and forces him, as 
 he dies, to drink it, which I take to be the right thing. A good 
 effect, too, was produced in this scene by the King being seated some 
 steps above the stage. These words, so explained and acted, 
 brought vividly to my mind Macbeth' s imagery in the monologue of 
 the last scene of the first act ; 
 
 ' This even-handed justice 
 Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice 
 To our own lips.' " 
 
 The Ophelia of the evening was Miss Stephens, in 
 accordance with the ahsurd stage usage, which continued 
 for long afterwards, of giving to the singing lady of the 
 theatre a part, for which a sensitive imagination and the 
 most subtle dehcacy of treatment are indispensable. Most 
 of us wiU echo Tieck's words : " I have never seen this 
 part played as the poet conceived it, instinct with life, 
 movement, and charm even in her madness." Ophelia is 
 very far from being the colourless insipid personage, which 
 our stage generally presents, and which critics are ready to 
 accept as the embodiment of that type of clinging virginal 
 sweetness, " blasted with ecstasy." 
 
 When, two nights afterwards, Mr Kemble appeared for 
 the last time upon the stage, Tieck could not be expected 
 to share the enthusiasm and the excitement, with which 
 the public watched every gesture and intonation of the 
 favourite to whom they owed so much. The event excited 
 so much interest that it found a record in an elaborate 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 77 
 
 brochure well known to bibliophiles, in which all the 
 incidents of the evening, and of the public dinner given to 
 Mr Kemble a fortnight afterwards, are preserved in full 
 detail Some words from a criticism by Hazlitt in the 
 'Times' (June 25, 1817) give vivid expression to the 
 prevailing sentiment. 
 
 " There is something in these partings with old public favourites 
 exceedingly affecting. They teach us the shortness of human life, 
 and the vanity of human pleasures* Our associations of admiration 
 and delight with theatrical performers, are amongst our earliest re- 
 collections — amongst our last regrets. . . . It is near twenty 
 years ago since we first saw Mr Kemble in the same character — yet 
 how short the interval seems ! the impression appears as distinct as 
 if it were of yesterday. . . . The petty and personal, that which 
 appeals to our senses and our interests, is by degrees forgotten, 
 and fades away into the distant obscurity of the past. The grand 
 and the ideal, that which appeals to the imagination, can only 
 perish with it, and remains with us, unimpaired in its lofty abstrac- 
 tion, from youth to age ; as, wherever we go, we still see the same 
 heavenly bodies shining over our heads ! We forget numberless 
 things that have happened to ourselves, . . . but not the first 
 time of our seeing Mr Kemble, nor shall we easily forget the last ! " 
 
 The ' Times ' critic found in the Coriolarms of that 
 evening no falling away of Mr Kemble's powers, no 
 diminution of fire or force. " He played the part," he 
 says, " as weU as ever he did — with as much freshness and 
 vigour. There was no abatement of spirit or energy — 
 none of grace and dignity ; his look, his action, his ex- 
 pression of the character, were the same as they ever were. 
 They could not be finer." The colder judgment of Tieck, 
 while making some deductions for occasional feebleness, 
 was compelled to bow before the indisputable genius of 
 the great artist. 
 
 " On the 23d of June," he writes, " Kemble appeared upon the stage 
 for the last time, and took leave for ever of the public, which held 
 
78 LUDWIG TIECK ON 
 
 * 
 him in the highest honour, in his most celebrated part, the Oorio- 
 lanus of Shakespeare. The house was fuller than ever, for no friend 
 of the artist would have missed this evening. Again I must express 
 my regret, that the piece was so unmercifully mangled, and its finest 
 passages out out ; a proceeding the more childish, seeing that they 
 had interpolated a superfluous pageant for the hero's triumphal 
 entry, in the shape of a procession with trophies and eagles, which, 
 entering at the back of the stage, and extending over its whole 
 expanse, consumed a great deal of time.^ If I cannot agree in re- 
 garding the performance as the artist's masterpiece, as his admirers 
 
 ^ This was in the second scene of the second act, after the vic- 
 tory at Corioli. No fewer than 240 supernumeraries were intro- 
 duced into the pageant. It was regarded at the time as a marvel 
 of scenic splendour. When Mrs Siddons was the Volmrmia, she 
 illustrated that power, which only the greatest actors possess, of 
 " filling the stage with her presence," with an effect of which the 
 following eloquent description by the Rev. J. C. Young in the 
 memoirs of his father (2d ed., p. 40) enables us to form some 
 conception. " In this procession, and as one of the central figures 
 in it, Mrs Siddons had to walk. Had she been content to follow in 
 the beaten track of her predecessors in the part, she would have 
 marched across the stage, from right to left, with the solemn, 
 stately, almost funeral step conventional. But at the time, as she 
 often did, she forgot her own identity. She was no longer Sarah 
 Siddons, tied down to the directions of the promoter's book— or 
 trammelled by old traditions — but the proud mother of a proud 
 son and conquering hero. So that, when it was time for her to 
 come on, instead of dropping each foot at equidistance in its place, 
 with mechanical exactitude, and in cadence subservient to the 
 orchestra, deaf to the guidance of her woman's ear, but sensitive to 
 the throbbings of her haughty mother's heart, with flashing eye, 
 and proudest smile, and head erect, and hands pressed firmly on her 
 bosom, as if to repress by manual force its triumphant swellings, 
 she towered above all around, and rolled, and almost reeled across 
 the stage, her very soul, as it were, dilating and rioting in its exul- 
 tation, until her action lost all grace, and yet became so true to 
 nature, so picturesque, and so descriptive, that pit and gallery 
 sprang to their feet electrified by the transcendent execution of an 
 original conception." 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 79 
 
 here do, his Wolsey in my opinion being quite as fine, still it is past 
 all question that Kemble proved himself once more a great actor 
 in many of the scenes. Nobler or more marked expression could 
 not be given to the proud nature of Coriolarms, and "figure, look, 
 and voice here stood the artist in excellent stead. His heroic 
 wrath, indeed, seemed too feeble, and his fury failed altogether, 
 because his organ was too weak for these supreme efforts, and the 
 actor had to economise it for the most important passages. Greatest 
 and most exciting of all was the close ; without exaggeration it 
 might be pronounced sublime." 
 
 When Goriolanus exclaims, " Hear'st thou, Mars ? " and 
 Aufidius says, " Name not the god, thou hoy of tears ! " 
 the exclamation " Ha ! " to which Goriolanus gives vent 
 in the height of his rage, Tieck tells us, was terrible. The 
 power with which Kemble gave the following speech, as 
 well as his look and bearing, were indescribable : — 
 
 " Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart 
 Too great for what contains it. Boy ! oh slave ! 
 
 Cut me to pieces, Volsces ! Men and lads, 
 
 Stain aU your edges on me ! Boy ! False hound ! 
 
 If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there. 
 
 That, like an eagle in a dove-cot, I 
 
 Fluttered your Volsces in Corioli. 
 
 Alone I did it! Boy!"^ 
 
 " This is the grand feature in the art of the stage," the 
 critic goes on to say — and who that has ever had his heart 
 stirred and his imagination kindled and enriched by the 
 genius of a great actor or actress, will not feel the justice 
 of his words 1 — 
 
 1 "In speaking these last lines," the late Hon. 'William Russell 
 wrote to me in 1880, " Kemble broke through the ordinary solem- 
 nity of his deep-toned voice into a triumphant yell. It rings in my 
 ears yet ! " 
 
80 LUDWIG TIEGK ON 
 
 "that it can bring out, nay, can create effects bo vast, that for the 
 moment our remembrance of every other pleasure that art can give 
 seems feeble, and but a shadow of what the stage can do. True it 
 is, that its manifestations also fleet away like a shadow, leaving no 
 trace behind ; and an unsatisfying remembrance of the great mo- 
 ments of delight and rapture fills us with sadness, for no memorial 
 can restore these fleeting phenomena for those who have hung upon 
 them with transport, because all that language or the painter's skill 
 can do are inadequate to portray what the rapt spectator has seen 
 and heard. Therefore it is only fair that the artist should in any 
 case be requited, however poorly, by the loudest applause directly 
 face to face, for he is powerless to preserve even for an instant the 
 product of his genius to tell to a future generation of what quality 
 it was. 
 
 " Such were the plaudits, the cheers, the shouts of rapture, and 
 tears of emotion given to the noble veteran, the honoured favourite 
 whom the public were never to see again. The loudest outburst of 
 applause I had ever heard, even in Italy, was but feeble compared 
 to the indescribable din, which, after the curtain fell, arose on every 
 side. There were thousands present, packed closely together, and 
 the huge area of the house was changed as if into one vast machine, 
 which produced a supernatural clangour and jubilation, men and 
 women shouting, clapping, smiting the sides of the boxes might and 
 main, with fans and with sticks, while, to add to the tumult, every- 
 body was making what noise he could with his feet, 
 
 " After this unheard-of din had lasted for some time, Kemble, 
 deeply moved and in tears, again came forward. What seemed im- 
 possible nevertheless took plsice, the clamour grew louder and 
 louder, until the tumult of sound aroused the feeling of something 
 awful and sublime.' Kemble bowed, and attempted more than 
 once to give utterance to » few words of parting ; at length he re- 
 gained his composure, but was frequently interrupted by his emo- 
 
 ' On Mr Kemble's reappearance, the critic of the ' Sun ' news- 
 paper wrote next day, " the acclamations were resumed, but in a 
 manner that we never witnessed before, in all the long course of 
 our theatrical experience. It seemed as if all hands struck in uni- 
 son by a resistless instinct, and certainly never were military move- 
 ments executed with more precision. It is impossible to describe 
 the effect." 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 81 
 
 tion. Not a sound was heard, save from many points a suppressed 
 low sob. And, when he finished, the storm broke forth again with 
 all its force." 
 
 The great body of the audience demanded (as they had 
 done on Garrick's farewell night) that the after-piece, 
 which had been announced, should not be proceeded with ; 
 but a noisy minority having resisted this, they were left 
 in possession of the field, and it was gone through by 
 the performers amid an uproar, which turned their acting 
 into " inexplicable dumb show." 
 
 Tieck had been unable to secure a place for Kemble's 
 last appearance as Macbeth (June 5), when Mrs Siddons 
 left her retirement to appear for the benefit of her brother, 
 Charles Kemble, as ILady Macbeth. It was most fortu- 
 nate that he was prevented from seeing the great actress 
 in her decay. How bad must the performance have been, 
 when Mr Macready, whose admiration of Mrs Siddons 
 was almost idolatrous, could write of it thus : " It was 
 not a performance, but a mere repetition of the poet's 
 text — ^no flash, no sign of her aU - subduing genius ! " 
 Tieck was already, as we have seen, too much disposed to 
 attribute to a radical vice of style, in the only great repre- 
 sentative of the Kemble school whom he had seen, the 
 shortcomings which were in a great measure the result of 
 fatigue and physical suffering. The spectacle of Mrs 
 Siddons, as Macready describes her, would probably have 
 confirmed him in his prejudice. Still, startled though he 
 was by a treatment of Shakespeare's great characters in a 
 way to which he had hitherto been unaccustomed, Tieck 
 could not blind himself to the dignity and breadth of con- 
 ception, and to the sublime effect of that stateliness of 
 manner, that " large utterance," and rhythmical cadence, 
 the echoes of a great and poetic soul, which won for 
 
 r 
 
82 ■ LUDWIG TIECK ON 
 
 Kemble so strong a hold upon the imagination of his 
 countrymen. Had Kemble's impersonations heen so 
 wanting in life and variety and truth to nature as Tieck 
 would have us think, had he been a declaimer merely, 
 and not an actor, he would never have taken the position, 
 which he held to the last, not merely with the public, but 
 with the great critics of his day. As a set-off to Tieck's 
 denunciations of his languor and slowness, let us turn 
 to what was said of him by the 'Times' critic, already 
 quoted, speaking from a twenty years' knowledge of his 
 efforts in the poetical drama : — 
 
 "The distinguishing excellence of Mr Kemble's acting may be 
 summed up in one word — intensity ; in the seizing upon some one 
 feeling or idea, in insisting upon it, in never letting it go, and in 
 working it up, with » certain graceful consistency and conscious 
 grandeur of conception, to a very high degree of pathos or sublimity. 
 If he had not the unexpected bursts of nature and genius, he had 
 all the regularity of art ; if he did not display the tumult and con- 
 flict of opposite passions in the soul, he gave the deepest and most 
 permanent interest to the uninterrupted progress of individual feel- 
 ing ; and in embodying a high idea of certain characters, which 
 belong rather to sentiment than passion, to energy of will rather 
 than to loftiness or to originality of imagination, he was the most 
 excellent actor of his time." 
 
 It is useful to turn back to these records, which remind 
 us that, on our stage, as elsewhere in our history, "great 
 men have been among us, greater none," and to see in 
 what manner they grappled with the characters of Shake- 
 speare, before which all others shrink into insignificance 
 as tests of an actor's powers. By studying these records, 
 we keep up to a fitting level the standard by which to 
 estimate the dramatic artists of our own time. Fashions 
 change upon the stage, as they do in the greater world, of 
 which it is the mirror. The manner of one period wUl 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 83 
 
 seem pedantic to another, its passion OTercharged, its 
 humour forced or vulgar. A John Kemble of the present 
 day would be very different from the John Kemhle of 
 the past. The elements of his greatness would find a 
 mode of expression less artificial perhaps, and more in 
 harmony with the freer and more varied play of expres- 
 sion which is demanded by the best culture of the pre- 
 sent time. But, in reading such criticisms as those above 
 cited, who can fail to wish that we had upon our stage at 
 this moment something of the high tone and breeding, 
 the sinewy vigour, the articulate and beautiful utterance, 
 of which they tell us? 
 
 It was the possession of these qualities, vivified by 
 cultivated intelligence and fine sensibility, rather than by 
 the fire of genius, which gave the charm to the acting of 
 Charles Young. Tieck saw him play Othello, but says 
 the performance was by no means to his mind. Why, he 
 does not mention, further than that, handsome though 
 Young was, he did not look well in his oriental costume. 
 His treatment of the part must, however, have been 
 marked by high qualities when even Kean, who in Oth- 
 ello was pre-eminent, dreaded to have his performance 
 brought into immediate contrast with it. They were to 
 have alternated the parts of logo and Othello at Drury 
 Lane in 1822. They had never acted together before. 
 Kean first played Othello, but he was so deeply impressed 
 by Young's logo, that he sent the manager to Young 
 after the play to beg that he would not insist on his right 
 to play Othello, and to say that he would regard his con- 
 sent as a personal obligation.^ Young, with characteristic 
 
 ' The Rev. Julian Young, from whose memoirB of hia father we 
 learn this fact, mentions an interesting oircumstanoe with reference 
 to Young's early impersonation of Othdlo. Speaking one day of 
 
84 . . LUDWIG TIEGK ON 
 
 courtesy, complied with the" request, and ke eculd afford 
 to do so, for his lago was in its way quite as fine as Kean's 
 Othello. It had none of the faults which Tieck describes 
 in the lago of Booth, faults which long afterwards con- 
 tinued to infect the stage conceptions of the character. 
 
 "Charles Kemble," says Tieok, "played OMBio admirably, and 
 with a certain lightneaa of touch ; but far too much effort and 
 false study were wasted upon the lago, just as they always are in 
 Germany. This emphasis of accentuation, this perpetual working 
 of the features, this louring of the brows, and leering and winking 
 of the eyes, simply defeat and destroy the effect they are intended 
 to produce. Except in some few passages, logo cannot be played 
 too simply and plainly, with that air of frank honesty and true- 
 heartedness which everybody has kuowli in fellows bf his stamp, 
 who under this habitual mask are often able for a time to mislead 
 even the most acute. How much more, then, the impetuous 
 Othello, who only discovers what his heart and true nature are, 
 when they have vfrought his ruin ? " 
 
 On the same occasion Liston, the play-bills of the day 
 tell us, was the Roderigo. "To my surprise," says 
 Tieck, "Roderigo was played as a clown. The same 
 
 the importance of the actor's possessing the abstract power of real- 
 ising character. Young mentioned that, "in his early theatrical 
 career, while playing Othello, the struggle in his mind between his 
 love for his wife and the sense of wrong she had done him so over- 
 whelmed him with conflicting emotions, that, after he had smoth- 
 ered her, he was in such an ecstasy of remorse ijnd misery at his 
 crime, that he flung himself wildly on her bed, burst into a par- 
 oxysm of tears, and was only recalled to the fact of his having 
 merely represented a murder, instead of having committed one, by 
 the rapturous applause of the audience." This power of "forcing 
 the soul to its own conceit " is indispensable to a great actor ; the 
 personal agony and the suffering has to be gone through, but this, 
 the best artists agree, should be done in the study of the character, 
 so that the emotions may be kept under control, and not allowed to 
 dominate the artist in the actual impersonation of his conception. 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. . 85 
 
 clever actor ■who had performed Ototen in ' Cymheline ' 
 so creditahly on the whole, performed this young, elegant, 
 love-sick Venetian in quite the same blunder-headed way, 
 and with the same peculiar gait and ungainly gestures, 
 causing numbers of the spectators to laugh heartily when- 
 ever he appeared. It would scarcely be possible to push 
 misconception farther. Yet this misrepresentation of the 
 poet seemed to cause no dissatisfaction, probably because 
 people had by long habit grown accustomed to it.'' 
 
 " But everything was made right — nay, more than compensated 
 — ^by the glorious style in which Miss O'Neill played Desdemona. 
 This part is considered an easy one, that almost acts itself ; at 
 least, one which it would not he easy to spoil altogether, or not to 
 awaken some interest in it. But the large, simple, innocent, noble 
 nature which was so touohingly and impressively brought out in 
 this performance I have never seen presented in such perfection, 
 nor any performance, in which profound feeling was combined 
 throughout with so much grace. Although I know the play by 
 heart, yet every verse became new to me, and disclosed to me an 
 inner significance which I had not before surmised. Miss O'Neill's 
 figure is fine, her face a pure oval, speaking in every Une, her voice 
 strong and clear, of a full penetrating quality. Once again I heard 
 that pure, gentle, womanly cadence, wliich alone touches the heart, 
 not that deep guttural ring, which is supposed to signify passion 
 and grandeur. This lovely woman frequently reminded me of an 
 actress whom I had often seen in Italy ; who was not, indeed, so 
 beautiful, but resembled her in the essential points, and who also 
 had the same clear, fuU-toned voice, and played incomparably in 
 Qoldoni's comedies, and also with superb pathos in "Werther's 
 'Charlotte.'" 
 
 Tieck saw Miss O'Neill again as Florinda in SheU's 
 play, 'The Apostate,' which was produced on May 3, 
 1817, with a cast which included Charles Kemble, 
 Charles Young, and Macready. It was a success, as suc- 
 cesses were regarded in those days, and was played twelve 
 
86 LUDWIG TIEGK ON 
 
 times that season. ^ Tliis was one of the cases, where the 
 playwright owes his hest fame to the actor's skUl. The 
 drama was iatrinsically worthless. 
 
 " It is," writes Tieck, " a Moorish story, in which a noble maiden, 
 who is deeply in love, is compelled to marry a villain (Pescara) in 
 order to save her lover's life. Her lover arrives to free her from 
 the shameful union, but it is too late. All used-up incidents, and 
 stale tragic exaggerations ! The performance of the actress, how- 
 ever, so completely ennobled the poverty of the text, that the 
 enjoyment of this evening will take its place among my most pleas- 
 urable recollections. The scene in which, being already married, 
 she hears the trumpets of her approaching lover, the cry of exulta- 
 tion, the wild laugh in the extremity of her anguish, and her sub- 
 sequent collapse, were of the very highest tragic power. People 
 no doubt say that this adventurous stroke of the actor's art, 
 which lies upon the very verge of what is possible and beautiful, 
 is too often introduced ; that this hysterical laughter in despair, 
 and these convulsive movements and spasmodic jerkings, recur too 
 often and too capriciously, frequently in passages where they rend 
 the spectator's heart, and when they had better be omitted, so 
 as not to degrade this appalling effect to a vulgar stage trick. If 
 this be really the case, then it is to be regretted that a lady whose 
 excellence is so exceptional should not do more justice to herself 
 than to present anything but what is altogether worthy of a true 
 artist." 
 
 A certain physical facility in presentiag the external 
 signs of grief, it is well known, frequently gave to Miss 
 O'Neill's performances a semblance of profound pathos, 
 which did not spring from depth of emotion. It natu- 
 rally tempted her to abuse, in the direction indicated by 
 
 ' Such runs as we are familiar with, fatal to actors, and to pub- 
 lic taste, were happily then unknown. Milman's 'Fazio,' pro- 
 duced in February 1818, was acted only fifteen times; Shell's 
 'Evadne' (February 1819) thirty times; while Pocock's 'Rob 
 Hoy ' (March 1818) was acted no fewer than thirty -four times that 
 season — a run quite unusual. 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 87 
 
 Tieck, a power which stirred, with so little trouble to 
 herself, " the sacred source of sympathetic tears." ^ Ed- 
 mund Kean fell into the same vice, tiU by repetition the 
 trick made itself felt, and people became callous even to 
 the hysterical sob, which used to make Byron weep, and 
 sensitive women faint. One night, as the Eev. Julian 
 Young records, on the authority of the elder Matthews, 
 when Kean had been trying something of the kind upon 
 -the audience, and got hissed, he whispered, as he left the 
 stage, to a brother actor (Wewitzer), " By Jove ! old 
 fellow, they've found me out. It won't do any more. I 
 must drop my hysterics." 
 
 It was his performance of Pescara ia ' The Apostate ' 
 which made Tieck recognise ia Macready the promise of 
 a fine actor. And yet Macready ia his ' Eeminiscences ' 
 (vol. i. p. 145) mentions, that when the part was given 
 to him, after the reading of the play to the actors, he 
 received it "mournfully and despondingly." "Why, 
 William," said Charles Kemble, with his wonted kradli- 
 ness and good seuse, " it is no doubt a disagreeable part, 
 but there is passion ia it." And this was just what Mac- 
 ready could turn to account, and he did it so effectively, 
 that Tieck says of him : " The villaia, Mr Macready, was 
 so admirably acted, so impetuous, true, and powerful, 
 that (what never happened to me ia England before) I 
 felt myself reminded of the best periods of the actor's 
 art in Germany. If the young man [Macready was then 
 twenty-four] follows the Hnes on which he is now work- 
 tag, he is sure to make himself a name." 
 
 ' Mr Browning informs me that Sheil often spoke to him of a 
 very fine stage scream, which Miss O'Neill had always at command, 
 and that he (Sheil) used to write a passage into his plays, where it 
 might be brought in with effect. 
 
88 LUDWIG TIEGK ON 
 
 At this time, Kean was in the full blaze of his popu- 
 larity, it was his third season in London. He had got 
 rid of some of his earlier faults of unevenness and want 
 of finish, and was in full possession of the fine physical 
 qualities of eye and voice and figure, to which his reck- 
 less habits afterwards brought premature ruin. 
 
 " He is the stage liero of the present day," writes Tieok. " Those 
 who are ready enough to join in the censure of Kemble, and the 
 mannerism of his school, start with the assumption that the fa- 
 vourite of their idolatry is far above criticism. Kean is a little, 
 slightly built man, quick in his movements, and with brown, 
 clever expressive eyes. Many who remember Garriok maintain 
 that Kean is like him ; even Garrick's widow, who is stiU alive, is 
 said to concur in this opinion : but she will hardly agree with the 
 many admirers of Eean, who hold that he acts in Garrick's manner, 
 and even surpasses him in many of his parts." 
 
 The town was then talking of Kean's Hamlet, which 
 he had played, for the first time in London, shortly before 
 (March 14, 1816). Like aU his performances, it had fine 
 moments ; but in the opinion of the best judges, HazHtt 
 included, it failed to impress the spectator with the pen- 
 siveness, the refinement, " the weakness, and the melan- 
 choly," the humour playing with a lambent light over the 
 profound pathos, and the fitful, but short-lived passion, 
 wanting which they could not recognise the Hamlet of 
 Shakespeare. The conflict of criticism which raged on 
 every side, explains the anxiety which Tieck says he felt 
 to see the new Hamlet. 
 
 " All the playful, humorous speeches, aU the bitter cutting pas- 
 sages, were given in the best style of comedy. But he could not 
 touch the tragic side of the character. His mode of delivery is the 
 Very opposite of Kemble's. He speaks quickly, often with a rapid- 
 ity that injures the effect of what he has to say. His pauses and 
 excess of emphasis are even more capricious and violent than 
 Kemble's, added to which, by dumb show, or sudden stops, and 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 89 
 
 Biiohlike artifices, he frequently imports into the verse aniueaning, 
 which, in a general way, is not to be found in it. He stares, starts, 
 wheels round, drops his voice, and then raises it suddenly to the 
 highest pitch, goes off hurriedly, then comes back slowly, when one 
 does not expect him ; by all these epigrammatic surprises, crowding 
 his impersonation with movement, showing an inexhaustible inven- 
 tion, breaking up his pai-t into a thousand little frequent hona mots, 
 tragical or comic, as it may happen ; iind it is by this clever way of, 
 as it were, entirely recasting the characters allotted to him, that he 
 has won the favour of the general public, especially of the women. 
 If he does not weary the attention, as Kemble does, one is being 
 constantly circumvented by him, and defrauded as by a skilful jug- 
 gler of the impression, the emotion, which we have a right to ex- 
 pect. Now, on the artist's part all this is done in mere caprice, 
 with the deliberate purpose of giving a great variety of light and 
 shade to his speeches, and of introducing turns and sudden alter- 
 nations, of which neither the part nor the author have for the miost 
 part afforded the most remote suggestion. This is, therefore,, play- 
 ing with playing, and more violence is done to an author, especially 
 if that author be Shakespeare, by this mode of treatment than by 
 the declamatory manner of the Kembles." 
 
 This criticism, in all essential points, agrees with, that 
 of Hazlitt (' Criticisms and Dramatic Essays,' 2d ed., p. 
 178), who thought Kean's genurail delineation of the char- 
 acter wrong. 
 
 " It was," he writes, " too strong and pointed. There was often a 
 severity, approaching to virulence, in the common observations and 
 answers. There is nothing of this in Hamlet. He is, as it were, 
 wrapped up in the cloud of his reflections, and only thinks aloud. 
 There should, therefore, be no attempt to impress what he says 
 upon others by any exaggeration of emphasis or manner ; no talk- 
 ing at his hearers. There should be as much of the gentleman and 
 scholar as possible infused into the part, and as little of the actor. 
 . . . Samlet should be the most amiable of misanthropes. There 
 is no one line in the play, which should be spoken like any one line 
 in Richard; yet Mr Kean did not appear to us to keep the two 
 characters always distinct." 
 
 Hazlitt admits that in the great scene with Ophelia 
 
90 LUDWIG TIECK ON 
 
 the genius of the actor made itself felt even through, his 
 faults. 
 
 " If there had been less vehemence of effort it would not have 
 lost any of its effect. But vfhatever minor faults might be found 
 in this scene, they were amply redeemed by the manner of his com- 
 ing back after he has gone to the extremity of the stage, from a 
 pang of parting tenderness, to press his lips to Ophelia's hand. It 
 had an electrical effect on the house. It was the finest commentary 
 that was ever made on Shakespeare. It explained the character at 
 once (as he meant it), as one of disappointed hope, of bitter regret, 
 of affection suspended and not obliterated by the distractions of the 
 scene around him." 
 
 Tieck does not seem to have been impressed to the 
 same extent by this fine and then novel interpretation of 
 a scene of crucial difiBculty; but he thought it at all 
 events worthy of the following minute description : — 
 
 "In the interview with Ophelia, after the famous monologue, 
 overheard by the King and Polonms, Kean does not fall into the 
 error of so many actors, who give this scene an entirely tender and 
 sentimental colouring. He, on the other hand, is perhaps too 
 bitter and severe. The words, ' To a nunnery ! Go ! ' which he 
 has to speak a second time after a long intermediate speech, having 
 previously given the same counsel to Ophelia twice in different 
 words, were accentuated by him with an ascending emphasis, till it 
 took the tone of a vehement menace and command, rising almost 
 to a scream, with an expression of marked severity (Grausamheit) 
 in voice, look, and action, after which he retires hurriedly, and has 
 already grasped the handle of the door, when he stops, turns round, 
 and casting back the saddest, almost tearful look, stands lingering 
 for some time, and then, with a slow, almost gliding step, comes 
 back, seizes Ophelia's hand, imprints a lingering kiss upon it with a 
 deep-drawn sigh, and straightway dashes more impetuously than 
 before out at the door, which he slams violently behind him. 
 Peals of applause from all parts of the house rewarded this well- 
 studied specimen of the favourite's art. " 
 
 Those who remember the Hamlet of Charles Kean in 
 his best days will recognise ia this vivid description the 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 91 
 
 source from wHch. lie drew what made one of tlie most 
 effective features of that performance. 
 
 The conflicting judgments of theatrical critics are a 
 source of constant perplexity to those who cannot judge 
 for themselves. But it is hardly possible to imagine how 
 two men, Kke HazUtt and Tieck, should come to such 
 diametrically opposite opinions, as they have recorded of 
 the performance of the Ghost by a Mr Redmond. " We 
 cannot speak too highly of it," says HaaUtt. " It glided 
 across the stage with the preternatural grandeur of a 
 spirit." His speakiag, he admits, was not equally excel- 
 lent. " A spirit should not wMne or shed tears." Con- 
 trast this with Tieck's commentary on the deportment of 
 this "poor ghost." 
 
 "Although with us m Germany, especially in the smaller 
 theatres, the Ghost may not always be what it should be, still he' 
 is never seen tottering across the stage so absolutely without dig- 
 nity and grace as here, without a trace in hia appearance either of 
 anguish or of majesty. If Hamlet is at a loss for words to blacken 
 the King, after what epithets must he strive in order to portray a 
 Ghost, that neither stands nor walks, and who carries himself as 
 though he had just reeled from the nearest tavern, a Ghost that 
 speaks with such absence of emphasis and meaning ? . . . Worst 
 of all is its appearance in the Queen-Mother's chamber, when the 
 Ghost with great complacency enters by one door, totters across the 
 stage, and not looking particularly either at Hamlet or the Queen, 
 goes off through the opposite door, which closes behind him, while 
 Hamlet, inaptly enough, hurries after him, and is only kept back 
 by the door slamming in his face. At this passage it is diflScult not 
 to laugh. Quite lately a friend of mine in the pit could not con- 
 tain himself when Kemble played the part in the same way and 
 with the same absurd effect ; but the English, who, although they 
 do not believe in ghosts, do not like to have them laughed at, took 
 his conduct much amiss. They are, however, mistaken if they 
 reaUy believe that ghostly apparitions at no time have inspired 
 awe, and we can assure them that even now they would thrill with 
 terror were they to see Schroder in this part, on which he has be- 
 stowed long and most careful study." 
 
92 LUDWIG TIECK ON 
 
 Up to a comparatively recent period the absurdities to 
 whicli Tieck here calls attention kept their place upon our 
 stage. They would not now be endured. But when will 
 an English actor, of the first rank, like Schroder, show 
 his audience in the Ghost, or indeed, in any subordinate 
 part, that Shakespeare has put qualities into aU his char- 
 acters which only an artist can thoroughly develop ? 
 
 Tieck formed a very poor opinion of Kean's Maebeth. 
 He found it a great deal feebler than his Hamlet. " He 
 has not," Tieck writes, " the gifts of mind nor the phy- 
 sique to produce a harmonious whole, but oscillates hoio. 
 one extreme to another, from want of imaginative grasp. 
 Besides all the defects in his style, to which I have al- 
 ready adverted, he tears whole scenes to tatters in the 
 manner of the French tragedians by speaking almost every 
 word at the highest pitch of his voice, and with the 
 strongest emphasis." Even HazUtt, with all his admi- 
 ration for Kean, admits that he missed the poetry of 
 Macheth's character. He finds nothing to praise in it 
 but his acting of the scene after the murder. " The hesi- 
 tation, the bewUdered look, the coming to himself when 
 he sees his hands bloody ; the manner in which his voice 
 clung to his throat and choked his utterance ; his agony 
 and tears, the force of nature overcome by passion, beg- 
 gared description.'' But Tieck loved and understood 
 Shakespeare too well to be reconciled, by occasional strik- 
 ing passages in a performance, to a fundamental miscon- 
 ception of a character, or physical unfitness for it. Be- 
 sides, he was irritated, as what Shakespearian scholar has 
 not been, by the introduction of Locke's, or rather Pur- 
 ceU's, Witch Music into the play, with its motley horde 
 of fantastically arranged chorus singers, and by other 
 arrangements of the scene, which he discusses at great 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 93 
 
 length, and denounces, not without cause, as tending " to 
 pervert the poet's grand coijceptions, and to make them 
 ridiculous." 
 
 He was thus not ui a mood to see such merits in Kean's 
 performance as it probahly had. His judgment of that 
 great actor's Richard III. was probably warped from the 
 same cause. Instead of Shakespeare's play, he was pre- 
 sented with Gibber's perversion of it. He had some 
 nights before seen Booth, an actor of short-lived reputa- 
 tion, who played the part in Kean's manner, but without 
 his genius, and was shocked by the "unwarrantable' omis- 
 sions," ho less than by the " pitiful additions," which in 
 his eyes robbed the play of its distinctive excellence. 
 The character of Richard was stripped of its heroic pro- 
 portions ; and he asks, with just indignation, what can be 
 said of a play from which the impressive Cassandra-hke 
 figure of Queen Margaret has been omitted ? 
 
 Kean's scene in the tent, when he wakes up from his 
 ghost-haunted sleep, was regarded by his admirers as one 
 of his greatest achievements. Our own bojrish recollec- 
 tions enable us to vouch for the accuracy of the following 
 description of it by Tieck. The best critics of the present 
 day win probably agree that the German was not far 
 wrong ia thiokiag that true art was lost sight of in the 
 attempt to produce a claptrap effect. 
 
 " As the ghosts disappeared, Richard sprang up from his sleep. 
 But how ? He had a naked sword by his side, and, leaning upon 
 this, he staggered forward, sank on one knee, then started back as 
 if he wished to rise, holding high in the air his other arm, which 
 shook violently even to the finger-tips ; then trembling, staring 
 with wide-open eyes, he advanced in silent anguish on his knees 
 with violent gesticulations, and yet slowly, into the proscenium, 
 still shaking with fright, and staring at the audience with wide- 
 set eyes. I cannot say how long this idiotic dumb-show lasted, 
 
94 LUDWIG TIEGK ON 
 
 which seemed to me a mere mountebank's trick ; but when, after a 
 long interval, he wanted to proceed with the monologue, he had to 
 wait almost as long, on account of the extravagant peals of ap- 
 plause, before he could begin." 
 
 The great defect wHch Tieok found in the English 
 stage was its want of completeness and ensemble. This 
 was due, not as now to the way such good actors as exist 
 are scattered up and down the theatres of the metropolis, 
 and to the disappearance of permanent companies from 
 the great provincial cities, but to the habit which pre- 
 vailed of not regarding plays as a whole from a com- 
 manding central point, but " thinking only of this or that 
 character, of special scenes, and so forth." 
 
 We may fitly conclude this paper with some general 
 remarks by Tieck upon what English acting was, as he 
 saw it, and what it ought to be, in order to bring it back 
 to what it must have been, when it had no splendour of 
 scenic accessories to rest upon, but was compelled to trust 
 to its power of impressing the imagination of the audience 
 by speech and gesture, and truth to nature, wisely tem- 
 pered by art. They are not without significance at the 
 present day. 
 
 " I have found that the performance of English tragedy is not 
 nowadays essentially different from the French, and that the two 
 stages approximate each other in points where both are most strik- 
 ingly wrong. In point of fact, we in Germany follow the same 
 track, and consequently it must be owned that the French school 
 and manner are the best and finest of the three, for in France they 
 have carried to the ripeness of perfection what both English and 
 Qermans are still struggling to attain in a tentative and hesitating 
 way. We must, however, not forget that the English had for a 
 great length of time been in possession of a fully developed stage, 
 when the French had scarcely made their first quite insignificant 
 essays in tragedy, which did not assume a national character among 
 them till a much later period. So in like manner the acting of 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 95 
 
 English tragedians was completely formed, and of a marked indi- 
 viduality, before the other countries in Europe had ahything 
 similar to show. This histrionic art, as we know from authentic 
 records, and may with the greatest certainty conclude from its 
 effects, was so perfect, that the finest performances of later times can 
 have been at best only an approximation to it, 
 
 " The ensemble in those days must have been no less excellent, be- 
 cause otherwise these great plays at their first appearance must 
 have gone off as lamely as they do now, or rather they would never 
 have come into existence at all. The acting of that time, however, 
 I imagine, was very different in kind from that now employed by 
 the French in their tragedies ; true, simple, more or less coloured 
 and interpenetrated by whim and irony, the very antipodes to all 
 declamation and false emphasis — ^no rhythmic chanting, no unnec- 
 essary pauses and falsetto accents. This spirited, living, natural 
 style of acting, this just and simple manner of speaking, which 
 alone gives scope for and makes every. delicacy of gradation pos- 
 sible, sustained and elevated the productions of Shakespeare and 
 his contemporaries : it was in this style that Burbage and Alleyne 
 were great ; as Betterton was in later days, and so on down to 
 Garrick. Therefore it is not to be wondered at, if with that monot- 
 onous and inflated voice and action, which approach to the French 
 mannerism, together with the exaggeration, which is due simply to 
 the want of imagination and creative power, the works of Shake- 
 speare in these days of ours often make but little impression. . . . 
 
 "In the matter of acting, Schroder's universal talent laid the 
 foundation of a genuine German school, which of necessity was 
 akin to that old English one, to which I have just alluded. A firm 
 reliance upon truth and nature, delight in a high tone of comedy, 
 a freedom of opinion which stoops to no conventions, an enlightened 
 emotional nature, which is not to be dazzled by bombast — all this, 
 with an earnest striving after genuine and profund art, is, if we 
 take the high point of view, our real German nature. And there- 
 fore Shakespeare the Incomparable suits us better than any other 
 poet. . . . True help is only to be found in that uniquely great 
 poet, of whose creative power his country unquestionably still 
 shows that it has glimpses, although often feeble glimpses only." 
 
 Tieck then refers to tlie salutary influence of Goethe in 
 restoring a true dramatic style to the German drama, and 
 of Schroder, Fleck, Eeinicke, Scholz, and others in giving 
 
96 LUDWIG TIEGK. 
 
 to his country a national stage. He then makes a remark, 
 which the English in their exaggerated estimate of the 
 merits of foreign actors, would do well to remember. Let 
 them think, for example, of what a French or Italian 
 actress would make of Juliet, Imogen, Constance, Queen 
 Katherine, Lady Macbeth, Isabella, Desdemona, Beatrice, 
 Rosalind, and they will then appreciate the force of the 
 following words. " To rise to supreme excellence as a 
 German" (let us add, or English) "actor is, no doubt, 
 infinitely more difficult than to beconie a great French 
 tragedian ; just as it is a much higher feat to write a play 
 in the sense in which Shakespeare's or Goethe's are plays, 
 than to write a tragedy on the narrow conventional 
 model" 
 
 Note. — Jolin Kemble died at Lausanne (26th February 1823), and 
 was buried in the cemetery there. Twenty years ago we only suc- 
 ceeded in finding his grave after a lengthened search. It was 
 hidden under a dense growth of ivy, weeds, and brushwood, which 
 had to be pushed aside, before the inscription on the tombstone 
 could be read. And there, forgotten by the world, and seemingly 
 even by his kindred, lay the dust of him who had left the stage 
 amid the plaudits and the tears which Tieck (ante, p. 80) has so 
 well described. 
 
WILLIAM CHAELES MACEEADY. 
 
 (Fkom the 'Quarteklt Review,' June 1876.) 
 
 HIE condition of a great actor's work is that it 
 dies with him. Let him have put into it all 
 that Hfelong observation and study, quick- 
 ened by the creative energy of genius, can 
 produce, he must still be content to forego the natural 
 yearning of the artist for a hold upon the hearts and 
 minds of a future age. With the kindred spirits who 
 " rule us from their tombs," he knows he can never rank. 
 Of these Alfred de Musset, in his fine ' Ode to the Memory 
 of Malibran,' has said — 
 
 " Jamais I'afireuse nuit lee prend tout entiers." 
 
 But with him it is different. Who shall preserve from 
 oblivion that magic of voice, that charm of form, of look, 
 of gesture, through which his soul has spoken to his 
 
98 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 
 
 f ello-w-men with Buch resistless eloquence ? ^ Yet is he not 
 without his consolations. No noble influence is ever whoUy 
 lost; and he may find compensation for the short-lived 
 doom of his nohlest creations in the assurance that the 
 power of his genius, which has been reflected to him in 
 the palpable emotion or ringing plaudits of his audience, 
 has opened up to them a world of poetry and emotion, 
 which but for Vn'm they would never have known. His 
 " so potent art " has awakened them to a knowledge of 
 their own hearts, — " shown them noble lights in their own 
 souls." It has widened the sphere of their sympathies ; 
 flashed light upon the conceptions of the greatest poets, 
 which has made them living realities, even for the unima- 
 ginative ; and in doing this it has communicated impulses 
 which may exercise a lasting influence for good on the 
 lives of thousands. Happier, too, than many great poets 
 and artists, the great actor has not to wait for his fame. 
 It meets him face to face in the eager eyes, the hushed 
 breath, the choking sob, the triumphant acclaim, gf his 
 contemporaries. Not in vain has he lived who owes such 
 success to having wrought with a pure aim to turn to the 
 highest account the special gift of genius. Even though 
 
 ' The day after the death of Le Kain (9th February 1778), 
 Thouvel, hia not unworthy successor, wrote in a letter to his f eUow- 
 actors, now preserved in the archives of the Comddie Fran^aise : 
 "Voilb, done oh aboutissent trente aus de travail, trente ans de 
 peine, trente ans de gloire ; le cercueil engloutit tout en un mo- 
 ment ; U ne restera d'un talent souvent sublime qu'une mtooire 
 incertaine, que le temps effacera chez ceux qui la conservent, et qui 
 ne sera qu'un songe pour ceux qui n'auront point joui de ses tri- 
 omphes. Le peintre, le pofete, laissent aprfes eux des monuments de 
 leurs travaux moins aohev^s dans leur genre que Le Eain dans le 
 sien ; ce qu'ils ont fait du bien reste entre les mains de la post^rit^, 
 et Le Kain ne laisse rien, mSme aux yeux de ses contemporains, qui 
 atteste son m^rite, et la profondeur de ses reoherchea." 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADT. 99 
 
 his work die with him, he may comfort himself with the 
 thought that its excellence lingers long in the traditions 
 of the world, and that he will at least remain — ^how few 
 even of the greatest in any sphere of action do more ? — 
 the shadow of a mighty name. 
 
 Great actors as a rule have accepted this condition of 
 their existence cheerfully. They have not sought to keep 
 their name and fame before the world by autobiographies 
 or memoirs, but have left themselves and their merits to 
 be dealt with by other pens than their own. In truth, 
 there is little to awaken interest in the story of an actor's 
 life. The successive steps in his career, the long appren- 
 ticeship in the practical study of his art, the passage from 
 stage to stage, the gradual rise to eminence and fortune — 
 all so interesting to himself — can have no attraction for 
 any reasonable creature. The mature fruit of his toUs, 
 his impersonations, into which he throws himself with all 
 that study and experience have taught him, — it is with 
 these alone that the public have any concern. The true 
 artist on the stage, as elsewhere, will, above all, be a gen- 
 tleman ; and as he will shrink in his life from that vulgar 
 curiosity — never more rife than in the present day — 
 which seeks to penetrate into the private history and 
 habits of those who, by the necessity of their vocation, 
 live much in the public eye, he wiU be no less chary of 
 ministering to this curiosity when he has passed away, 
 and it can no longer wound his feelings or outrage his 
 seK-respect. 
 
 Hence it is that the greatest actors have added little to 
 biographical literature. The most illustrious of our own 
 stage — Betterton, Booth, Quin, Garrick, Barry, the Kem- 
 bles. Young — ^have all kept silence. Some, if not all, of 
 these could write well ; and Garrick, the ablest of them 
 
100 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 
 
 all, had, as his letters testify, the very qualities to make 
 him pre-emiaent in this branch of literature. It is im- 
 possible not to regret that he had not found time to de- 
 vote himself to it. What memoirs might he not have 
 ■written! Of himself he would probably have told us 
 little. But what sketches of manners might we not then 
 have had! "What anecdotes; what conversations of 
 Beauolerk, of Johnson, of Goldsmith, of Eeynolds, of Burke 
 and Chatham ; of Clairon, Le Kain, Pr^ville, MoW, and 
 other stars of the French stage ; of Diderot, Maupertuis, of 
 D'Holbach, and aU the brilliant society of Paris ! What 
 pictures of the leading men and women of his time ; and 
 there were few whom he did not know ! Above all, how 
 might he have set in aU the hues of life before us his 
 great compeers on the stage — Quin, Macklin, Powell, 
 Barry, Mossop, Sheridan, Weston, King, Mrs Woffington, 
 Mrs Gibber, Kitty Olive, Mrs Pritchard, Mrs Abington, 
 — doing for them what Colley Gibber has done for Better- 
 ton, for Mountfort, and Bracegirdle. What invaluable 
 lessons should we not then have had in dramatic criticism ! 
 What hints to make the stage, as it ought to be, a school 
 of manners and of high thinking, as well as the most 
 delightful of amusements ! 
 
 The great actors of France, it is true — Le Kain, Pr^ 
 ville, M0I4 Talma, and others — have left written records 
 behind them. But in them little is to be found of their 
 personal history. It is of their art and not of themselves 
 they write ; their memoirs being confined almost exclu- 
 sively to illustrations of what the stage is capable, con- 
 veyed either in examples taken from other actors, or in 
 general propositions for the guidance of those who may 
 have to practise or to criticise the actors' art. Nor could 
 better guides to a just appreciation of that art be desired. 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADT. 101 
 
 They were proud of it ; for they regarded it from the same 
 high point of view as Voltaire, when he said of a genius for 
 it, that it was " le plus beau, le plus rare, et le plus diffi- 
 cile des talents.'' It was an art which ia its perfection 
 could only come of "the gifts that God gives." It could 
 not, as the great comedian Preville wrote, be taught : 
 " A man must be bom an actor, and then it is not a mas- 
 ter he needs, but a guide." Mdlle. Clairon, though her- 
 self open to the charge of too artificial a style, — " elle est 
 trop actrice," was Gairick's comprehensive criticism — a 
 fault from which, at a later date, she shook herself free, 
 — was equally clear on this point. " I am aware of no 
 rules," she writes, "no traditions, that are capable of im- 
 parting aU those qualities of mind and sensibility which 
 are iadispensable for the production of a great actor ; I 
 know of no rule by which one can learn to think, to feel ; 
 Nature alone can give those faculties, which study, advice, 
 and time may serve to develop." ^ But though teaching 
 could not make a fine actor, he was not therefore to dis- 
 pense with culture and study. "FiU yourselves with 
 knowledge," Clairon says elsewhere ; " be unremitting in 
 the search for truth; by dint of care, of study, make 
 yourselves worthy to educate your public, and constrain 
 them to own that you profess the most difficult of aU the 
 arts, and not the most degraded of mechanical crafts." 
 
 Le Kain, himself an illustrious instance of the power 
 and patience of genius to overcome the disadvantages of 
 face and figure for a vocation where such disadvantages 
 are most felt, — that inexpressible something which made 
 
 ^ "Vois-tu,'' wrote poor Eaohel, when sinking under her fatal 
 illness, " pour ^tudier, il est bien inutile de parler, de faire de gestes ; 
 il faut penser, il faut pleurer." — 'Madame de Girardin,' par Im- 
 bert de St Amaud (Paris, 1875), p. 263. 
 
102 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 
 
 "Pritchard genteel and Garrick six-feet Mgh," — writes 
 eloquently ia the same strain. " Soul is the foremost 
 requisite of the actor ; intelligence the second ; truth and 
 fervour of utterance the third ; grace and harmony of 
 movement the fourth. To he thoroughly master of his 
 parts, to know the force and significance of every hne, 
 never to lose sight of Nature, simple, noble, and affectiag ; 
 to be assured that -understanding is not to be acquired 
 save by ripe meditation, nor practical skill save by perse- 
 vering ton ; to be always in his part ; to use the pictur- 
 esque with skilful reserve ; to be as true in level speaking 
 as in the great movements of passion ; to avoid whatever 
 is trivial ; to make his pauses not too frequent ; to let 
 nobility of style be seen even across his lightest moods ; 
 to avoid jerkiness in speaking; to weep only when the 
 soul is stormed and thrust in upon itself by grief ; to show 
 unbroken attention to what is passing on the stage, and 
 to identify himself with the character he represents : " 
 these are some, and only some, of the qualities which go, 
 in the estimation of one from whose judgment there could 
 be no appeal, to constitute the claim to be considered a 
 great actor. 
 
 Those who thought so highly of their art were not likely 
 to be otherwise than proud of it. They bore within them 
 that which might well make them indifferent alike to the 
 prejudices that refused them the social status conceded to 
 other artists, and to the Churchman's dogma, which denied 
 to them, when dead, a resting-place in consecrated ground. 
 The gift which made them great was divine in its origin ; 
 and loving their pursuit as they did, with the passionate 
 devotion which was one main secret of their excellence, 
 they felt it gave them a rank above conventional distinc- 
 tions. They would not, if they could, have exchanged it 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAOREADY. 103 
 
 for any other. What could the sneer at the player's craft 
 of some weU-bom fool, or of some professional pedant, 
 matter to a man who knew he could cope with the best 
 in every honourable quality, and whose business in life 
 was to make his fellows familiar with " the high actions 
 and the high passions "which make a poetical drama the 
 best discipline of humanity ? Nor were oui English actors 
 behind them in glorying in their vocation. On the statute- 
 book players might stOl appear as " vagabonds " ; but the 
 profession which our supreme poet had followed, and for 
 which his best works had been written, could not be de- 
 graded by the reckless classification of an obsolete law. 
 The opinion of society soon abolished the stigma : the 
 actor who respected himself was sure of its respect. 
 Whom, indeed, was it prepared to welcome more kindly, 
 or to accept in its most intellectual circles upon a footing 
 of more complete equality 1 And if in public any slight 
 were offered to him, the support of his audience never failed 
 him ; just as it is upon record that the house went tho- 
 roughly with George Frederick Cooke, in his memorable 
 retort to a young officer in the stage-box, who had made 
 himself conspicuous by interrupting the play : " You are 
 an ensign ? Sir, the King (God bless him !) can make 
 any fool an officer, but it is only the Almighty that can 
 make an actor ! " 
 
 It naturally, therefore, excited no small surprise, not 
 unmixed with indignation, among the actors of the day, 
 when, before the Select Committee on Dramatic Litera- 
 ture in 1832 presided over by Sir E. L. Bulwer, Mr 
 Macready, who had by this time taken rank with the 
 leaders of his profession, spoke of it as one so " unrequit- 
 ing, that no person who had the power of doing anything 
 better would, unless deluded into it, take it up.'' In a 
 
104 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADT. 
 
 separate answer he disparaged it still farther, by saying, 
 " that persons who could find any other occupation would 
 not take to one on which they were dependent entirely 
 upon the humour of the puhlic." It was an ungracious 
 speech, considering that the public had been kind to him 
 to the fuU measure of his deserts. But it had a farther 
 and deeper significance, because it showed that the speaker 
 wanted the first element of greatness — a thorough faith in 
 his art, as in itself worthy, without reference to the meas- 
 ure of popular appreciation or of money value. It was 
 obvious from such a reply that Mr Macready did not view 
 his profession, as we have seen Le Kain do, en grand. 
 His individual self was more to him than his art. Its 
 followers were exposed to popular caprice. But what 
 artists are not 1 Did Gainsborough, Constable, MiiUer — 
 nay, did even Maxman — rise to theic true place in their 
 own day ? Their returns in pounds, shillings, and pence 
 were small. The artist in whose thoughts such things 
 are uppermost, may be dexterous, may be popular ] but 
 without the inspiration which seeks a vent, that will not 
 be repressed, on the canvas, in the marble, or upon the 
 stage, let the world requite him as it may, he will never 
 be great. 
 
 The volumes before us ^ are an instructive comiftentary 
 on Mr Macready's evidence in 1832. No one can read 
 them without seeing that he had no special genius, in the 
 right sense of the word, for the stage. Accident, not 
 impulse, took him there ; and great force of wiU, and a 
 determined ambition, carried him. into a conspicuous place 
 upon it, which his sound intellectual training and high 
 
 ' Macready's Reminisoencea and Selections from his Diaries. 
 Edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart., one of his executors. 2 
 Vols. London, 1875. 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 105 
 
 personal character enabled him to maintain with honour. 
 Whatever he had to do, it was his maxim to do tho- 
 roughly. The inspiration of genius was not within his 
 command ; but hard study and a certain fervour of style 
 gave to many of his impersonations something that seemed 
 to come near it. He worked at acting as he would have 
 worked at jurisprudence or theology, had circumstances 
 taken him to the Bar or to the Church. Under no con- 
 ditions would he have been content to be lost in the com- 
 mon herd of toilers in the same field. But to the artist's 
 delight in his work for its own sake, these volumes show 
 very clearly that he was a stranger. This fact, now 
 placed by them beyond mere surmise, is, to our minds, 
 the best justification of those who qualified their admira- 
 tion of his talents by denying to him the attributes of 
 an actor of the highest class. 
 
 WhUe, therefore, this book will not raise the general 
 estimate of Mr Macready as an actor, it will hardly make 
 the world think better of him as a man. Actors have an 
 evil reputation for egotism and jealousy. No one ever 
 lay more heavily under this imputation than Mr Mac- 
 ready while on the stage. "We have heard the greatest 
 comedian of his time say of him — " Macready never could 
 see any merit in any living actor in his own line, nor in 
 any actress either, imtil she was either dead or off the 
 stage." The indictment was sweeping, but this book 
 almost bears it out. 
 
 So little assured, apparently, was Mr Macready of his 
 hold on public favour, or, to use his own phrase, on " po- 
 pular caprice," that he lived in constant dread of being 
 ousted from it by some new favourite. The echo of ap- 
 plause, unless given to himself, fills him with " envious 
 and vindictive feelings." The words are his own (vol. ii. 
 
106 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 
 
 p. 62). But for Ms own confessions, as here given, the 
 extent of this weakness would have been incredible. 
 Thus, when he was in the zenith of his reputation (29th 
 August 1837), he reads in the ' Morning Herald' that Mr 
 Phelps has made a decided success. What is his com- 
 ment ? "It depressed my spirits, though perhaps it should 
 not do so. If he is greatly successful, I shall reap the 
 profits." Mr Phelps was then under engagement to ap- 
 pear in Mr Macready's company at Covent Garden. " If 
 moderately, he wiU strengthen my company ; but an 
 actor's iame and iis -dependent income is [sic) so precari- 
 ous, that werBtait at every shadow of an actor. It is an 
 unhappy life " (vol. ii. p. 88). By this rule nothing would 
 have more thoroughly embittered his existence than a 
 stage fiUed with performers of the highest stamp. No 
 generous emulation, no triumph in the general exaltation 
 of the drama, no delight in the display of genius or power 
 in others, would compensate for the comparative eclipse 
 of his own star. And yet this was the man whose highest 
 claim on the public favour was his professed desire to raise 
 and dignify the stage ! ^ 
 
 It is typical of the same morbid egotism, that even 
 when Mr Macready is chronicling in the Diaries here 
 published the production of the numerous poetical plays, 
 which were the glory of his management at Covent Gar- 
 den and Drury Lane, it is only of his own share in them 
 he speaks. No one would ever suppose that they were 
 
 ^ At the same time it is quite certain that, when off the stage, 
 and his admirable judgment allowed itself fair play, Mr Macready 
 was always ready to admit the great importance to the actor of 
 having good actors on the stage with him. To Lady Pollock he said, 
 " It is the greatest help to have a great actor by your side ; it is 
 torture to act against bad acting — to be, as it' is said, 'ill sup- 
 ported." "—Lady Pollock's 'Macready as I Knew Him,' p. 27. 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADT. 107 
 
 supported by a body of performers scarcely inferior to 
 himself, and to ■wbom, at aU events, almost as much as to 
 bimseK, their success was due. One illustration wiU suf- 
 fice. Bulwer's ' Lady of Lyons ' was produced on the 15th 
 of February 1838, with a cast not likely to be forgotten by 
 those who were present — Helen Faucit, Macready, Bartley, 
 Elton, Diddear. But aU Mr Macready has to say is : "Acted 
 Glavde Melnotte pretty well The audience felt it very 
 much, and were carried away by it, and the play in the 
 acting was completely successful : was called for." Again, 
 when the play is repeated two nights after : " Was called 
 for ; led on Miss Faucit, and was very cordially received ; " 
 as if the young actress, to whom the first success of the 
 play and its ultimate hold on the stage were mainly due, 
 had been of no account. 
 
 Li truth, Mr Macready coidd " brook no rival near the 
 throne." If the main interest of any of the new pieces 
 he produced was found on rehearsal or in performance not 
 to centre in himself, it lost its interest for him. This was 
 often alleged of him both by authors and actors ; his own 
 diaries "give it proof." Thus, when Bulwer's comedy of 
 ' Money ' is first put into his hands, he is charmed with it. 
 He reads it to the Haymarket Company (24:th October 
 1840). " It was quite successful," he notes, " with them." 
 A few days of rehearsals change the aspect of everything. 
 " As I write," he says (4th November), " doubts and mis- 
 givings rise in my mind. I have nothing great or striking 
 in situation, character, humour or passion, to develop. 
 The power of all this is thrown on Mr Strickland, and 
 partially on Mr Webster." On the 8th of December — in 
 these days a month of rehearsals was not thought too 
 much for a new play^ — the comedy was produced. By 
 
 ^ "We have had twenty rehearsals of this," said some one at 
 
108 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREAD7. 
 
 this time Mr Macready had apparently discovered that it 
 was not only Mr Strickland aaid Mr Webster who might 
 have the pull upon him — so he is " very much depressed 
 and low-spirited. . . . Acted the part of Evelyn — not 
 satisfied. I wanted lightness, self-possession, and in the 
 serious scenes, truth. I was not good ; I feel it. In the 
 last scene, Miss Faucit, as I had anticipated, had quite 
 the advantage over me. This was natural." If so, then 
 surely it was a thing to rejoice in ; and those who remem- 
 ber, how admirably all the parts of this brilliant comedy 
 were filled on its first production, wiU be surprised to find 
 that this circumstance was only a source of vexation to 
 one who, both as actor and as the trusted friend of the 
 author, might well have been glad of whatever brought 
 the merits of the play into the highest relief. 
 
 Mr Macready was always ready to urge upon the mem- 
 bers of his company that it was the actor that made the 
 part, not the part that made the actor ; and we have heard 
 him quote in society, with warm commendation, the reply 
 quoted in this book of the German actress, Schroeder, to 
 some one who remarked with surprise on her condescend- 
 ing to perform the unimportant part of Lady Capulet, the 
 night after she had taken her audience by storm as Lady 
 Macbeth. " Condescend ! " she replied, " is it not Shake- 
 speare I acted?" Constant sacrifices of this kind were 
 conceded to Mr Macready. But what was a sound rule 
 for others was apparently no rule for him. Thus, having 
 played Friar Laurence in ' Eomeo and Juliet ' one night 
 (30th April 1838), he records : "I find playing a part of 
 this sort, with no character to sustain, no effort to make, 
 
 the end of the last rehearsal of Bulwer's 'Eiohelieu.' "Then I 
 ■wish you luck at 'Vingt-et-un ' ! " said Tom Cook, the leader of the 
 orchestra. His wish was more than fulfilled. 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAOREADY. 109 
 
 no power of perceiving an impression made, to be a very 
 disagreeable and unprofitable tasJc. Having required many 
 of the actors to do what they considered beneath them, 
 perhaps it was only a just sacrifice to their opinions to 
 concede so far." How little of the Schroeder spirit is 
 here ! Lady Oapulet has not one feature of dramatic 
 interest. On the other hand, the character of Friar 
 Laurence is sketched with subtle skill, and he has at 
 least one considerable speech of great beauty. But it 
 is beneath Mr Macready's notice, because it gives no 
 scope "for perceiving the impression made," or, in plain 
 English, for what is technically called "bringing down 
 the house." 
 
 With strange inconsistency, the man to whom the 
 plaudits of an audience were as the breath of his nostrils, 
 who could do nothing without the stimulus of " perceiving 
 an impression made," affected to abhor, and even to 
 despise, the only profession in which this stimulus can be 
 had. All through this book run lamentations at the un- 
 toward fate that made him an actor. That wretched old 
 statute about "vagabonds" poisons his existence. It is 
 in vain that audiences cheer, that critics extol, that ho- 
 nours are showered upon him by statesmen and men of 
 letters as the great regenerator of the British stage. He 
 was not a gentleman by statute. "The slow unmoving 
 finger" of a purely imaginary scorn troubled his peace. 
 Nor was this all. What might he not have done at the 
 Bar, or in some other profession 1 The First Satire of 
 his favourite Horace might have taught him to cure him- 
 self betimes of that most foolish of all foolish habits, 
 which makes men sigh for some occupation other than that 
 which choice or destiny has assigned them. What a man 
 does best may be pretty safely taken to be what he is best 
 
110 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. 
 
 fitted to do. And Mr Macready did his acting so well, 
 that it may fairly be douMed whether he could have done 
 anything else better, if so welL In his boyhood he- was 
 destined for the Bar ; but, judged by his own confessions, 
 he had neither the patience, tact, nor temper, without 
 which no man need hope to make his way there. A dis- 
 position like his, so morbidly sensitive, so impatient of 
 control, so dictatorial and supercihous, would have exposed 
 him to sufferings far more acute in that career than any 
 he had to encounter on the stage, where his temper made 
 many suffer who had to bear with it, as it would have 
 been borne with nowhere else. Where else could he have 
 hoped to secure so many of the prizes for which so many , 
 excellent men have to struggle in vain t His place upon 
 the stage brought him fame, a fair fortune, troops of 
 friends in England, America, and France, among them 
 many of the choicest spirits of his time, and the honours 
 of more than one public dinner ; and yet his diaries 
 aboimd with such entries as this : " 19th February 1845. 
 — I see a life gone in an unworthy, an unrequiting pur- 
 suit. Great energy, great power of mind, ambition and 
 activity that, with discretion, might have done anything, 
 now made into a player." Or this, on the 1st July 1843, 
 when he has been to Westminster HaU to see the Exhibi- 
 tion of Cartoons : " Saw several persons that I knew, to 
 whom I did not speak, as I did not know how far they 
 might think themselves lowered in their own opinion by 
 speaking to me." And yet the same morning he had 
 breakfasted with Monckton MUnes (Lord Houghton), to 
 meet Carlyle, Bunsen, Lord Morpeth, and several other 
 people of the same class, not one of whom but esteemed 
 him, and of course treated him as they would have treated 
 any other gentleman of their acquaintance. 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. Ill 
 
 Can it be, is the question that again and again rises 
 as we read passage after passage of this kind, that Mr 
 Macready seriously meant such revelations of personal, 
 foibles, if not of something worse, to be given to the 
 public? It is conceivable that a man should turn his 
 diary into a confessional, in which to hold up in black, 
 and white before strangers' eyes his vanity, his overweening 
 estimate of his own powers and importance ; his vices of 
 temper, of envy, of jealousy, of morbid pride ; his grudges 
 at fortune ; his occasional misgivings about himself ; his 
 penitences and self-reproaches. It may perhaps be well 
 for him that he should write down there his appeals to 
 Heaven for help against these and other besetting sins. 
 But such revelations can scarcely have been intended for 
 the public eye. They are infinitely painful to those who 
 would wish to think with respect of a man, in many 
 respects so excellent and so distinguished. They teaoh 
 nothing, because they are only one evidence the more of 
 the ineradicable weaknesses and foUies even of the wise. 
 Surely, too, the taste is more than equivocal which dic- 
 tated the publication of such prayers as are here recorded, 
 for protection against the vices of an overbearing temper, 
 which, by the way, was always ready to break out with 
 fresh vigour after every smiting of the breast, and cry of 
 " Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa." From ejaculations 
 such as these one turns away, as one would from a 
 private letter left accidentally open. What can be said 
 of them but what St Beuve says of similar pious out- 
 pourings in Madame Schwetzine's 'Memoirs' — "Bh qm 
 la prikre commence, la critique litteraire expire " f 
 
 Whatever Mr Macready's injunction may have been to 
 his editor, we venture to think that Sir Frederick PoUock 
 would have better served the memory of his friend by not 
 
112 WILLIAM CHARLES MACBEADY. 
 
 giving these volumes in their present shape to the world. 
 Had he used their contents as the materials for a biography, 
 cutting remorselessly away aU that is essentially private 
 and unimportant, or needlessly communicative, enough 
 would have been left to make an amusing and instructive 
 book. If he had been a little blind to the faults of his 
 hero, so much the better ; Mr Macready's good qualities 
 would then have stood out in probably truer proportion 
 and relief. We should have thought only with pleasure 
 of the old favourite, to whom we had owed many a de- 
 lightful and instructive hour in the dreamland of the 
 theatre. At the same time we should have escaped a 
 host of details, with which the book is now weighted, of 
 where, and what, and when Mr Macready played; how 
 much a night he got ; how his Macduff at one place was 
 imbecile, his Laertes, at another, infected with the vice 
 of the Court of Denmark ; his Evadne, at a third, without 
 brains or breeding ; how much money was in the theatre 
 on one night, how little on another ; how, at one time, he 
 was called on, night after night, after the play, or how, to 
 his amazement, he was not once called on through a whole 
 engagement ; of petty squabbles, and prosy speeches — all 
 that, in a word, may be dismissed as the merest chronicling 
 of personal and theatrical small beer. Even the ' Eemi- 
 niscences,' begun by Mr Macready in 1855 and which bring 
 down his story to the end of 1826, should have been weed- 
 ed of a deal of stuff of this kind. He would indeed have 
 done more wisely, we venture to think, if, like his distin- 
 guished predecessors, he had left the story of his life alto- 
 gether in other hands. But no mercy should have been 
 shown to the subsequent diaries. All that is really valu- 
 able in them would have gone into a comparatively small 
 compass; and worked up into a compact and animated 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 113 
 
 biography, an agreeable voltiine might have been added 
 to the not too numerous list of good works that deal 
 with the history of the English stage. 
 
 "WiUiam Charles Macready was bom in London on the 
 3d of March 1793. His father, the son of a well-to-do 
 Dublin upholsterer, left the paternal business for the 
 stage, and after running the usual career in the provinces, 
 and playing for some time in London, became the mana- 
 ger of the Birmingham, Sheffield, and other theatres. He 
 wrote the successful farce of ' The Irishman in London,' 
 produced at Covent Garden in 1782, and. seems to have 
 enjoyed and merited the respect of the various towns 
 where he flourished as a manager through a long life. 
 His first wife, the mother of W. C. Macready, was also 
 on the stage — a fact of which, oddly enough, her son 
 makes no mention in his ' Eeminiscences.' She seems to 
 have been one of those mothers whose sweet influence 
 penetrates the lives of their children, and haunts them 
 like some holy presence. She died in December 1803, 
 and her son never speaks of her but with the deepest 
 reverence and devotion. Doubtless he cost her no small 
 share of anxiety, for in his childhood he was marked, to 
 use his own words, by "a most violent and self-willed 
 disposition" — an raheritance from his father, in which 
 the gentle mother must have foreseen a pregnant source 
 of future trouble. 
 
 Macready was one of six children. The family means 
 were small, the parents busy. So while little better than 
 an infant, he was got out of the way by being sent to a 
 day-school. Henceforth he says, "my childhood and 
 boyhood were all school." A preparatory school at 
 Kensington, where the pupils were arrayed " in uniform 
 
 H 
 
114 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. 
 
 of scarlet jacket, with blue or nankeen trousers," next 
 received Vn'Tn ; and from this he was removed to a school 
 ia Birmiagham, where the master, a Mr Edgell, a " violent- 
 tempered man," who was confidently believed to have for- 
 saken the tailors' shopboard for the ferule and the desk, 
 did his best to make his pupil's bad temper worse, while 
 initiating him in the mysteries of English grammar and 
 Bonnycastle's arithmetic. But the future actor was even 
 then foreshadowed in the fact, so commonly met with iu 
 the lives of players, that recitation was his forte. Milton 
 and Toung were two of his school-books. 
 
 " I had to learn by heart long extracts from them, from Aken- 
 side, Pope, and pieces from ' Enfield's Speaker ' — ^including Sterne, 
 Thomson, Keate, Shakespeare, &c., which have been of some service 
 to me in accustoming my ear to the enjoyment of the melody of 
 rhythm. To cure me of the habit of misplacing my h'a, my dear 
 mother, I remember, took especial pains ; and in teaching me 
 Dryden's ' Alexander's Feast,' the Une, as I pronounced it, ' 'Appy, 
 'appy, 'appy pair ! ' was for some time an insuperable obstacle to 
 progress." 
 
 He learned quickly, and retained what he learned. 
 Pope's ' Homer ' was got almost by heart ; and its author 
 became so great a favourite with him, that long afterwards 
 he prepared for his children, and subsequently pubhshed, 
 an expurgated edition of Pope's works. The great London 
 actors when set free by the close of the London theatrical 
 season, which was then a winter one, were available for 
 his father's theatre at Birmingham. Here in the mana- 
 ger's dressing-room he had a glimpse of King, dressed as 
 Lord Ogleby. The grand deportment and beauty of Mrs 
 Siddons were engraven on his boyish memory. The face 
 of Mr W. T. Lewis, the great comedian, also made an in- 
 delible impression on the boy; but of Mrs BiUington all 
 he could remember was the figure of a very lusty woman. 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 115 
 
 and the excitement of the audience when the orchestra 
 struck up the symphony of Ame's rattling bravura, ' The 
 Soldier Tired/ ia the opera of ' Artaxerxes.' He had the 
 much greater good fortune to catch a glimpse of Nelson 
 when, during the short peace of Amiens, the hero of the 
 Nile made a tour of several of the provincial towns — " a 
 recreation apparently innocent enough, but which was 
 harshly reflected on ia the House of Lords." 
 
 " The news of his arrival spread like wildfire, and when his inten- 
 tion of going to the theatre got wind, all who had heard of it, as 
 might have been expected, flocked there to behold, and do him 
 honour. The play was Shakespeare's ' Merry Wives of Windsor,' 
 for the benefit of a player of the name of Blissett, who had some 
 repute in the part of Falstaff. At my father's request. Lord Nelson 
 consented to bespeak for the next night the play of ' King Heniy 
 rV.,' wishing to see Blissett again in PcHstaff. The box-office was 
 Kterally besieged early the next morning, and every place soon 
 taken. At the hour of commencement, my father was waiting with 
 candles to conduct the far-famed hero through the lobby, which 
 went round the whole semicircle of the lower tier, to his box. 
 The shouts outside announced the approach of the carriage : the 
 throng was great, but being close to my father's side, I had not 
 only a perfect view of the hero's pale and interesting face, but 
 listened with such eager attention to every word he uttered, that 
 I had all he said by heart, and for months afterwards was wont to 
 be called upon to repeat ' what Lord Nelson said to your father.' 
 This was in substance to the effect that the universal esteem in 
 which his, my father's, character was held in the town made it a 
 pleasure and a duty to render him any assistance. 
 
 " Nothing of course passed unnoticed by my boyish enthusiasm : 
 the right-arm empty sleeve attached to his breast, the orders upon 
 it, a sight to me so novel and remarkable ; but the melancholy 
 expression of his countenance and the extremely mild and gentle 
 tones of his voice impressed me most sensibly. They were indeed 
 for a life's remembrance. When with Lady Hamilton and Dr Nel- 
 son he entered his box, the uproar of the house was deafening, and 
 seemed as if it would know no end. The play was at length suffered 
 to proceed, after which was a sort of divertisement in honour of the 
 
116 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 
 
 illustrious visitor, from one song of which I can even now recollect 
 one couplet ! Oh sacred Nine, forgive me while I quote it ! 
 
 ' We'll shake hands, and be friends ; if they won't, why, what then ! 
 We'll send our hrave Nelson to thrash 'em again. 
 
 Derry down, ' &o. 
 
 The crowded house was frantic in its applause at this sublime 
 effusion. Lady Hamilton, laughing loud and without stint, clapped 
 with uplifted hands and aU her heart, and kicked with her heels 
 against the footboard of the seat ; while Nelson, placidly and with 
 his mournful look (perhaps in pity for the poet),' bowed repeatedly 
 to the oft-repeated cheers. Next day my father called at the hotel 
 to thank his Lordship, when Nelson presented him with what he 
 intended to be the cost of his box, wrapped in paper, regretting 
 that his ability to testify his respect for my father was so much 
 below his will. My father never told me the amount, but pur- 
 chased with it a piece of plate that he retained to his death in 
 memory of the donor. I should not omit to mention that in the 
 hall of the hotel were several sailors of Nelson's ship wanting to 
 see him, to each of whom the great admiral spoke in the most 
 affable manner, inquiringly and kindly, as he passed through to 
 his carriage, and left them, I believe, some tokens of his remem- 
 brance." 
 
 One of the elder Macready's theatres was that of Boltoii- 
 le-Moors, which in those days was regarded as a semi-bar- 
 barous place — not lighted, the dialect uncouth, the artisans 
 given to fighting, and to winding up a set-to by a playful 
 method of adjustment called "purring," in which the 
 combatant, when his adversary was down, kicked him on 
 the head with his wooden-soled shoe, — a tradition of those 
 heroic ages which Liverpool has subsequently reduced to 
 practical perfection. An incident recorded of Mr Mac- 
 ready's visit to this place is characteristic of the loyalty, 
 the almost family tie, which then bound the members of 
 
 * Surely not. The lines had the right ring in them, — ^the faith 
 in their hero— their faith in themselves, which carried the British 
 nation through the fiery ordeal of that time, 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. 117 
 
 a theatrical company together. The great London man- 
 ager, George Colman the younger, struck hy the perform- 
 ance of three of Mr Macready's actors in his own play of 
 ' John Bull,' offered them high terms to go to his theatre 
 in the Haymarket, and they resisted the temptation. 
 "My father stood on his dignity, and not haviag been 
 first applied to, refused his permission, without which 
 they all most loyally refused to treat." We get what may 
 be almost called old-world glances of traTeUing, and of 
 what were then mere hamlets, and are now flourishing 
 towns, ia the accounts of the boy's visits to Dubliu ; to 
 Holywell, with St Winifred's Spring, where " the crutches 
 suspended as votive offerings beneath the groined arches 
 of the roof above it," testified to the miraculous power of 
 its waters ; to Chester, then, as now, swarming in the race- 
 week j to Leamington, "then a small village, consisting 
 only of a few thatched houses, not one tiled or slated, the 
 BowUng-Green Inn being the only one where very mod- 
 erate accommodation could be procured." The failing 
 health of Macready's- mother drew her to the waters of 
 Leamiagton. It was there he saw her last, when he set 
 out with his father for Eugby, with aU a boy's trepidations 
 and reluctance to face the unknown future of a great pub- 
 lic school He fell there as fag under a very harsh mas- 
 ter, " a young Irishman of the name of Eidge," and wrote 
 home such piteous letters that his father more than once 
 thought of sending for him. The mother, with a wiser 
 sagacity, prevented this. Her boy was no worse off 
 than other boys, and he had a kind cousin in Mr 
 Birch, one of the masters, who would not suffer him to 
 be ill-treated. So there he remained — making a course 
 through the school rapid beyond precedent, and attain- 
 ing the fifth form in three years, " from which advance 
 
118 WILLIAM CHARLES MA OREAD Y. 
 
 he began to be sensible of a certain enjoyment of Ms 
 position.'' 
 
 It was one of the amusements of the bigger boys at 
 Eugby to get up plays, and they were not likely to over- 
 look the fact that the father of one of their school-fellows 
 had a theatre no farther off than Birmingham. Here was 
 an easy way to get at play-books and dresses, and these 
 were readily furnished to them on the appKcation of 
 the manager's son. Some requital for such a service was 
 due even to an under schoolboy. It was given first 
 in the distinguished post of prompter. Higher honours 
 followed ; and Dame Ashfield in ' Speed the Plough,' Mrs 
 Brulgrvddery in ' John BuU,' the Jew in Dibdin's ' School 
 for Prejudice,' and Briefwit in the farce of ' Weathercock,' 
 a tolerably varied list, were the maiden efforts of the future 
 tragedian. 
 
 Other excitements varied the school routine. Nothing 
 was talked of but Buonaparte and invasion. The older 
 boys went through regular drill after school-hours with 
 heavy wooden broadswords, "their blue coats cuffed 
 and collared with scarlet." These were also the days 
 of one of the maddest frenzies that ever possessed the 
 play-going public. It was only in August 1874 that its 
 object died at the ripe age of eighty-three, " a prosperous 
 gentleman." WilHam Henry West Betty, the young 
 Eoscius, "a miracle of beauty, grace, and genius," as 
 Macready calls him, and still a mere boy, was the theme 
 of aU discourse. 
 
 " My father had brought him to England, and his first engage- 
 ment was at Birmingham, where crowded houses applauded his 
 surprising powers to the very echo. In London, at both Drury 
 Lane and Covent Garden theatres, and throughout the whole 
 country, ' the young Eoscius ' became a rage ; and in the fwore of 
 public admiration the invasion ceased to be spoken of. He acted 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 119 
 
 two nights at Leicester ; and on a half -holiday, my cousin Birch 
 having sent a note to excuse me and hia eldest son from the after- 
 noon's, calliags-over, at my father's request Tom Birch and myself 
 were smuggled into ' a chaise and reached Leicester in time for the 
 playi ' Richard IIL' The house was crowded — John Kemble and 
 H. Han:is, son of the patentee of Covent Garden, sat in the stage- 
 box immediately behind us. I remember John Kemble's handker- 
 chief, strongly scented of lavender, and his observation, in a very 
 compassionate tone, ' Poor boy ! he is very hoarse.' I could form 
 little judgment of the performance, which excited universal en- 
 thusiasm, and in the tempest of which we were of course borne 
 along. 
 
 "... After the play, Tom Birch and myself got into our chaise, 
 and travelling through the night reached Rugby in good time for 
 ' first lesson ' in the morning." 
 
 During subsequent engagements with the elder Mac- 
 ready, the boys became playfellows ; " and off the stage,'' 
 we are told, " W. H. Betty was a boy with boys, as full 
 of spirits, fun, and mischief as any of his companions, 
 though caressed, fondled, and idolised by peeresses, 
 and actually besieged for a mere glimpse of him by 
 crowds at the door of his hotel." This popularity, 
 like all similar fashionable crazes, was doomed to a 
 sudden extinction. "When he had reached manhood, the 
 public turned a cold ear to him, and, as Macready thinks, 
 unjustly. 
 
 "It seemed," he says, "as if the public resented on the grown 
 man the extravagance of the idolatry they had blindly lavished on 
 the boy.'' His level speaking was not agreeable. " A sort of sing- 
 song and a catch in his voice suggested the delivery of words 
 learned by heart, not flowing from the impulse or necessity of 
 the occasion ; but when warmed into passion he became pos- 
 sessed with the spirit of the scene, and in vritnessing, as I have 
 done, his illustration of passages with all the originality and fire of 
 genius, the conviction was pressed upon me that it he had not 
 had to his prejudice the comparison of his boyish triumphs, and 
 the faulty manner derived from frequent careless repetition, he 
 
120 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. 
 
 would have maintained a distinguished position in his maturer 
 years." 
 
 In 1807, Dr Wooll succeeded to the head-mastership of 
 Rughy. He was too indulgent ; and there being no longer 
 the same pressure on his industry as under WooU's prede- 
 cessor, Dr Inglis, young Macready for a time fell back in 
 his studies. Happily, he pulled up in time ; and to re- 
 trieve what he had lost, would get out of bed when the 
 house was asleep, hang up clothes against the windows to 
 hide his light, and, with the help of strong tea, sit up to a 
 late hour working at his 'Homer' or 'VirgU.' Dr "WooU 
 varied the exercises of the elder boys by introducing the 
 composition of English verses ; and in addition to the 
 prizes for these and Latin verse, gave prizes for speaking, 
 as a test of the elocutionary powers of the fifth and sixth 
 forms. Young Macready had clearly struck him as a de- 
 claimer above the average. He assigned the boy the closet 
 scene in ' Hamlet ' for the public declamation ; and in 
 answer to his remonstrance on the score of its difficulty, 
 silenced him by saying — " If I had not intended you to 
 do something extraordinary, I should not have taken you 
 out of your place." "Eobinson, afterwards Master of the 
 Temple,' Lord Hatherton (nS Walhouse), and the late Sir 
 G. Eicketts," Mr Macready notes, " were the best speak- 
 ers." But the comments made at the time on one of the 
 cards, by an old gentleman who was present at the repre- 
 sentation on the second Tuesday in June 1808, quoted by 
 his editor, while they confirm the excellence of Eobinson 
 and Eicketts, place Macready quite on a level with them. 
 They are " excellent," " very well," " very excellent," but 
 his share in the entertainment is pronounced to be " sur- 
 prisingly well indeed." In Dr "WooU's time the school- 
 plays were got up " in a more expensive style " than in his 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. 121 
 
 predecessor's, and " witli great completeness." Audiences 
 from the town and neighbourhood were iavited. The 
 young actors flew at high game. Dr Young's tragedy of 
 ' The Eevenge,' with the farce of ' Two Strings ' to your 
 Bow,' made a strong bill. Zanga and Lazaiillo, the 
 leading parts, fell to Macready. 
 
 " The suocesa was great : we were all much applauded, and I re- 
 member the remark of a Mr Caldecot, reported to me — ' I should 
 be uneasy if I saw a son of mine play so well.' I had, however, no 
 thought of this but as an amusement ; and my pride would have 
 been wounded if a suspicion had been hinted that I could regard it 
 in any other light. The half-year closed with speeches before an 
 auditory consisting only of the school and the gentry of the town. 
 My place was the last among the speakers, and I can now remember 
 the inward elation I felt in marking, as I slowly rose up, the deep 
 and instant hush that went through the whole assembly ; I recol- 
 lect the conscious pride I felt, as the creaking of my shoes came 
 audibly to my ears, whilst I deliberately advanced to my place in 
 the centre of the school. My speech was the oration of Titus Quin- 
 tius, translated from Livy. It was a little triumph in its way, but 
 the last I was doomed to obtain in dear old Rugby." 
 
 Another reminiscence, which falls within this period, is 
 not uninteresting. In passing through Birmingham, Mac- 
 ready went to the theatre, which had by this time fallen 
 into other hands, his father having left it for Manchester. 
 The after-piece was a serious pantomime, founded on Monk 
 Lewis's ballad of ' Alonza and Imogene.' The manager's 
 wife, a lady cast in " nature's amplest mould," was the 
 fair Imogene. 
 
 " As if in studied contrast to this enormous ' hill of flesh,' a little 
 mean-looking man, in a shabby green satin dress (I remember him 
 well), appeared as the hero, Alonzo the Brave. It was so ridiculous 
 that the only impression I carried away was that the hero and hero- 
 ine were the worst in the piece. How little did I know, or could 
 guess, that under that shabby greeti satin dress was hidden one of 
 the most extraordinary theatrical geniuses that have ever illustrated 
 
122 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADT. 
 
 the dramatic poetry of England ! When, some years afterwards, 
 public enthusiasm was excited to the highest pitch by the appear- 
 ance at Drury Lane of an actor of the name of Kean, my astonish- 
 inent may easily be conceived on discovering that the little insig- 
 nificant Alonzo the Brave was the grandly impassioned personator 
 of Othello, Richard, and Shyloch I " 
 
 On young Macready's return home for the holidays of 
 the winter 1808-9, it was to find his father ruined. The 
 Manchester theatre had proved a failure, and had absorbed 
 the little property which the elder Macready had accumu- 
 lated in previous years of successful management in Bir- 
 mingham, Sheffield, Newcastle, and elsewhere, and out of 
 which he had sustained the very considerable expenses of 
 ius son at Eugby. An exhibition at Oxford, a degree, 
 and a call to the Bar, had till then been the boy's ambi- 
 tion. But this dream was all at once rudely dispelled. 
 Even the last half-year's bills at Eugby were unpaid. Mr 
 Birch, his kind cousin there, at once relieved him of this 
 difiSculty ; but his father was, in fact, bankrupt, and a re- 
 turn to Eugby was impossible. Mr Macready writes, in 
 a mysterious way, of " a lady then staying in our house," 
 who had made mischief between his father and himseK, 
 and from whom he first learned the state of his father's 
 affairs. From her the suggestion came at the same time 
 that he should go on the stage. 
 
 " Would not my doing so relieve my father from farther expense 
 of my education ? My expectations did not go beyond this result. 
 The extravagant views of my counsellor looked to another young 
 Roscius fu/rore (I being not yet sixteen years of age), and speculated 
 on a rapid fortune." 
 
 When he spoke to his father, it was to teU him his 
 mind was made up to go on the stage. His father, who 
 by this time was well aware of the obstinacy of his son's 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. 123 
 
 temper, seems to have dealt quite fairly with him. " It 
 had been the wish of his life," he said, " to see me at the 
 Bar ; but if it was my real wish to go upon the stage, it 
 would be useless for him to oppose it." To the Zanga of 
 Eugby school the stage was probably not without allure- 
 ments. In any case, he went there of his own choice, 
 swayed, perhaps, by the thought that he was doing some- 
 thing noble ia sacrificing to filial duty his dreams of foren- 
 sic distinction. If he really had within him the qualities 
 to make a great lawyer, all the odds are against his having 
 given up his first ambition. Men have fought their way 
 to the fiirst rank at the Bar under heavier disadvantages. 
 At once he set about preparing himself for his future voca- 
 tion, taking lessons ia fencing, and getting by heart the 
 words of the youthful characters then in vogue. Mean- 
 while his classics were not forgotten, and this, with the 
 assistance which he gave his father in the business of his 
 theatre, kept hiTn fully employed. Of his father as an 
 instructor for his future work he speaks slightingly. He 
 had no originality himself. Macklin and Henderson, the 
 heroes of his youth, John Kemble, and even Pope and 
 Holman, were his ideals. Consequently he referred al- 
 ways to what he had seen, and cited the manner in which 
 past celebrities would deliver particular passages. A worse 
 monitor for a yoimg man, who was not strong enough to 
 think for himself, and find his own modes of expression, 
 could not well be conceived. Every period has its style ; 
 so has every genuine artist ; neither will fit another age 
 or another individuaL So we are not surprised to hear 
 that Macready " in after-life had the difficult task of un- 
 learning much that was impressed upon him in his boyish 
 days." 
 
 Worse for a youth afflicted with a fierce and imperious 
 
124: WILLIAM CHAELES MAGREADT. 
 
 temper was the circuinstance that, as his father was forced 
 to keep out of the way to avoid arrest, he had to carry on 
 the business of his theatres for him. Managers are by 
 necessity despots. How hurtful to one, already too self- 
 willed, must it have been to find himself ia a position 
 where he could lay down the law on all subjects within a 
 little kingdom of his own ! The entire management de- 
 volved on him at Newcastle, where he remained for two 
 months, " not deriving much advantage, though some ex- 
 perience, from the society of some of the players, and fall- 
 ing desperately in love with one of the actresses — ^no im- 
 probable consequence of the unguarded situation of a boy 
 of sixteen." Availing himself of the invitation of his 
 father's friend, Fawcett, one of the best comedians of the 
 day, he came to London in the end of 1809, to see the 
 best actors, and to learn fencing from the best masters. 
 It was the period of the 0. P. riots at Covent Garden 
 Theatre. His father had commanded him not to see John 
 Kemble, for fear of his becoming an imitator. The in- 
 junction was superfluous, for neither Kemble nor his sister, 
 Mrs Siddons, would be listened to. After three or four 
 weeks of unbroken riot, the house would be tolerably quiet 
 during the first three acts of the play, until the influx of 
 brawlers at second price turned the theatre into a bear- 
 garden. 
 
 During this time Macready reports that he had the 
 satisfaction of seeing Cooke, Young, C. Kemble, Munden, 
 Fawcett, Emery, Liston, and other distinguished perform- 
 ers. It was his business to see as much good acting as he 
 could, and he did see it. Among other things, he saw the 
 fine powers of Elliston — who had taken the Surrey Theatre, 
 where the law allowed him to perform only burlettas — 
 wasted on ' Macbeth,' performed as a pantomime, and on 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 125 
 
 Oaptain Macheath, with Gay's pithy prose thrown into 
 jingling rhyme. The first public experiment in the use 
 of gas also attracted his notice, in the shape of a star he- 
 fore a house in PaU Mall, " which relighted itself as the 
 wind every now and then blew out some of its jets." 
 
 This visit over, young Macready had to begin the work 
 of life in earnest. The father was in Lancaster Castle, a 
 prisoner for debt, until set free by the proceedings in 
 bankruptcy, and the task of working his company and 
 keeping it together was undertaken by his son. At Ches- 
 ter the struggle began against heavy odds, but the young 
 manager contrived to. make both ends meet. Newcastle, 
 a haven of greater promise, did not disappoint him. His 
 company was an unusually good one, with Conway, then 
 young, handsome, ardent, at its head. All went so well 
 in his hands, that the son was able to remit to his father 
 three pounds a-week " in his melancholy duress at Lan- 
 caster," and to carry on his theatre with credit. Before 
 the season closed his father obtained his release, his certi- 
 ficate of bankruptcy having been granted under circum- 
 stances which speak volumes for his integrity, and which 
 his son records with an honourable pride. 
 
 These were good days for the public of the smaller 
 towns — good also for the actors themselves, and for the 
 drama — ^by keeping up a supply of intelligent, weU-trained, 
 and respectable performers. 
 
 " At that time," Mr Macready says, " a theatre was considered 
 indispensable in towns of very scanty populations. The prices of 
 admission varied from 5s., 4b., or Ss. to boxes ; 2s. 6d. or 2b. to pit ; 
 and Is. to gallery. A sufficient number of theatres were united in 
 what was called a circuit, to occupy a company during the whole 
 year, so that a respectable player could calculate upon his weekly 
 salary, without default, from year's end to year's end ; and the cir- 
 cuits, such as those of Norwich, York, Bath and Bristol, Exeter, 
 
126 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 
 
 Salisbury, Kent, Manchester, Birmingham, &c., with incomes rising 
 from £70 to £300 per annum, would be a sort of home to him, so 
 long as his conduct and industry maintained his favour with hia 
 audiences. But beyond that, the regularity of rehearsal and the 
 attention paid to the production of plays, most of which came 
 under the class of the ' regular drama,' made a sort of school for 
 him in the repetition of his characters and the criticism of his audi- 
 tors, from his proficiency in which he looked to Covent Garden or 
 Drury Lane as the goal of his exertions. For instance, from Exeter 
 came Kean ; from Dublin Miss O'Neill, Conway, K. Jones, Lewis, 
 W. Farren ; from York Fawcett, C. Matthews, Emery, Harley, J, 
 Kemble. The distance from London was then so great, and the 
 expense and fatigue of travelling was such as to make a journey 
 then more rare ; and the larger towns, as York, Newcastle, Bath, 
 Exeter, Norwich, were centres or capitals_ of provincial circles, to 
 which the county families resorted for the winter season, or 
 crowded to the public weeks of races and assizes, when the assem- 
 bly-rooms and the theatres were the places of fashionable meeting." 
 
 Wien the elder Macready resumed the direction of his 
 theatre, his son, though relieved from business responsi- 
 bilities, continued to superintend the rehearsals ; and in 
 the getting up of the melodramas, pantomimes, &c., he 
 " was the instructor of the performers.'' No wonder he 
 fell into the habit of playing the schoolmaster to aU about 
 him, which made him in after-years so obnoxious to his 
 fellows. The time for his own debut had now arrived. 
 It was made in the character of Romeo at Birmingham, 
 where his father had again become manager. What he 
 tells of his feelings on the occasion confirms our convic- 
 tion, that inclination, quite as much as duty, sent him 
 upon the stage. 
 
 "The emotions I experienced on first crossing the stage, and 
 coming forward in face of the lights and the applauding audience, 
 were almost overpowering. There was a mist before my eyes. I 
 seemed to see nothing of the dazzling scene before me, and for some 
 time I was like an automaton moving in certain defined limits. I 
 went mechanically through the variations in which I had drilled 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 127 
 
 myself, and it was not until the plaudits of the audience awoke 
 me from the kind of waking dream in which I seemed to be mov- 
 ing, that I gained my self-possession, and really entered into the 
 spirit of the character, and, I may say, felt the. passion I was to 
 represent. Every round of applause acted like inspiration on me : 
 I ' trod on air,' became another being, or a happier self ; and when 
 the curtain fell at the conclusion of the play, and the intimate 
 friends and performers crowded on the stage to raise up the Juliet 
 and myself, shaking my hands with fervent congratulations, a lady 
 asked me, ' Well, sir, how do you feel now ? ' my boyish answer 
 was without disguise, ' I feel as if I should like to act it all over 
 again.' " 
 
 Once launched in the profession, Macready worked at it 
 with enthusiasm. Not content with the regular work of 
 the week, he used to lock himself into the theatre after 
 morning service on the Sundays, and pace the stage ia 
 every direction to give himself ease, and become familiar 
 in his deportment with exits and entrances, and with 
 every variety of gesture and attitude. " My characters," 
 he adds, " were aU acted over and over, and speeches 
 recited, tiU, tired out, I was glad to breathe the fresh air 
 again. This was for several years a custom with me.'' 
 The manager's son was sure to get quite his share of aU 
 the best parts, as well as of the public favour ; and so 
 early as 1811 we find him, while still only eighteen, risk- 
 ing his honours at Newcastle in the part of Hamlet. It 
 was a success. AU Hamlets are so, more or less. His 
 remarks on the occasion are much to the purpose. 
 
 "The critic who had made a study of this masterpiece would 
 predict with confidence a failure in such an experiment, but he 
 would not have taken into account the support to the young aspir- 
 ant supplied by the genius of the poet. There is an interest so 
 deep and thrilling in the story, such power in the situations, and 
 such a charm in the language, that with an actor possessed of 
 energy, a tolerable elocution, and some grace of deportment, the 
 character will sufficiently interpret itself to the majority of an au- 
 
128 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREAD7. 
 
 dience to win for its representative, from their delight, the reward 
 of applause really due to the poet's excellence, A total failure in 
 Hamlet is of rare occurrence. . . . ' There be players, that I have 
 seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly,' in the charac- 
 ter, who could as soon explain and reconcile its seeming inconsist- 
 encies, as translate a page of Sanscrit. Dr Johnson, who so lucidly 
 describes the mind of Polonius, has left us in his observations clear 
 proof that he did not understand that of Hamlet ; and audiences 
 have been known to cheer innovations and traps for applause, which 
 the following words of the text have shown to be at utter variance 
 wjth the author's intention ! My crude essay, like those of many 
 others, was pronounced a success ; but the probing inquiry and 
 laborious study of my after-life have manifested to me how Uttle 
 was due to my own skill in that early personation." 
 
 If we are to believe Mr Maoready's ' Eeminisoences,' 
 amidst all the scenic triumphs of his youth, as well as of a 
 later day, he never thoroughly enjoyed his work. About 
 this time he encounters Mrs Whitlock, one o| John Kem- 
 ble's sisters, who, after making a comfortable indepen- 
 dence in America, had settled with her husband in New- 
 castle. With something of the Kemble manner, she had 
 none of the fanuly genius. She was old and stout, but 
 her love of acting was so great as to blind her to her 
 disqualifications for the heroines of tragedy, 
 
 " She has told me," says Macready, " that when on the stage she 
 felt like a being of another world ! How often have I envied in 
 others, less fortunate than myself in public favour, this passionate 
 devotion to the stage 1 To myself its drawbactks were ever preamt." 
 
 If this were really the case, it is nothing short of a 
 miracle that Macready ever rose to the eminence he did, 
 and his admirers, who believed the stage owed him so 
 much, both as manager and actor, may complain that he 
 kept up the delusion of his interest in the drama so weE 
 But for ourselves we regard this as only one out of many 
 splenetic outbursts against an art which he had seen fall, 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADT. 129 
 
 during his later years, for the most part into incapable 
 hands, coloured by that soreness about the actor's unde- 
 fined social status which grew with time into a disease 
 with him. The drawbacks of the stage could have been 
 little present to his mind when, in 1812, he found himself 
 cast to play with Mrs Siddons, as she took Newcastle on 
 her way to London, where she was about to take her leave 
 of the stage. The plays were 'The Gamester' and 
 'Douglas.' Young Norval in the latter was one of Mac- 
 ready's favourite parts; but he might well have been 
 appalled, as he says he was, at the thought of playing 
 Beverley, and for the first time, to the Mrs Beverley of the 
 great actress. It was one of her greatest parts. Leigh 
 Hunt, writing in 1807, classes it with her Lady Macbeth. 
 He cites — " The bewildered melancholy of Lady Macbeth 
 walking in her sleep, or the widow's mute stare of per- 
 fected misery by the corpse of the gamester Beverley, two 
 of the sublimest pieces of acting on the English stage," as 
 the highest illustration of Mrs Siddons' power in the 
 natural expression of profound emotion, which he con- 
 sidered to be " the result of genius rather than of grave 
 study." 
 
 Mr Macready writes, as he always spoke, of Mrs Siddons 
 with enthusiasm. With fear and trembling he was sent 
 by his father to her hotel to rehearse his scenes with her. 
 " I hope, Mr Macready," was her good-natured salutation 
 to him, "you have brought some hartshorn and water 
 with you, as I am told you are terribly frightened at me." 
 Some further remarks she made about his being a very 
 young husband. Had he not been the manager's son, the 
 remark would in all likelihood have been more pointed 
 than it was. It could not have been pleasant for an 
 actress of her mature and stately proportions to find her- 
 
130 WILLIAM CHARLES MAOREADT. 
 
 self played to by a comparative boy. The business of the 
 morning over, he took his leave with fear and trembling 
 to steady his nerves for the coming night. He got through 
 his first scene with applause. In the next, his first with 
 Mrs Beverley, he was so overcome by fear that his memory 
 failed him, and he stood bewildered. "Mrs Siddons 
 kindly whispered the word to me (which I never could 
 take from the prompter), and the scene proceeded." 
 
 " What eulogy can do justice to her personations ? . . . Will any 
 verbal account of the most striking features of 'the human face 
 divine ' convey a distinct portraiture of the individual ? How much 
 less can any force of description imprint on the imagination the 
 sudden but thrilling effects of tone or look, of port or gesture, or 
 even of the silence so often significative in the development of 
 human passion ! . . . I wiU not presume to catalogue the merits of 
 this unrivalled artist, but may point out, as a guide to others, one 
 great excellence that distinguished all her personations. This was 
 the unity of design, the just relation of all parts to the whole, that 
 made us forget the actress in the character she assumed. Through- 
 out the tragedy of ' The Gamester ' devotion to her husband stood 
 out as the mainspring of her actions, the ruling passion of her 
 being ; apparent when reduced to poverty in her graceful and 
 cheerful submission to the lot to which his vice has subjected her, 
 in her fond excuses of his ruinous weakness, in her conciliating 
 expostulations with his angry impatience, in her indignant repulse 
 of StuJcdy's advances, when in the awful dignity of outraged virtue 
 she imprecates the vengeance of Heaven upon his guilty head. The 
 climax to her sorrows and sufferings was in the dungeon, when on 
 her knees, holding her dying husband, he dropped lifeless from her 
 arms. Her glaring eyes were fixed in stony blankness on his face ; 
 the powers of life seemed suspended in her ; her sister and Lewson 
 gently raised her, and slowly led her unresisting from the body, her 
 gaze never for an instant averted from it ; when they reached the 
 prison door she stopped, as if awakened from a trance, uttered a 
 shriek of agony that would have pierced the hardest heart, and, 
 rushing from them, flung herself as if for union in death, on the 
 prostrate form before her. 
 
 " She stood alone on her height of excellence. Her acting was 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 131 
 
 perfection ; and as I recall it, I do not wonder, novice as I was, at 
 my perturbation when on the stage with her. But in the progress 
 of the play I gradually regained more and more my self-possession, 
 and in the last scene, as she stood by the side wing waiting for the 
 cue of her entrance, on my utterance of the words, ' My wife and 
 sister ! well — well ! there is but one pang more, and then farewell 
 world ! ' she raised her hands, clapping loudly, and calling out, 
 ' Bravo, sir, bravo ! ' in sight of part of the audience, who joined in 
 her applause." 
 
 This incident of the " Bravo, sir, bravo ! " comes with a 
 chilling effect after so much to make us think that the 
 actress was lost in her part. It might at least have been 
 kept out of sight of the audience, to whose tearful sym- 
 pathies she was the next moment to make so terrible an 
 appeal. ' Douglas ' went off without a hitch. The great 
 lady sent for her Norval after the play, and in her 
 grandiose manner gave him some excellent advice. 
 
 "'You are in the right way,' she said, 'but remember what I 
 say, — study, study, study, and do not marry till you are thirty. I 
 remember what it was to be obliged to study at nearly your age 
 with a young family about me. Beware of that ; keep your mind 
 on your art, do not remit your study, and you are certain to 
 succeed. . . . God bless you ! ' Her words lived with me, and 
 often in moments of despondency have come to cheer me. Her 
 acting was a revelation to me, which ever after had its influence on 
 me in the study of my art. Ease, grace, untiring energy through, 
 aU the variations of hmnan passion, blended into that grand and 
 massive style, had been with her the result of patient application." 
 
 The words in italics are surely the mere hyperbole of 
 praise. Mrs Siddons was no doubt supreme within her 
 range; but her range was narrow. She had dignity, 
 grandeur, force — tenderness also in many of its phases. 
 Constanee, Queen Katharine, Lady Macbeth, Volumnia, 
 and characters of the same class were within her means, 
 physical and mental But there was a wide sweep of 
 
132 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADT. 
 
 passion outside these limits whicli she could not reach. 
 Of humour, the primary requisite for the treatment of 
 Shakespeare, she was devoid; and in the portrayal of 
 playful affection, and of what Leigh Hunt calls the 
 "amatory pathetic," she whoUy failed. She could, as 
 Hunt says, "overpower, astonish, affect, hut she could 
 not win." What else might be expected from her " grand 
 and massive style ? " From her acting, Macready says he 
 received a great lesson. "Where opportunity presented 
 itself," he says, " she never failed to bring out the passion 
 of the scene and the meaning of the poet by gesture and 
 action — more powerfully, I am convinced, than he origin- 
 ally conceived it." This is the special gift of the great 
 actor. As Voltaire said to Brizard, of the ComMie Fran- 
 gaise, " Vous m'avez fait voir, dans le r6Ie de Brutus, des 
 beautes que je n'avais pas aperjues en le composant." Mrs 
 Siddons had another great merit, which Charles Young 
 tersely expressed by saying, " She never indulged in 
 imagination at the expense of truth." Macready says the 
 same thing in a more roundabout way. 
 
 "In giving life, and, as it were, reality to the character she 
 represented, she never resorted to trick, or introduced what actors 
 call 'business,' frequently inappropriate, and resulting from the 
 want of intelligence to penetrate the depth of the emotions to be 
 portrayed." 
 
 Of Mrs Jordan, whom he acted with soon afterwards at 
 Leicester, Mr Macready gives us some pleasant glimpses. 
 The gayest, merriest, most spontaneous of actresses, she 
 left no point unstudied, spared no pains to ensure her 
 effects. 
 
 " At rehearsal," he says, " I remarked, as I watched this charming 
 actress intently through her first scene, how minute and how par- 
 ticular her directions were ; nor would she be satisfied, till by repe- 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MA0READ7. 133 
 
 tition she had seen the business executed exactly to her wish. The 
 moving picture, the very life of the scene, was perfect in her mind, 
 and she transferred it in all its earnestness to every movement on 
 the stage. With a spirit of fun that would have outlaughed Puck 
 himself, there was a discrimination, an identity with her character, 
 an artistic arrangement of the scene that made all appear spon- 
 taneous and accidental, though elaborated with the greatest care. 
 Her voice was one of the most melodious I ever heard ; . . . and 
 who that once heard that laugh of hers could ever forget it ? . . . 
 so rich, so apparently irrepressible, so delioiously self-enjoying, as 
 to be at all times irresistible." 
 
 Wliat this laugh was, and the secret of its charm, 
 Leigh Hunt has told ns in even happier language : — 
 
 " Her laughter is the happiest and most natural on the stage. 
 ... It intermingles itself with her words, as fresh ideas afford 
 her fresh merriment ; she does not so much indulge as she seems 
 unable to help it ; it increases, it lessens with her fancy, and when 
 you expect it no longer, according to the usual habit of the stage, 
 it sparkles forth at little intervals, as recollection revives it, like 
 Same from haK-smothered embers. This is the laughter of the 
 feelings ; and it is this predominance of the heart in all she says 
 and does that renders her the most delightful actress in the Donna 
 Tiolamte of the 'Wonder,' and the Clara of 'Matrimony,' and in 
 twenty other characters which ought to be more lady-like than 
 she can make them, and which acquire a, better gentility with 
 others. " 
 
 Oh for the return of such acting and such criticism ! 
 Macready's ambition carried him, even in these salad 
 days, into 'Eichard III.,' the Antony of 'Antony and 
 Cleopatra,' for neither of which he owns he was at aU 
 fitted. He even undertook the revival of ' Eichard II.,' 
 and produced it at Leicester, with himself as Richard. 
 Since Shakespeare's days it had not been seen upon 
 the stage. It was a complete success, and proved 
 the attraction of the season. In later years it was one 
 of his favourite parts ; Edmund Kean also numbered it 
 
134 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 
 
 on his list; but th.e play has never taken hold of the 
 stage. Why this is so, Mr Macready states, with the 
 acuteness which, as a rule, distinguishes his criticisms on 
 plays and books : — 
 
 " It has often excited the wonder of Shakespearian critics, that 
 it should have lain so long neglected, and still should enjoy so 
 little popularity. The passion of its language and the beauty 
 of its poetry (considered apart from effect in representation) have 
 dazzled its readers, and blinded them to the absence of any marked 
 idiosyncrasy in the persons of the drama, and to the want of strong 
 purpose in any of them. Not one does anything to cause a result. 
 All seem floated along on the tides of circumstance. Kothing has 
 its source in premeditation. Riehard's acts are those of idle, al- 
 most childish, levity, wanton caprice, or unreflecting injustice. He 
 is alternately confidently boastful and pusiUanimously despondent. 
 His extravagant persuasions of kingly inviolability, and of heaven- 
 ly interposition in his behalf, meet with no response in the sym- 
 pathies of an audience. His grief is that of a spoiled, passionate 
 boy." 
 
 After illustrating his proposition in detail, he pro- 
 ceeds : — 
 
 " In all the greater plays of Shakespeare, purpose and will, the 
 general foundations of character, are the engines which set action 
 at work. In 'King Eichard II.' we look for these in vain. 
 Macbeth, OtheUo, logo, Hamlet, Richard III,, &e., both think and 
 do ; but Richard II. , Bolimghroke, Tork, and the rest, though 
 they talk so weU, do little else than talk : nor can all the charm 
 of composition redeem, in a dramatic point of view, the weakness 
 resulting from this accident in a play's construction. In none 
 of his personations did the late Edmund Kean display more 
 masterly elocution than in the third act of ' Eichard II. ' ; but 
 the admiration he excited could not maintain a place for the 
 work in the list of acting plays among the favourite dramas of 
 Shakespeare. " 
 
 In 1813, the elder Macready having become the tenant 
 of the Glasgow and Dumfries theatres, his son made 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 135 
 
 acquaintance with a fresh pubKc, and laid the foundation 
 of his popularity ia the west of Scotland. He remem- 
 bered with peculiar satisfaction the knot of playgoers who 
 clustered in comers of the Glasgow pit, and by their 
 murmurs of approval encouraged the young actor with 
 the behef that they were giviag their thoughts to what 
 was going on before them. The theatre was the largest 
 out of the metropolis ; and the necessity which he felt 
 himself under, of more careful study and practice to 
 satisfy the demands of an audience critical as well as 
 enthusiastic, had an excellent effect in advancing his 
 mastery of his art. Here he had to measure his strength 
 against young Betty, of whose energy, dignity, and pathos 
 he speaks warmly — admitting, at the same time, that 
 Betty did not study itoprovement ia his art, and conse- 
 quently " deteriorated by becoming used up in the frequent 
 repetition of the same parts." 
 
 Hitherto Macready had lived with his father. The 
 temper of neither was good. The infirmity of his own 
 the son declares " to have been the source of most of the 
 misery he had known in Hfe." But when passion got the 
 better of his father, " there was no curb to the violence of 
 his language.'' Each had strong opinions; and as they 
 did not always run in the same groove, the son very often 
 provoked the displeasure of the father. "If two men," 
 as Dogberry says, " ride upon a horse, one must ride be- 
 hind ; " and we can well believe that the younger Macready 
 was not likely to accept the hindmost place. He was now, 
 too, approaching manhood ; and after an angry parley, 
 father and son parted on the understanding that the latter 
 should thenceforth live apart, and receive a salary of three 
 pounds a-week. A truce was patched up for a time after 
 the return of the company to their headquarters at New- 
 
136 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADT. 
 
 castle; but, with such jarring elements, it could te of 
 only brief duration. Meanwhile the son did his best to 
 keep up the reputation of his father's theatres, taking on 
 himself a heavy share of the work, writing pieces from 
 Scott's ' Marmion ' and ' Eokeby,' and rearranging others 
 to meet the exigencies of the hour. In the midst of his 
 labours, to spur his ambitious hopes, the tidings reached 
 him of the triumph at Drury Lane, as Shyloch, of the 
 iasignificant little Alonzo of the Birmingham Theatre. 
 His Othello followed, justly recognised, Macready says — 
 and for once he does not qualify his praise — as " a mas- 
 terpiece of tragic power and skill." Charles Kemhle and 
 his wife visit Newcastle, in " engagements not very lucra- 
 tive." His Mirabel, in Farquhar's 'Inconstant,' is spoken 
 of — how truly some wiU yet remember — as "a most 
 finished piece of acting." "Bhs Richmond is "chivalrous 
 and spirited," his Cassia "incomparable." The general 
 remark, that "he was a first-rate actor in second-rate 
 parts,'' is a true one. But who may now hope to see the 
 first-rate parts filled on the same scale of excellence 1 
 Emery and Young also pass across the theatrical horizon 
 of Newcastle. The acting of the former in the 'York- 
 shire Farmer ' was so lifelike, and his natural manner so 
 irresistible, that Macready foimd it impossible, in playing 
 with him, to suppress upon the stage the laughter he pro- 
 voked. The plays in which he won his fame have passed 
 away ; but in one of them. Tyke, in the ' School of Ee- 
 form,' the tradition of his excellence is still strong, In 
 it, Macready says, "he rose to the display of terrific 
 power.'' Of Charles Young Macready cannot bring him- 
 self to speak with the same heartiness. He has nothing 
 better to say of one of the most refined, and, at the same 
 time, impressive of actors, than that he was. 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 137 
 
 "of course, greatly and deservedly applauded. His grand de- 
 clamatory style wound up the speeches of Zwnga and Mortimer 
 with telling effect. His Richard was not good ; and his perform- 
 ance of Samlet (a character that so few are found to agree upon) 
 had, as usual, its very numerous admirers." 
 
 But the truth is, and it is a melancholy one, that 
 whereYer professional rivaby intervened, Macready's judg- 
 ment was warped. It comes out most painfully in an 
 entry in his diary, so late as July 5th, 1856. The tidings 
 of Young's death at the age of 79 have just reached him, 
 and he writes : — 
 
 " My struggle in professional life was against him, and for 
 several years we were in rivalry together ;' disliking, of course, 
 but still respecting one another. ... No two men could 
 have differed more in the character of their minds, in their 
 tastes, pursuits, and dispositions ; but his prudence, his con- 
 sistency in his own peculiar views, and the uniform respect- 
 ability of his conduct, engaged and held fast my esteem for him, 
 from the time that the excitable feelings of immediate rivalry 
 had passed away." 
 
 A pitiahle confession for himself ; an unwarrantable 
 assumption that it was " of course " equally true of Young. 
 Young's sweet and generous nature was ever ready to see 
 and to delight in the merits of a brother actor. The 
 finest things that have been said of Mrs Siddons were 
 said by him. " Of Kean," his son tells us, in his de- 
 lightful and only too brief 'Memoir,' "he was a great 
 admirer, although by no means blind to his faults." It 
 was of Kean he made the remark, and experience un- 
 happily confirms its general application, that the pas- 
 sages on which he (Kean) had bestowed the most pains, 
 and which were chastely and beautifully delivered, he 
 never got a hand for ; while his delivery of those which, 
 to use his own phrase, caused "the house to rise at 
 
138 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 
 
 Mm," were in bad taste and meretricious. This quali- 
 fied admiration, his son says, was not due to jealousy, 
 adding : — 
 
 " I really do not think he was open to that suspicion, for I have 
 never known him grudge his praise to Charles Kemble, or William 
 Macready, who came more frequently into competition with him." 
 
 Young and Macready were indeed as unlike in the 
 characters of their minds and dispositions as they were in 
 their style as actors. There was an unselfish nobleness in 
 Young — a delight in all that was good in others — which 
 gave a graciousness and charm to the man and to the actor 
 quite peculiar to himself. To young Macready he gave, 
 in these early days, a piece of advice, of which the justice 
 wiLL be felt by those who remember Macready's prevailing 
 fault even in his maturer years : " Young gentleman, you 
 expend a degree of power unnecessarily ; half the energy 
 and fire that you employ would be more than sufficient. 
 You wiU only waste your strength if you do not bear this 
 in mind." 
 
 Macready had up to this time worked loyally for his 
 father, and repaid all, and more than aU, that had been 
 expended upon that education at Eugby, which was to 
 prove of priceless value to his future career. Fresh dis' 
 putes between them arose. Neither would give way, and 
 Macready left home upon an engagement for Bath. The 
 theatre there was at that time regarded as a sort of ante- 
 chamber to the great patent theatres of London, " and 
 the judgment of a Bath audience a pretty sure presage of 
 the decision of the metropolis." The young actor stood 
 the scrutiny of this critical public. He was hailed with 
 " compliments, invitations, troops of friends, and aU the 
 flattering evidences of unanimous success," but 
 
 " One bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom threw." 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 139 
 
 A Zoilus of the Press hit him in his tenderest point hy 
 sayiQg of his Beverley, that it would have been altogether 
 excellent, if not perfect, "hut for the unaccommodatuig 
 disposition of Katuie in the formation of his face." The 
 rumour of his success soon spread. Mr Harris, of Covent 
 Garden, opened negotiations with him. ; and an engage- 
 ment for seven weeks in DubHn, at £50 a-week, was the 
 best assurance that he had now fairly got his foot on the 
 first round of the ladder. The negotiations for Covent 
 Garden having taken him to London, where Kean and 
 Miss O'Neill were crowding the two great houses, the im- 
 pressions they produced on him. are well described : — 
 
 " Places were taken one night at Drury Lane for ' Richard III.,' 
 and for another Fawcett procured seats for us in the orchestra of 
 Covent Garden, to see the Juliet of Miss O'Neill to the best advan- 
 tage. Kean was engaged to sup with my father at the York Hotel 
 after the performance of ' Eichard,' to which I went with no ordi- 
 nary feelings of curiosity. Cooke's representation of the part I had 
 been present at several times, and it lived in my memory in all its 
 sturdy vigour. . . . There was a solidity of deportment and man- 
 ner, and at the same time a sort of unctuous enjoyment of his suc- 
 cessful craft, in the soliloquising stage viUainy of Cooke, which gave 
 powerful and rich effect to the sneers and overbearing retorts of 
 Gibber's hero, and certain points (as the peculiar mode of delivering 
 a passage is technically phrased), traditional from Garriok, were made 
 with consummate skill, significance, and power. 
 
 " Kean's conception was decidedly more Shakespearian. He hur- 
 ried you along in his resolute course with a spirit that brooked no 
 delay. In inflexibility of wUl and sudden grasp of expedients he 
 suggested the idea of a feudal Napoleon. His personation was 
 throughout consistent, and he was only inferior to Cooke where 
 he attempted points upon the same ground as his distinguished 
 predecessor. 
 
 " My father and self were betimes in our box. Pope was the 
 lachrymose and rather tedious performer of Hervry 71. But when 
 the scene changed, and a little keenly visaged man rapidly bustled 
 across the stage, I felt there was meaning in the alertness of his 
 
140 WILLIAM QHARLES MAGREADT. 
 
 manner and the quickneBS of his step. As the play proceeded I be- 
 came more and more satisfied that there was a mind of no common 
 order. In his angry complaining of Nature's injustice to hia bodily 
 imperfections, as he uttered the line, ' To shrink my arm up like a 
 ■withered shrub,* he remained looking on the limb for some moments 
 with a sort of bitter discontent, and then struck it back in angry 
 disgust. My father, who sat behind me, touched me, and whispered, 
 ' It's very poor ! ' ' Oh, no ! ' I replied, ' it is no common thing,' for 
 I found myself stretching over the box to observe him. The scene 
 with Lady Anne was entered on with evident confidence, and was 
 weU sustained, in the afiected earnestness of petulance, to its suc- 
 cessful close. In tempting Buchinghwm to the murder of the chil- 
 dren, he did not impress me as Cooke was wont to do, in whom the 
 sense of the crime was apparent in the gloomy hesitation with which 
 he gave reluctant utterance to the deed of blood. Kean's manner 
 was consistent with his conception, proposing their death as a polit- 
 ical necessity, and sharply requiring it as a business to be done. 
 The two actors were equally effective in their respective views of 
 the unscrupulous tyrant ; but leaving to Cooke the more prosaic 
 version of Cibber, it would have been desirable to have seen the 
 energy and restless activity of Kean giving life to racy language and 
 scenes of direcb and varied agency in the genuine tragedy with which 
 his whole manner and appearance were so much more in harmony. 
 In his studied mode of delivering the passages, ' Well ! as you guess ?' 
 and ' Off with his head ! So much for Buckingham ! ' he could not 
 approach the searching, sarcastic incredulity, or the rich vindictive 
 chuckle of Cooke ; but in the bearing of the man throughout, as the 
 intriguer, the tyrant, and the warrior, he seemed never to relax the 
 ardour of his pursuit, presenting the life of the usurper as one un- 
 broken whole, and closing it with a death picturesquely and poetic- 
 ally grand. Many of the Kemble school resisted conviction in his 
 merits, but the fact that he made me feel was an argument to enrol 
 me with the majority on the indisputable genius he displayed. 
 
 " We retired to the hotel as soon as the curtain fell, and were 
 soon joined by Kean, accompanied, or rather attended, by Pope. I 
 need not say with what intense scrutiny I regarded him as we shook 
 hands on our mutual introduction. The mUd and modest expression 
 of his Italian features, and his unassuming manner, which I might 
 perhaps justly describe as partaking in some degree of shyness, took 
 me by surprise, and I remarked with special interest the indifference 
 with which he endured the fulsome flatteries of Pope. He was very 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 141 
 
 sparing of words during, and for some time after, supper ; but about 
 one o'clock, when the glass had circulated pretty freely, he became 
 animated, fluent, and communicative. His anecdotes were related 
 with a lively sense of the ridiculous ; in the melodies he sang there 
 was a touching grace, and his powers of mimicry were most humor- 
 ously or happily exerted in an admirable imitation of Braham ; and 
 in a story of Incledon acting Steady the Quaker at Rochester, with- 
 out any rehearsal — where, in singing the favourite air, ' When the 
 lads of the village so merrily, ah ! ' he heard himself, to his dismay 
 and consternation, accompanied by a single bassoon, — the music of 
 his voice, his perplexity at each recurring sound of the bassoon, his 
 undertone maledictions on the self-satisfied musician, the peculiar- 
 ity of his habits, all were hit off with a humour and an exactness 
 that equalled the best display Mathews ever made, and almost con- 
 vulsed us with laughter. It was a memorable evening, the first and 
 last I ever spent in private with this extraordinary man." 
 
 This animated sketch is followed by an account of Miss 
 O'Neill's Juliet, not so discriminating, hut, naturally, more 
 glowing. The writer was young, susceptible, and he would 
 have been more or less than mortal, if admiration for the 
 beauty of the woman had not heightened the estimate of 
 the actress. 
 
 Two years were yet to elapse before Macready was to 
 face the ordeal of a London audience. He stood out for 
 terms which the managers there were not prepared to 
 yield. The Drury Lane Committee was appealed to by 
 his friends, and one of them having urged with Lord 
 Byron (who was upon it), in addition to the young aspir- 
 ant's professional merits and successes, the further plea 
 that Mr Macready was " a very moral man," drew from 
 his lordship the very practical reply : " Ha ! then I sup- 
 pose he asks five pounds a-week more for his morality." 
 The interval was spent in most useful practice in the 
 chief provincial theatres; but at length, his cautious 
 scruples having been overcome, and good terms secured, 
 Mr Macready appeared at Covent Garden as Orestes, in 
 
142 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADT. 
 
 ' The Distressed Mother,' on the 16th of September 1816. 
 He was received with the applause always liberally be- 
 stowed on every new performer, and this, Kean, who was 
 conspicuous ia a private-box, helped to sweU. Better still, 
 the critics of the press admitted his claims to distinction ; 
 Hazlitt, one of the best of them, described him " as by 
 far the best tragic actor that has come out in our remem- 
 brance, with the exception of Kean." Othello, his next 
 part of importance, confirmed the favourable estimata 
 The ' Times ' gave him the highest praise in saying of it : 
 " The actor's judgment is shown ia his practice of employ- 
 ing all his force in those passages of noiseless but intense 
 f eeHng, and exhibiting it in all its sublime depths, if not 
 by a sudden look or startling gesture, yet by a condensa- 
 tion of vigorous utterance and masculine expression, from 
 which few will be disposed to appeal." In logo, which 
 in. after-years was one of his finest studies, he failed by 
 his own admission. Hazlitt's remark, that " Young in 
 Othello was like a great humming-top, and Macready in 
 lago like a mischievous boy whipping him," he owns was 
 quite as complimentary as his own share of the perform- 
 ance deserved. 
 
 Miss O'Neill, John Kemble, Young, and Charles Kem- 
 ble, were all at Covent Garden, and in the height of their 
 popularity, and Macready found that he must be content 
 to drop into a comparatively subordinate place. Kean, at 
 Drury Lane, divided with them the public enthusiasm ; 
 and he had consequently abundant leisure to profit by the 
 study of the performances of his great compeers. By this 
 we are gainers, in a few excellent pages of description, 
 which bring their distinctive qualities vividly before us, 
 and which are of especial value from the pen of one so 
 well qualified to judge. But this enforced banishment to 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 143 
 
 the second rank was wormwood to Macready, whose way 
 it was to drop into despondency whenever things did not 
 go exactly as he wished. It actually led him. to cast about 
 in his thoughts " in quest of some other mode of life less 
 subject to those alternations of hope and dejection, which 
 so frequently aad so painfully acted on my temper." 
 While in this mood he was summoned to the reading of a 
 tragedy by a new author. This was Richard Lalor Sheil, 
 with whose dramatic successes Macready was destined to 
 become henceforth ia a great measure identified. The 
 pla,y was ' The Apostate.' There were parts in it for 
 Young, C. Kemble, and Miss O'Neill; that of Pescara 
 was assigned to Macready. He took it "mournfully 
 and despondently." Charles Kemble, a better judge of 
 what was to be done with it, cheered him by sayin'g, 
 "Why, WUliam, it is no doubt a disagreeable part, but 
 there is passion in it.'' This was true ; and the part, 
 odious as it was, gave Mr Macready his first real hold on 
 the London public. Ludwig Tieck, who saw him in it, 
 speaks of it in his ' Dramaturgische Blatter,' as a perform- 
 ance " so vehement, truthful, and powerful," that, for the 
 first time in England, he felt himself recalled to the best 
 days of German acting. " If the young man," he adds, 
 " continues in this style, he will go far.'' The impression 
 produced on Tieck must have been a strong one, for he 
 told Goethe's biographer Mr Lewes, many years after- 
 wards, that he liked Macready better than either Kemble 
 or Kean It was, in some respects, unlucky for Macready 
 that his very success in portraying the villainous passions 
 of Pescara led to his having a series of others of a kindred 
 character assigned to him. But if this had its bad side, 
 it also had its good ; for by the intensity and picturesque- 
 ness which he threw into these and other characters of a 
 
144 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADT. 
 
 somewhat melodramatic cast, he made more progress in 
 public favour than he would probably have done in the 
 great characters of Shakespeare, where, rightly or wrongly, 
 he would have suffered by comparison with established 
 favourites. 
 
 In 1817, John Kemble gave his last performances. 
 Asthma, and a general decline of health, had left but a 
 wreck — a splendid one it is true — of his former self. Of 
 all his parts, Macready gives the preference to King John, 
 Wolsey, The Stranger, Brutus, " and his peerless Oorio- 
 lanus." He was present at his last performance of Mac- 
 beth, and on this occasion Mrs Siddons was unwise enough 
 to appear as Lady Macbeth. The contrast with her for- 
 mer self was pitiable. " It was not," he says, " a per- 
 formance, but a mere repetition of the poet's text — no 
 flash, no sign of her all subduing genius ! " Her brother 
 languished through the greater part of a play which de- 
 mands all the vigour of a powerful physique. 
 
 " Through the whole first four acta the play moved heavily on : 
 Kemble correct, tame, and ineffective ; but in the fifth, when the 
 news waa brought, ' The Queen, my Lord, is dead ! ' he seemed 
 struck to the heart ; gradually collecting himself, he sighed out, 
 ' She should have died hereafter ! ' — then, as it with the inspiration 
 of despair, he hurried out, distinctly and pathetically, the lines : — 
 
 " To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," &c. 
 
 rising to a climax of desperation that brought down the enthusiastic 
 cheers of the closely packed theatre. All at once he seemed carried 
 away by the genius of the scene. At the tidings of ' the wood of 
 Bimam moving,' he staggered, as if the shock had struck the very 
 seat of life, and in the bewilderment of fear and rage could just 
 ejaculate the words, ' Liar and slave ! ' then lashing himself into a 
 state of frantic rage, ended the scene in perfect triumph. His 
 shrinking from Macduff when the charm on which his lite hung was 
 broken by the declaration that his antagonist was ' not of woman 
 bom,' was a masterly stroke of art ; his subsequent defiance was 
 
. WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 145 
 
 most heroic ; and at his death Charles Kemble received him in his 
 arms, and laid him gently on the ground, his physical powers being 
 unequal to further effort." 
 
 Mr Macready nowhere appears to more advantage in 
 thoBe volumes than in passages like this. When no per- 
 sonal feeling interfered, his criticisms as a rale are excel- 
 lent. They rested, both where books and acting were 
 -concerned, on wide observation and careful study. But 
 ■ although his active life, as he himself says, had been de- 
 voted chiefly to the study of poetiy and playing, he always 
 speaks with the modesty of true knowledge of his own 
 powers as a critic. The standards by which he judged 
 were high, for he weU knew that on the stage, as in books, 
 "le moyen le plus slir," as Clairon says, "d'an^antir le 
 mMte, est de prot^ger la mediocrity" Knowing as he 
 did, that of all arts his own was the most complex, and 
 rested on facts of nature, which few are even capable of 
 observing, he was entitled to speak with some contempt 
 of the opinion prevalent in England, " that no particular 
 study is requisite to make a critic or connoisseur of acting." 
 That acting in France and Germany still keeps a high 
 level is in some measure due to the fact that it has its 
 critics there who know when and why to praise or to 
 condemn. 
 
 The production of 'Eob Eoy,' on March 12, 1818, 
 enabled Mr Macready to make another decided upward 
 step in public favour. In this character he broke the spell 
 which had begun to hang round him, " as the undisputed 
 representative of the disagreeable," and which had seemed 
 to weigh him down. The mingled humour, pathos, and 
 passion of the character exactly fitted him. Its rugged 
 heroism, dashed with the poetical element, stood weU out in 
 his somewhat abrupt and impulsive mode of treatment. 
 
 K 
 
146 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 
 
 Barry Cornwall, the fast friend of his after-life, -wrote a 
 sonnet ahout it, praising " the buoyant air,'' the " passion- 
 ate tone '' that breathed about it and lit up the actor's eye 
 " with fire and freedom." This success revived Macready's 
 hopes, and encouraged him to "bide his time." Amvr 
 rath, in another of Shell's now forgotten plays, ' BeUamira, 
 or the FaU of Tunis,' enabled him soon after to score a 
 fresh success. " Macready," wrote the ' Times,' " quite 
 surpassed himseU in the cool, remorseless villain, regard- 
 ing his victim with the smUe of a demon." 
 
 The next season saw the production of the most suc- 
 cessful of Shell's plays, ' Evadne, or the Statue,' in which 
 some fine situations, splendidly treated by Miss O'Neill, 
 Young, Charles Eemble, and Macready, concealed that 
 inherent weakness of both plot and dialogue, which have 
 consigned it with its feUows to unregrettable oblivion. 
 Here, as usual, Ludovico, Macready's part, was the villain 
 of the piece. The next new piece was Mathurui's 
 ' FredoKo,' in which there were no less than three viUains. 
 The worst of the three, WallerAerg, " a very voluptuary 
 in vUlainy, whom it was not possible the taste of any 
 audience could tolerate,'' fell of course to Macready. The 
 play struggled through to the fifth act. Here Wallenr 
 berg, under circumstances of more than Mathurinian 
 atrocity, had to tiU the hero, " upon which the pit got up 
 with a perfect yell of indignation, such as, I fancy, was 
 never before heard iu a theatre." The curtain fell for 
 the first and last time upon the catastrophe. Such parts 
 as Posthumus in ' Cymbeline,' or Cassiiis in ' Julius 
 Csesar,' however, came in to soothe the disappointed am- 
 bition of the young actor. But it was not till the winter 
 of 1819 that his chance came of being recognised as a 
 Shakespearian actor. To his consternation, he found him- 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 147 
 
 self one day announced for Qloster, in ' Eiohard III.' It 
 was no ordinary trial, with the fresh fame of Kean in the 
 part staring him in the face. However, he was committed 
 to the public, and must screw up " each corporal agent to 
 the terrible feat " : — 
 
 "All that history could give me, I had ahready ferreted out; 
 and for my portrait of the character — ^the self-reliant, wily, quick- 
 sighted, decisive, inflexible Plantagenet — I went direct to the true 
 source of inspiration, the great original, endeavouring to carry its 
 spirit through the sententious and stagy lines of Gibber, not search- 
 ing for particular ' points ' to make, but rendering the hypocrisy of 
 the man deceptive and persuasive in its earnestness, and present- 
 ing him in the execution of his will as acting with lightning-like 
 rapidity." 
 
 His triumph was complete. It overcame even those 
 who had hitherto thought lightly of his powers. Among 
 these apparently was Leigh Hunt. " We thought him a 
 man of feeling," he wrote in the next 'Examiner,' "but 
 httle able to give a natural expression to it, and so taking 
 the usual refuge in declamation. . . . We expected to 
 ■find vagueness and generality, and we found truth of 
 detail. We expected to find declamation, and we found 
 thoughts giving a soul to words." 
 
 Covent Garden Theatre had been for some time in so 
 languishing a state, that the company were playing on 
 reduced salaries. Macready's success turned the tide, the 
 exchequer was replenished, and by common consent he 
 now felt himself the leading actor of the theatre. The 
 ball once started kept rolling. In Goriolanus he won his 
 next honours ; and to confirm him in his place, Knowles's 
 ' Virginius,' with its fresh and forcible if somewhat flashy 
 style, gave him a character which especially fitted him in 
 all his strongest points. "Austere, tender, famUiar, ele- 
 vated, mingUng at once terror and pathos," was the just 
 
148 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 
 
 description given of it by a critic of the day. It spoke 
 home to people's hearts, and in Macready's treatment no 
 play of modem times has drawn more tears, or more truly 
 touched the springs of pity and terror. 
 
 From this time Macready's position was assured ; and 
 allowing for the vicissitudes of lite, and of his profession, 
 he became a prosperous — and, but for his own desponding 
 and querulous disposition, might have been a happy — 
 man. He rose at once in market value. Engagements 
 poured in upon him, and he began to lay the founda- 
 tion of the comfortable independence which he ultimately 
 secured. Mrs Siddons' prudent counsels not to marry 
 before thirty were apparently not forgotten ; not that 
 Cupid had not in the meantime tapped him more than 
 once upon the shoulder. His choice of a wife was 
 characteristic of his passion for supremacy. She was a 
 child of nine when he first came across her in 1815, 
 playing a child's part in one of his scenes. She was im- 
 perfect in her words, and he tells us that he " scolded her 
 on coming off the stage for her neglect, which he was 
 afterwards sorry for, as it cost her many tears." Five or 
 six years afterwards they met on the stage at Aberdeen, 
 where she had to play his daughter in ' Virginius.' Her 
 beauty and intelligence attracted him, and his interest was 
 deepened by finding that she was the support of her 
 family. This interest led to a correspondence, in which 
 the tutor developed into the lover. He would have 
 married her in 1823, and indeed went to Worthing, 
 where she was, for the purpose. His sister went with 
 him to be introduced to his future bride. What ensued 
 had much better, we think, have been left untold. The 
 ladies conceived an instant and mutual aversion for each 
 other. The marriage was put off, and the young lady was 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 149 
 
 sent to a boarding-school, apparently to get educated to 
 Miss Macready's satisfaction. She aided the paternally 
 miaded lover " ia his duties of tutorage to his lovely and 
 docile Griseldaj" and eighteen months afterwards, the 
 sister having ia the meantime declared herself satisfied, 
 these patient lovers were married at St Pancras Church. 
 
 Macready was a Literal and something more ia politics, 
 as so many men are, who, Hke^him, resent not having been 
 born of gentle blood. In his diary, on 30th December 
 1835, apropos of the President's speech, he writes : " I 
 read it through, and thiak it is to be lamented that 
 European countries cannot learn the lesson of self-govern- 
 ment from our wiser and happier brothers of the West." 
 The remark does not say much for his political sagacity ; 
 and a rough experience of American mobs, to be after- 
 wards mentioned, cured him very effectually of his regret 
 that we had gone on governing ourselves ia our own way. 
 In 1826, and again in 1843-4, when he visited the States, 
 he was received with enthusiasm, and in a literal sense had 
 secured " golden opinions from all sorts of people.'' The 
 best men in the country had held out the hand of friend- 
 ship to him. He had even thought for a time of settling 
 there and forgetting England, with its mortifications and its 
 social distinctions, which were so abhorrent to his spirit. 
 
 Visits to Italy in 1822, and again in 1827, enabled 
 Macready to gratify his love for art, and to enrich his 
 mind with remembrances, which bis previous studies 
 qualified him to turn to excellent account. An engage- 
 ment in Paris, in 1828, established his reputation with the 
 most critical of audiences. Virginius, William Tell, 
 Othello, and Hamlet, with the wide range of character, 
 passion, and pathos which they involved, came as a sort 
 of revelation to audiences accustomed to tragedies of a 
 
150 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADT. 
 
 more limited scope, and transported them to an enthusiasm 
 which, made them rank the young Englishman with Le 
 Kaia and Talma. When he returned to play ia Paris in 
 1844, this enthusiasm, we rememher, had very sensibly 
 cooled. Either the actor's power had diminished, or the 
 taste for his methods had changed. His great ability and 
 accomplishment continued to be recognised. But it was 
 " talent," as distinct from " genius,'' of which such critics 
 as Janin, Th. Gautier, Edouard Thierry, and A. Dumas 
 spoke. 
 
 The diaries here published, which continue the story of 
 Macready's career from 1826, teU, through many years, a 
 sad tale of bad temper, of angry jealousies, of somewhat 
 unmanly querulousness. The condition of the London 
 stages was declining from bad to worse ; and, if we may 
 judge from his annual balance-sheets, which no tradesman 
 could have kept with closer care, his popularity was on 
 the wane. An iacome of £3285, 5s. Od. in 1827, has 
 dropped in 1832 to £1680, Is. 9d. Then come such 
 entries as, this (October 2, 1832), "Newspapers, middling, 
 middling. They persecute me." Or this (10th November 
 1832) :— 
 
 "Lost much time and thought in useless, vain, bad imaginations, 
 referring to people indifferent to me, not turning my eyes to the 
 good I possess, but lashing myself into a state of irritation which, 
 if it were wise or just to despise anything in humanity, should 
 awaken my contempt. Letme be wiser, God ! " 
 
 He finds the key to his own disquietudes in Johnson's 
 remark on Dryden : " He is always angry at some past or 
 afraid of some future censure." He reproaches himself 
 with exhibiting " odiosam et inuUlem morositatem ; '' and 
 to what lengths this must have carried him we see from 
 his noting (21st February 1833), as something apparently 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 151 
 
 exceptional, "Rehearsed mth civility." A poor Kttle boy, 
 playing Albert to his William Tell, " disconcerts and e?j- 
 rages" him. He plays lago, at Manchester (13th March 
 1833), "pretty well, hut was certainly disconcerted, if 
 not annoyed, by the share of applause bestowed on Mr 
 Cooper." He had no faith in his own reputation, but 
 Uved ia ceaseless apprehension "of the danger it runs 
 from the appearance of every new aspirant" (21st October 
 1835). A few days before, he writes : " If I had not ties 
 which bind me down to this profession (and I could curse 
 the hour it was suggested to me), I would eat a crust, or 
 eat nothiag rather than play iu it." Well might he say 
 of himself, " Vanity and a diseased imagiaation are the 
 sources of my errors and my foUies," although it was not 
 quite so clear, that they were what, in the same sentence, 
 he calls "the evil result of a neglected youth." It is so 
 pleasant to throw the blame for our " cunning bosom-sias " 
 anywhere but upon our own pride and passionate wUl. 
 What an amount of self-torture and humiliation does a 
 nature of this krud prepare for itself ! It not only makes 
 troubles, but magnifies those to which all men are bom. 
 Intolerant, it begets iutolerance, and robs itself of the 
 kindly sympathy that makes half the pleasure of life. On 
 30th March 1835, he notes :— 
 
 " I begin to despair of obtaining that mastery over myself which 
 I owe to myself, to my children, and to society. It is no excuse 
 nor plea that I suffer so keenly as I do from regret and shame at 
 my own intemperance. I feel the folly, the madness, the provoking 
 extravagance of my behaviour, treating men like slaves, and assum- 
 ing a power over them which is most unjustifiable and most danger- 
 ous ; and yet contrition and stinging reflection seem to have no 
 power in the punishment they inflict of producing amendment." 
 
 It was more than mere jest Bulwer's saying of him, as 
 
152 WILLIAM CHARLES MAOREADY. 
 
 he sat at a public dinner, that he looked like " a baffled 
 tyrant." 
 
 This fretful state of mind was wrought to frenzy in the 
 beginning of 1836, by the studied slights put upon him 
 by his Drury Lane manager, Mr Bunn, a man, whom he 
 might be forgiven for regarding with contempt. Mac- 
 ready held, howiever, a lucrative permanent engagement 
 at the theatre, to which he was determined to hold fast. 
 Bunn, on the other hand, wanted to get rid of him, for 
 the twofold reason — ^that his attraction had fallen off, and 
 that Malibran had been secured for the theatre, and made 
 the manager independent of the legitimate drama. The 
 parties were at covert warfare, each trying to outflank 
 the other. It was Bunn's tactics to disgust Macready by 
 professional slights, putting him up for inferior parts, for 
 important ones at too short notice, and the like. At last 
 the climax of indignity was inflicted by announcing Mac- 
 ready for " The three first Acts of Richard III." The 
 night came. He went through the part "in a sort of 
 desperate way.'' As he left the stage, he had to pass the 
 manager's room ; opening the door, he rushed in upon the 
 startled impresario, who was seated at his writing-table, 
 and launching a highly appropriate but by no means com- 
 plimentary epithet at him, with the pent-up force of a 
 wrath that had been nursed for months, " he struck him 
 a back-handed slap across the face." A vehement scuffle 
 ensued, in which Bunn, a much smaller and feebler man, 
 had necessarily the worst of it. Macready was too truly 
 a gentleman not to feel that, in this scene, he had, to use 
 his own words, committed a " most indiscreet, most im- 
 prudent, most blameable action.'' His shame anji contri- 
 tion, as expressed in his diary, are overwhelming. " The 
 fair fame of a life has been sullied by a moment's want 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. 153 
 
 of self-command. I can never, never during my life, 
 forgive myseK," are among their mildest expressions. 
 
 Happily for him, his character stood as high virith the 
 world as that of his adversary was low. There were few 
 to regret that Mr Bunn had got a thrashing ; many who 
 were sure that, if not for his offences to Macready, at least 
 for other delinquencies, he had richly deserved one. AU 
 the leading actors felt that Macready had been cruelly 
 provoked, and they rallied loyally round him. Bunn 
 brought his "action of battery," and his injuries were 
 ultimately assessed at £150. But in the meantime Mr 
 Macready had been secured at Covent Garden, receiving 
 £200 for an engagement of ten nights ; and on his ap- 
 pearance there had been greeted with tumultuous applause. 
 At the close of the play, ' Macbeth,' he was called for, and 
 spoke. Had anything been wanted to seal his peace and 
 popularity with the public, it was given in his frank 
 avowal, after a slight reference to the provocations, per- 
 sonal and professional, which he had received, that he 
 had been " betrayed, in a moment of unguarded passion, 
 into an intemperate and imprudent act, for which I feel, 
 and shall never cease to feel, the deepest and most 
 poignant self-reproach and regret." 
 
 Everything now conspired in Mr Macready's favour. 
 The flagging attention of the public had been reawakened. 
 There was a company at Covent Garden well qualified to 
 do justice to his plays. Charles Kemble was there ; and 
 aU the town was crowding to see Helen Faucit, then a 
 mere girl, " unschooled, unpractised," who a few months 
 before had captivated it by a freshness, an enthusiasm, 
 a truthfulness and grace, to which it had long been un- 
 accustomed.1 The interest in Shakespeare and the higher 
 
 ^ " It has been my good fortune to know Helen Faucit even be- 
 
154 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 
 
 drama had revived, and it was kept alive during this and 
 the following season by a succession of excellent repre- 
 sentations of the most favourite plays. AH this tended 
 to the advancement of Mr Macready's reputation. His 
 scholarly attainments and general culture were also well 
 known, so that when, at the end of 1837, he undertook 
 the management of Covent Garden Theatre, with the 
 avowed purpose of making it a home for Shakespeare and 
 the best dramatic art, the ablest members of the company 
 and of the profession combined to lend him their hearty 
 support, accepting greatly reduced salaries, and more than 
 one agreeing to appear in parts much below their recog- 
 nised position in the profession. 
 
 To undertake the conduct of such a theatre, loaded as 
 it was with a too heavy rent, and damaged by many years 
 of wretched management, was a venture of considerable 
 risk. But Mr Macready had every inducement to make 
 it, quite apart from any wish he might have to raise the 
 standard of his art. Drury Lane was closed to him, for 
 it was stiU in Mr Buna's hands. Only there and at 
 Covent Garden could the legitimate drama in those days 
 be played, and if that theatre were shut up, he must have 
 been thrown on the provincial theatres, where, for some 
 time, his attraction had been waning. But by taking it, 
 he at once secured the sympathies of the public, and was 
 able to bring his powers, both as actor and manager, be- 
 fore them with far more effect than he could have hoped 
 
 fore she witched the world, in her early girlhood, in ' The Lady of 
 Lyons,' in ' The Hunchback,' and in those Shakespearian characters 
 in which from then till now she has had no rival. We remember 
 Mr Macready's astonishment that ' almost a child, she never had 
 any country practice ; ' and we knew that, while leading in the 
 plays we have named, she was so much under age that she could 
 not sign her engagements." — From a paper by Mrs S. 0. Hall, 1875. 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 155 
 
 to do in any other way. A bolder spirit would have 
 staked much on such a prospect without a shadow of 
 misgiviag. Mr Macready, as his diaries show, was neither 
 patient enough, nor sanguine enough, to fight the first 
 uphiU fight of all such ventures with steady courage. 
 He was too fearful of loss, too easily daunted by tem- 
 porary unsuccess. The least failure disconcerts him, and 
 he broods and trembles over an adverse balance of a few 
 hundreds, which woidd scarcely cost a thought to a man 
 really fitted for the administration of a great theatre. So 
 he goes on torturing himself with apprehensions during 
 his first season of management, which added a needless 
 weight to the already sufficient burdens of one who had 
 to do the double duty of both manager and actor. 
 
 He had, it is true, everything to cheer Mm in his ar- 
 duous task. The Queen was a constant visitor at the 
 theatre ; the public were warm in their admiration ; and 
 such men as Bulwer, Knowles, Browning, and Talfourd, 
 enabled biTn to sustain an interest in his management by 
 a constant succession of new pieces. Stanfield painted 
 for his first pantomime an exquisite moving diorama of 
 many of the most picturesque scenes in Europe, and re- 
 turned his cheque for £300, refusing to accept more than 
 £150, which Mr Macready records as "one of the few 
 noble instances of disinterested friendly conduct he had 
 met with in his life ! " The ' Lady of Lyons,' produced 
 on the 15th of February 1838, replenished his then fail- 
 ing exchequer; neither would its author hear of being 
 paid for it. He, too, returns the manager's cheque for 
 £210, in a letter " which is a recompense for much 01- 
 requited labour and unpitied suffering." This play, like 
 many other successful plays, did not attract at first. 
 Macready, quickly dispirited, on the eighth or ninth night 
 
156 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 
 
 talked of withdrawing it. The curtain had just fallen on 
 the exciting scene of the fourth act, — " Could you see,'' 
 said Mr Bartley, who was playing Damas, " what I see, 
 as I stand at the back of the stage, the interest and the 
 emotion of the people, you would not think of such a 
 thing. It is sure to be a great success." Mr Macready 
 took his advice, and the prediction was fully verified. 
 ' King Lear,' with Shakespeare's text restored, was pro- 
 duced early in the season with great effect, Bulwer minis- 
 tering incense of the most pungent kind by telling Mr 
 Macready that his performance of the old King was 
 " gigantic." ' Coriolanus,' admirably acted and put upon 
 the stage, soon followed. The house on the first night 
 was bad, and Macready was in despair : "I give up all 
 hope," are his words. Among the old stock pieces, ' The 
 Two Foscari,' and Talfourd's feeble ' Athenian Captive,' 
 came as novelties ; and, towards the end of the season, 
 Knowles's charming comedy of ' Woman's Wit, or Love's 
 Disguises,' charmingly acted, was also brought out. 
 
 In direct pounds, shillings, and pence, Mr Macready 
 was a loser by the season. So, at least, we understand 
 him to put its results, where he says (3d August 1838): 
 " I find I managed to lose, as I first thought, judging 
 from actual decrease of capital, and absence of profit by 
 my labour, £2500, or, measuring my receipt by the pre- 
 vious year, £1850." But against this was to be set the 
 positive increase of reputation and prestige, which secured 
 him engagements, both in London and elsewhere, that, 
 in the long-run, far more than compensated this temporary 
 loss. Moreover, the business of theatrical management, 
 like every business, takes time to make, and practical, 
 men do not regard a deficit in the outset as an actual loss. 
 Mr Macready, no doubt, in his less desponding moods. 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 157 
 
 took the same viev, and having made a more favourable 
 arrangement with his landlords, he took Covent Garden 
 for another season, and opened a fresh campaign, with 
 renewed vigour, on the 24th September 1838. 
 
 Aided by a company of unusual and varied strength, 
 he advanced stiU further the reputation already won by 
 his Shakespearian revivals. ' The Tempest ' and ' Henry 
 V.' were produced with a completeness and a sense of the 
 picturesque hitherto unknown The public crowded to 
 see them, and proved that no truly well-directed effort to 
 make the theatre a place of high intellectual recreation 
 will be made m vaio. Mr Macready notes, on the 20th 
 June 1839, as " not a common event,'' that ' The Tem- 
 pest ' was acted fifty-five nights, to an average of £250 a 
 night. But these performances were distributed through- 
 out the season. To have run this or any other piece, 
 however successful, night after night, as we now see done, 
 was a thiQg then undreamt of. A practice so fatal to the 
 actors as artists, not to speak of the mere fatigue, is the 
 result of the merely commercial spirit on which theatres 
 are now conducted. The most successful plays were, iti 
 those days, alternated with others. Thus the actors, if 
 they had not complete rest, had, at least, the rest of 
 change. They came fresh to their work, instead of falling 
 into mechanical routine. How much the public also 
 gained by this it is needless to say. Play after play was 
 brought before them, in which the performers were seen 
 at their best. They learned to understand good acting ; 
 and this appreciation reacted beneficially on the actors, 
 who felt that good and careful work was never thrown 
 away. Bulwer again came to the help of his friend by 
 writing ' Eichelieu,' where he fitted him with a part that 
 gave scope for his best qualities of intensity, strong powers 
 
158 WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 
 
 of contrast, and a certain grim humour. It proved one of 
 the great successes of the season. Every character was in 
 ahle hands. Elton, Diddear, Warde, Anderson, Yining, 
 Phelps, George Bennett, Howe, and Miss Helen Faucit, 
 aU names of strength, appeared in the cast. Never was 
 dramatist more fortunate than to he so interpreted. Never 
 had manager such a staff. 
 
 The season passed off brilliantly; but Mr Macready 
 was dissatisfied with the money results. It seems to have 
 left him £1200 in pocket ; certainly a most poor return 
 for aU the intellect and energy expended. Mr Macready, 
 at all events, thought he could not afford to persevere in 
 the course he had so well begun, and he retired from the 
 management at the end of the season. Of the warmth of 
 the public he coidd not complain. On the last night 
 (16th July 1839) he notes :— 
 
 "My reception waa so great from a house crowded in every part 
 that I was shaken by it. . . . The curtain fell amidst the loudest 
 applauses, and when I had changed my dress I went before the cur- 
 tain, and, amidst shoutings and wavings of hats and handkerchiefs 
 by the whole audience standing up, the stage was literally covered 
 with wreaths, bouquets, and branches of laurel. . . . The cheering 
 was renewed, as I bowed and left the stage ; and as I passed through 
 the lane which the actors and people, crowding behind, made for 
 me, they cheered me also. Forster came into my room, and was 
 much affected; [W. J.] Fox was much shaken; Dickens, Maolise, 
 Stanfield, T. Cooke, Blanchard, Lord Nugent (who had not been in 
 the theatre), Bulwer, Hockley of Guildford, Browning, Serle, Wil- 
 mot, came into my room ; most of them asked for memorials from 
 the baskets and heaps of flowers, ohaplets, and laurels that were 
 strewn upon the floor." 
 
 The same enthusiasm was shown at a public dinner, 
 four days later, given to him at the Freemasons' Tavern, 
 and presided over by the Duk6 of Sussex. When he rose 
 to speak, he says : " I never witnessed such a scene, such 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADT. 159 
 
 wild enthusiasm, on any former occasion." In tlie course 
 of his speech he stated that his hope and intention had 
 heen — 
 
 " to have left in our theatre the complete series of Shakespeare's 
 acting-plays, his text purified from the gross interpolations that dis- 
 figure it and distort his characters ; and the system of rearrange- 
 ment so perfected throughout them, that our stage would have pre- 
 sented, as it ought, one of the best illustrated editions of the poet's 
 works. But," he added, " my poverty, and not my will, has com- 
 pelled me to desist from the attempt. " 
 
 Much good had, however, been done, and the truth had 
 been brought home to many minds that, as Shakespeare 
 wrote for the stage, and not for the closet, his plays, to be 
 thoroughly felt and understood, must be acted, not read. 
 
 AH that Mr Macready had lost at Covent Garden he 
 soon retrieved by the increased value of his engagements 
 elsewhere. Mr Webster secured him for the Haymarket 
 Theatre upon most liberal terms, engaging at the same 
 time Miss Helen Faucit and several other members of the 
 Covent Garden Company, who thus kept alive the interest 
 in the higher drama which they had helped to create. 
 Bulwer's ' Sea Captain ' and 'Money,' Talfourd's 'Glencoe,' 
 Troughton's ' Nina Sforza,' and other plays of mark, in 
 addition to many of the older plays, were all produced by 
 Mr Webster with a finish no less complete — allowing for 
 the size of the theatre — than had distinguished the recent 
 performances at Covent Garden. Mr Macready continued 
 at the Haymarket, with slight interruptions, down to the 
 end of 1841. While there, thoughts of resuming the 
 managerial sceptre revived in his mind. " The stage," he 
 notes on the 27.th January 1841, "seems to want me. 
 There is no theatre, but that to a man with a family is no 
 argument ; there is no theatre for me, and that is an over- 
 
160 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 
 
 whelming plea. Then much may be done of good in all 
 ways." Soon after Drury Lane passed out of Mr Bunn'a 
 hands, and the temptation of reigning in his stead became 
 irresistible. Mr Macready took the theatre, and opened 
 his season with ' The Merchant of Venice,' on 27th De- 
 cember 1841, having again drawn round him a most 
 powerful company. 
 
 His return to management was hailed with sincere 
 pleasure by every lover of the drama. ' Acis and Gala- 
 tea,' produced on 5th February, was his first great success. 
 Those who remember what Stanfield did for the one scene 
 of the piece, and the fine singing of Miss Eomer, Miss 
 Horton, Mr AUen, and Mr Phillips, will quite concur 
 with Mr Macready when he says of the performance, 
 "that he had never seen anything of the kind so perfectly 
 beautiful." Gerald Griffin's fine play of ' Gisippus,' in 
 which we remember Mr Anderson produced a very power- 
 ful effect in one remarkable spene, was produced on 23d 
 February following. It had only a sucah d'estime. 
 Barley's 'Plighted Troth,' produced on 20th AprU, from 
 which Mr Macready to the last anticipated a brilliant 
 success, proved " a most unhappy failure." The play was 
 fuU of fine things. So, too, was WiUiam Smith's ' Athel- 
 wold,' produced on the 18th May; but not even the fine 
 acting and more than one powerful scene could carry it 
 beyond a second performance. ' Marino Faliero ' followed 
 on the 20th May, and two nights afterwards the season 
 closed. 
 
 During this season, as well as during that which fol- 
 lowed, success was chiefly assured, either by the admirable 
 style in which Shakespeare's best-known plays were pre- 
 sented, or by plays of already established reputation. 
 'As You Like It,' 'King John,' 'Othello,' 'Macbeth,' 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 161 
 
 'Much Ado About Nothing,' ' Cymbeline,' 'Eomeo and 
 Juhet,' 'Hamlet,' 'The Winter's Tale,' 'Julius Ctesar,' 
 'Henry IV.,' and 'Catherine and Petruchio,' represented 
 Shakespeare. ' She Stoops to Conquer,' ' The School for 
 Scandal,' 'The Eivals,' 'The Way to Keep Him,' 'The 
 Provoked Husband,' ' The Jealous Wife,' ' The Stranger,' 
 ' The Eoad to Euin,' ' Jane Shore,' ' Virginius,' ' Werner,'. 
 'The Lady of Lyons,' 'Marino Faliero,' and 'Acis and 
 Galatea,' were also given, besides a number of miuor 
 pieces. Milton's ' Comus ' was presented in a way never 
 to be forgotten ; while among the new pieces of exceptional 
 merit were Marston's 'Patrician's Daughter,' Browning's 
 ' Blot on the Scutcheon,' Knowles's ' Secretary,' Planch^'s 
 delightful Easter piece, 'Fortunio,' and the opera of 
 ' Sappho.' It is a splendid Hst, and the memory of the 
 playgoer of those days naturally kindles as he reads it. 
 In these diaries, however, nothing wiU strike him as so 
 noteworthy as Mr Macready's total silence as to those by 
 whose co-operation alone he was able to produce this mag- 
 nificent series of performances. Of himself, and how he 
 acted, and was called for, &c., &c., we hear more than 
 enough ; but no word appears of gratitude or recognition 
 for loyal service rendered, and for first-rate ability applied 
 by others with sincere artistic devotion, as it most cer- 
 tainly was. 
 
 In the midst of success apparently unclouded, and 
 when it seemed as if a theatre were now likely to be 
 established worthy of England and its drama, Mr Mac- 
 ready aU at once threw up the reins, upon some difference 
 with the proprietors of the theatre about terms. AU at 
 once, upon a few days' notice, his fine company found 
 themselves once more adrift, and their hopes of seeing one 
 great national theatre annihilated. The blow fell heavily 
 
162 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. 
 
 upon them ; and they had not even the consolation of 
 being called to mind by their leader when he was receiving 
 what he describes as the " mad acclaim " of the public on 
 the last night of his management. Again the honours of 
 a public dinner, with the Duke of Cambridge in the chair, 
 and the presentation of a magnificent piece of plate, were 
 accorded to the retiring manager. His speech on the 
 occasion is given in his Memoirs, but not even in it does 
 he say one word about the very remarkable body of per- 
 formers who had so ably seconded his efforts. His own 
 sensitiveness to ingratitude, real or imagined, had not 
 taught Mr Macready to avoid the sin in his own person. 
 Time does its work of oblivion quickly ; and the readers 
 of this generation should be reminded that there were 
 actors and actresses in Mr Macready's companies, to whose 
 assistance much of the great reputation of his management 
 was due, for from his published diaries they will get no 
 hint of the fact. Where his own effects are marred by the 
 incompetency of others, whether in this country or in 
 America, Mr Macready is always ready to note the fact 
 with almost peevish soreness ; but in no one instance does 
 he mention any man or woman as having helped him in 
 bringing out the fuU purpose of the author, or in height- 
 ening the effect of his own scenes. 
 
 In the autumn of this year he went to America, with 
 the glories of his Drury Lane management fresh upon 
 him. They brought him a liberal return for aU his pains. 
 After a year spent in the States he came home richer by 
 £5500 than he had gone there. No bad return for what 
 it pleases him to call (22d April 1844) "the worst exercise 
 of a man's intellect." On arriving in Europe at the end 
 of 1844, he played for a few nights in Paris, not greatly, 
 it would appear, to hia own satisfaction, and then, entered 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREADY. 163 
 
 upon a series of engagements in London and the provinces, 
 which occupied him, with varying success, till his return 
 to America in the end of 1848. This visit was, upon the 
 whole, an unlucky one. It hrought him into contact with 
 some of the worst features of the " rowdyism " by which 
 the great EepuhUc is afflicted. Mr Forrest, a native and 
 favourite actor, in resentment at some offence given or 
 imagined, had apparently determined to make the land of 
 freedom too hot to hold the English tragedian. When 
 Mr Macready, soon after his arrival, appeared in Phila- 
 delphia, hissing and catcalls greeted his entry as Macbeth. 
 " I went through the part," he writes, " cheerily and defy- 
 ingly, pointing at the scoundrels such passages as ' I dare 
 do all,'" &c. ISo wonder that the discharge at the 
 usurper, first of a copper cent and then of a rotten egg, 
 followed this very undignified style of sending home his 
 points. The better part of the audience supported Mr 
 Macready, and no further outbreak occurred. But when 
 he returned to New York a few months afterwards, the 
 Forrest movement assumed a more serious shape. The 
 first night he appeared, copper cents, eggs, apples, a peck 
 of potatoes, lemons, pieces of wood, a bottle of asafoetida, 
 were thrown upon the stage. At last the missiles grew 
 even more miscellaneous and dangerous. Chairs were 
 thrown from the gallery on the stage, and the play had 
 to be brought to a premature close. Two days afterwards 
 another attempt at performance was made. But this time 
 matters were more serious. Inside the theatre comparative 
 quiet was maintained ; but outside a complete bombard- 
 ment of stones and missiles was carried on. Through aU 
 this riot Mr Macready persevered, " acting his very best," 
 as he says, "and exciting the audience to a sympathy 
 even with the glowing words of fiction, while dreadful 
 
164 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 
 
 deeds of real crime and outrage were roaring at intervals 
 in our ears, and rising to madness all round us. The 
 death, of Macbeth was loudly cheered." But, while he 
 was changing his dress, he was startled by volley on 
 volley of musketry. The soldiers had been sent for, and 
 were firing into the mob. Eighteen were killed and 
 many wounded. Macready was with difficulty got away 
 from New York to Boston, where he embarked for 
 England on 23d May 1849, effectually cured of his 
 dream of settling in America — effectually cured, too, of 
 his faith in the perfections of a Eepublic. 
 • On his return home he commenced a series of farewell 
 engagements. Happily, for himself, he seems at this 
 period to have viewed his own performances with some- 
 thing more than complacency. It is scarcely fair to let 
 the world see the terms of high commendation with which 
 he mentions his own logo, Brutus, Lear, Hamlet, &c. 
 But notwithstanding all this, he records (26th February 
 1851), that " not one feeling of regret is intermingled with 
 his satisfaction at bidding adieu to the occupation of his 
 life." That same evening saw him for the last time upon 
 the stage. The play was ' Macbeth,' and the stage that of 
 Drury Lane. " I acted Macbeth," he says, " with a reality, 
 a vigour, a truth, a dignity, that I never before threw into 
 the delineation of this favourite character." The audience 
 were in no critical mood. They had come to do honour 
 to one to whom they owed much pure pleasure from an 
 art which they, at least, did not despise ; and they thought 
 of little else. Such were the greeting and farewell they 
 gave him, that he says, " No actor has ever received such 
 testimony of respect and regard in this country." His 
 triumph did not end here. Four days afterwards a public 
 dinner, at which six hundred guests were assembled, was 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 165 
 
 given to him. His constant friend, Sir E. L. Bulwer, 
 presided, and around him were gathered many of the 
 most distinguished men of the day. The chairman pro- 
 nounced a brilliant panegyric, and the speaking generally 
 was good. One speech appeared in the papers, and is 
 reprinted in Sir Frederick Pollock's book, which we well 
 remember was not spoken. It had been prepared by the 
 Chevalier Bunsen, and was by far the ablest of them all ; 
 but his turn to speak came so late in the programme that 
 Bunsen merely substituted for it a very few words. 
 
 The curtain could not have fallen upon a more splendid 
 close to an honourable career. Surely all these honours, 
 these unreserved gratxdations, might have made Mr Mac- 
 ready forget his old apprehensions that he was looked 
 down upon because he was an actor. But no, the same 
 feeling remained ; though with it comes the absurd con- 
 viction that, because he is an actor no longer, he "can 
 now look his fellow-men, whatever their station, in the 
 face, and assert his equality" (Diary, 19th March 1851). 
 He quite forgets that, had he not been an actor, he would 
 have been nobody. The applause, the " salutations in 
 the market-place," so precious to a man of his tempera- 
 ment, would never have been his. The grandson of the 
 Dublin upholsterer would have had no ' Eeminiscences ' 
 to write, no name to be proud of, or to be carried down to 
 generations beyond his own. 
 
 Mr Macready survived his retirement from the stage 
 more than twenty-two years, which he spent first at Sher- 
 borne and afterwards at Cheltenham, where he died on 
 the 27th April 1873. It was his fate to see many of his 
 "dear ones laid in earth." His wife, and most of his 
 children, preceded him to the grave. He married most 
 happily, a second time, in 1860. Eemoved from the stage 
 
166 WILLIAM GHABLES MAGBEAD7. 
 
 and its jealousies, all Ms fine qualities Lad freer scope ; 
 and we think now with, pleasure of his venerable and 
 noble head, as we saw it last in 1871, and of the sweet 
 smile of his beautiful mouth, which spoke of the calm 
 wisdom of a gentle and thoughtful old age. We 
 have reason to know that he looked back with yearning 
 fondness to the studies and pursuits which had made him 
 famous. The fretful jealousies, the passionate wilfulness 
 of the old times, seemed to have faded into the dim past, 
 and no longer marred the memory of kindness shown, and 
 loyal service rendered to him. He had done much good 
 work in the sphere which Providence had assigned him ; 
 and, we believe, had learned to know that it was not for 
 Tn'Tti to repine, if " the Divinity that shapes our ends " had 
 so shaped his, that his work was to be accomplished upon 
 the stage. It is of the man as we then saw him, the man 
 whom we had known as a highly cultivated and essentially 
 kind-hearted gentleman, that we would rather think, than 
 of the actor, with aU his weaknesses laid bare, whom these 
 volumes have placed before us. 
 
 It caused the writer no small pain to write, as he did 
 in the foregoing Essay, with condemnation of the way in 
 which the weaknesses of a great actor had been laid bare 
 in his Memoirs. How good, how kind, how accomplished, 
 how admirable in all the relations of private life Mr Mac- 
 ready was, the writer was well aware from the report of 
 intimate friends, as well as from personal knowledge of 
 the man. He therefore hailed with deep satisfaction the 
 charming picture subsequently presented by Lady Pollock 
 in her 'Macready as I Knew Him,' published in 1884, 
 which does much to counteract the impression produced 
 
WILLIAM CHARLES MAGREAD7. 167 
 
 by the Memoirs, and which should be read by all who 
 desire to form a just estimate of a man who, from over- 
 sensitiveness and mistaken pride, constantly did injustice 
 to his own finer qualities. 
 
 When the article above printed appeared in the ' Quar- 
 terly Eeview,' M. Eegnier, of the Com^die Frangaise, 
 wrote to the author : — 
 
 " Voire 6tude sur Macready est assurement trfea juste, mais c'eat 
 en soupirant que j'ai ^t^ forc^ d'en convenir vis-^-vis de moi-mSme. 
 Je vous ai trouv^ Equitable, et je n'ai pu cependant ne pas 6tre at- 
 triste de la sevfrite de votre jugement sur le caractfere d'un homme 
 que je n'ai jamais connu que par ses beaux c6t^s. Vous avez 
 raison, sans doute, d'etre dtonn^ de le voir g^mir chaque soir sur le 
 malheureux d^faut dans lequel il retombe chaque jour ; mais sa 
 constante confession a un oot^ moral dont il faut cependant lui tenir 
 compte ; c'est par lui seul qu'on connalt sa faute et ses soufErances, 
 elles me semblent lui m^riter I'indulgence, eb vos tribunaux eux- 
 mSmes sont mis&icordieux Ji ceux qui plaident coupahles. 
 
 " Etit U continue k rddiger ses M^moires, il aurait, je crois, fait 
 plus de justice h. ceux, et surtout k celle qui s'est illustrfe auprfes 
 de lui. H se serait moins appesanti sur les inconveniences de son 
 ' unfortunate profession ' ; tons les avantages qu'il en a recueillis, 
 la gloire, qu'elle lui a value, les talents groupfe autour du sien, lui 
 seraient apparus dans leur vraie lumifere, et son livre purg4 de ses 
 scories lui aurait fait un honneur dgal peut-dtre Si celui que lui a 
 m6nt6 son talent. 
 
 " Quant Si nous com^diens, si nous pouvons regretter I'exo&s de 
 susceptibility qui a port^ Macready h abaisser injustement notre 
 profession, nous ne pouvons mfoonnaitre que par la moralite, la 
 purete, la dignity de sa vie, il en a 616 I'honneur, et qu'il est I'&la- 
 tant t^moignage de I'erreur, ou si Ton veut mSme, de la f ausset^ de 
 ses assertions. 
 
 "C'est au reste, cher Monsieur, la conclusion k laqueUe vous 
 arrivez vous m§me k la fin de votre article. Je joins mes remerci- 
 ments et mes compliments k tous ceux qu'il a dt vous valoir. II 
 etait bon de ne pas nous laisser sous le coup de la flagellation, que 
 les Memoires de Macready nous appliquait, et il me semble que lui- 
 mdme vous remercierait de lui avoir dtoontr^ qu'il n'a jamais 6t6, 
 
168 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADT. 
 
 aux yeux de ses contemporains, aussi baa que son imagination 
 malade le lui faisait croire, et de I'avoir releve ^ sea propres 
 yeux.'' 
 
 To write thus was characteristic of M. Eegnier's kind 
 heart and clear judgment. Only in one point his corre- 
 spondent did not agree with him. It is true that it was 
 through Mr Macready himself that we were made aware 
 of his grave faults and his futile repentances. But did 
 he mean that we should he so made aware of them ? When 
 the sinner enters the confessional, especially if that con- 
 fessional he his own diary, is it right that his agony and 
 self-humiliation should be published after his death to an 
 unsympathetic world 1 In this, as it seemed to the writer, 
 a grave want of judgment was shown, which it was im- 
 possible not to condemn, as of a most evil example. 
 
THEATRICAL EEFOEM: 
 
 THE 'MERCHANT OF VENICE' AT 
 THE LYCEUM. 
 
 (From 'Blackwood's Magazdje,' December 1879.) 
 
 NATIONAL THEATEE ! Mucli has of late 
 been written about one ; but baye the -writers 
 formed to themselves any clear idea of what 
 they mean by the phrase ? A national drama 
 one can quite understand as a drama that embodies the 
 hfe, the character, the manners of a nation, — its modes of 
 thought and feeling. Our own roll of dramatists, with 
 Shakespeare at one end, and the smaU knot of living 
 writers for the stage who are not adapters from the 
 French or German, at the other, has given us a very 
 voluminous and interesting national drama. It is true 
 that, for all the practical purposes of the stage, the great 
 body of this drama is dead, and that it retains its interest 
 only for the literary student or him who seeks to form 
 for himself a vivid picture of the " age and body " of the 
 various periods of our social history, which, in a certain 
 sense, they reflect. But it is this body of dramatic litera- 
 
170 THEATRICAL REFORM. 
 
 ture which one understands by a national drama ; and iq 
 so far as this is concerned, England can quite hold her own 
 against France, Germany, Italy, or Spain; where, as with 
 ourselves, the great part of what constitutes their national 
 drama is antiquated, and out of tone with modem Hfe, 
 and no longer, therefore, availahle for the stage. 
 
 But how as to a national theatre ? One would imagine, 
 by much that is written and spoken, that in this respect 
 these countries are better off than OTirselves. But is it so ? 
 Wbich of them has a national theatre ? Excellent theatres, 
 with excellent companies, they have in many places. But 
 in what metropolitan city does there exist a theatre that 
 deserves the name of national — that is, a theatre which is 
 recognised as holding withia its ranks the best of what the 
 nation has to show m histrionic art, and employing that 
 best in the performance of dramas of the highest order ? 
 Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Paris, aU have theatres 
 that are so far, and only so far, national, that they are 
 partially supported by State subventions. So, too, have 
 Meiningen, Gotha, "Weimar, Mannheim, and many other 
 places. The Contiuental sovereigns have always had a 
 pride in maintaining a theatre ia connection with their 
 Courts, and these theatres occupy the place that was for- 
 merly occupied by our own patent theatres. In conven- 
 tional phrase, our metropolitan patent theatres used to be 
 called national theatres. But they never were national 
 institutions in the sense that the National Gallery, or the 
 British Museum, or the South Kensington Museum are 
 national institutions. Laving always depended for sup- 
 port upon the special public that visited them, and been 
 liable to the fluctuations in fortune necessarily incident 
 . to such precarious patronage. It is no doubt true that, 
 so long as they possessed the exclusive privilege of acting 
 
THEATRICAL REFORM. 171 
 
 the higher drama, they drew to themselves, as it was 
 natural they should, all the most gifted and accomplished 
 actors of their time ; and they thus became typical repre- 
 sentatives of the best national acting. But when this 
 exclusive privilege was taken from them, they lost that 
 character ; and with the abolition of the privilege vanished 
 the possibility of maintaining in England what could, in 
 any true sense of the word, be called a national theatre. 
 
 It were well that this fact should be at once recognised, 
 and that attention should be concentrated on the best 
 mode of obtaining the practical equivalent for a theatre 
 or theatres in the metropolis, such as it had when its 
 three leading theatres — Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and 
 the Haymarket — were at their best. If money alone 
 could effect this object, money would not be wanting. 
 But money in itself is powerless. Money can buy pictures, 
 statues, porcelain; it can make the fortune of indivi- 
 dual artists ; it can foster, and does foster, a very great 
 deal of bad art-work. It might even secure — although of 
 that who does not despair % — a comfortable theatre, and it 
 certainly coidd provide stage appointments in perfection. 
 But it can neither produce good actors, nor bring together 
 such good actors as exist, and make them work harmoni- 
 ously in perfecting the performance of good plays. But 
 this is just the one thing longed for by that section of the 
 public which loves the drama, but cannot be satisfied with 
 what most of the existing theatres have to offer. 
 
 Can this want be supplied? The question is a wide 
 one — much wider than appears at first sight — and the 
 answer to it involves many considerations, to deal with 
 which would carry us much too far. That it can be had 
 soon, or by any royal road, such as the endowment of a 
 theatre, seems to be quite out of the question. 
 
172 THEATBICAL REFORM. 
 
 Let us suppose any amount of money subscribed for the 
 purpose, and an excellent theatre, excellently appointed, 
 available : the question then arises, "Who is to organise 
 and control the company ; or rather, first of all, how is 
 that company to be obtained? 
 
 It must be remembered that the number of theatres in 
 the kingdom is so great, that it is a matter of no small 
 difficulty for those who conduct them to get hold of even 
 one or two actors and actresses of ability to give some 
 sort of backbone to their company. The consequence is, 
 that people who ought to be in the lower ranks of the 
 actor's profession are occupying the higher; and many, 
 very many, pretend to positions of importance who have 
 not one quality by nature or by training to justify their 
 being on the stage at aU. The demand for actors being 
 thus far in excess of the supply, the competition for those 
 who do excel is extreme ; and the salaries and other con- 
 ditions at which their services are obtained are such as 
 never entered the wildest dreams of the greatest actors 
 and actresses of former days. 
 
 What results from this ? Just this ; that even suppos- 
 ing actors of merit could be bribed away for our ideal 
 theatre from their existing engagements, a fresh difficulty 
 has to be encountered in filling up the company with 
 actors and actresses of the second and third ranks. This 
 can only be done by draining many theatres of their chief 
 attraction. But, apart from the fact that very great 
 numbers of performers of a lower grade are already spoiled 
 by undue promotion, it is only too probable that not even 
 a great increase of salaries would induce them to fall into 
 the subordinate ranks. Nor is this greatly to be wondered 
 at. How few are the actors of our present stage, whose 
 pre-eminence is so undoubted that their fellows should 
 
THEATRICAL REFORM. 173 
 
 accept them without question as their superiors ? And 
 how much fewer are those who possess the true artistic 
 spirit, which can find in minor parts such points of 
 individuality, that they will accept them cheerfully, and 
 trust to their treatment of them for obtaining a sym- 
 pathetic recognition from their audience ? And yet unless 
 they will do this, how is that completeness of ensemble — 
 that atmosphere of general excellence — that harmony of 
 tone — to be arrived at, which is the great desideratum of 
 the English stage, while it is the chief distinction of the 
 much-lauded company of the GomSdie Fran^aise ? Indeed, 
 what but this is it that, in the marked absence from 
 the ranks of that company of anything Hke genius, gives 
 so much attraction to performances that are very often 
 grievously wanting in the freshness and individuality 
 which are to be found in the actors of oui own stage, 
 imperfect as in other respects they may be? 
 
 This being the state of the theatrical profession, no 
 possible combination of reasonably good actors, such as 
 would give distinction to a theatre, could, we are satisfied, 
 be got together within any reasonable period. But there 
 is yet another difficulty. Where is the man to be found, 
 who is capable of infusing the higher art-spirit into such 
 a company, and of subordinating to it the many tempers 
 and caprices, the vanities and susceptibilities, of which 
 actors and actresses have, of course, a larger share than 
 the members of professions who are less in the public eye, 
 and less dependent on the immediate recognition of such 
 powers as they possess, or think they possess? Besides 
 the qualities just indicated, such a man must be no novice 
 in the afi'airs of a theatre : he must have the tact and 
 instinct to humour and yet to guide the public taste ; he 
 must know good acting, and be quick to discern the germs 
 
17-4 THEATRICAL REFORM. 
 
 of undeveloped power, so as from time to time to recruit 
 the forces of his theatre ; he must he swayed hy no un- 
 due partialities ; his knowledge, taste, and character must 
 he such as to command the respect of his company ; and, 
 if he has heen an actor, he must cease to act. Over 
 and above all, he must so manage his establishment as to 
 make it pay ; for the most enthusiastic wiU tire of sup- 
 porting a theatre, which, by its non-success, pretty clearly 
 proves that it does not meet any pubHc want. If such a 
 piece of perfection as a director of the kiud we have 
 imagined is to be found, he must combine with his other 
 qualities an amount of courage and vigour for the enter- 
 prise, to which all who have had any practical experience 
 of theatres must bow with awe. The manager of no 
 theatre sleeps on roses ; a bed of thorns would be a 
 couch of down compared to the bed on which the manager 
 of such a theatre as we have imagined must lie. 
 
 Not having ourselves any belief in the existence of 
 such a paragon, or in the success of any attempt to set 
 up, by any summary process, the ideal theatre, after which 
 we nevertheless yearn as fondly as the warmest enthusiasts 
 for a so-called national theatre, to what, it may be asked, 
 do we look for the setting up of a theatre worthy of the 
 country of Shakespeare ? Our answer is : The growth of 
 such a theatre, to be sound and permanent, must be 
 organic, and therefore gradual. To attempt to force it 
 must result in failure. It wiU demand the co-operation 
 of actors and the public, — actors, with the ambition to 
 belong to such a theatre, and prepared to make sacrifices 
 to gratify that ambition — and a public capable of appre- 
 ciating their endeavours, and not too impatient because 
 they do not get general excellence aU at once. 
 
 If the higher branches of the actor's art have fallen 
 
THEATRICAL REFORM. 175 
 
 into decay, let it not be thought that the public are free 
 from blame. They have for many years asked for dra- 
 matic entertainments of a not very elevated kind, and 
 they have got them. When, now, they cry out, because 
 the power of impersonating ideal characters, of express- 
 ing noble passion, of speaking blank verse, or giving due 
 emphasis to fine prose, has all but passed away, they 
 should remember to what they have during these years 
 chiefly given encouragement. Has it not been, as a rule, 
 to pieces flimsy in structure, poor in diction, commonplace 
 in incident and character, — in which anything like 
 elevation of style or high-bred grace in woman, or 
 chivalry of thought or deportment in men, would have 
 been out of place, and where a languid and slipshod 
 manner of speech Was held to be appropriate to such 
 feeble passion as the actor was ever called upon to 
 display ? Is it to be wondered at, after many years of 
 this sort of thing, and the utter ruin to actors as artists 
 which results from having to play the same piece night 
 after night through months, sometimes years, that the 
 want should be felt of that higher power of conception, 
 of action, and of speech, which are required for the 
 poetical drama, or for comedy founded upon human 
 character, and not upon the caricature of men and women, 
 and the impossible incidents which form the staple of the 
 majority of our modem pieces ? 
 
 " The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, 
 For they that live to please must please to Uve, 
 
 has always been, and always wUl be, true. A theatre is, 
 after all, only a great commercial venture. It must either 
 hit the public taste, or be shut up. The public, for the 
 last twenty years or so, has got what suited its taste, and 
 
176 THEATRICAL REFORM. 
 
 now an important section of it wants to get something 
 better. But that something better is not to be had 
 merely for the asking. All art is long, and the actor's 
 art is certainly no exception to the rule. Fine natural 
 gifts for it are exceptionally rare, for they are of the body 
 as weU as of the mind. The finest conceptions, without 
 the physical qualities of person, of feature, and of voice, 
 are of no use ; and the command of these qualities, so as 
 to give life to these conceptions, is only to be obtained by 
 reiterated practice upon the actual stage. The schooling 
 of masters can go but a little way. Articulate and careful 
 speech, the power to use the limbs freely and simply, 
 avoidance of aU that is slovenly and ungainly in motion 
 or deportment, — all of them things which every lady 
 and gentleman ought to regard, but which, unhappily, 
 they do not regard as essentials of their education, — are 
 in a special degree necessary for the stage. But even 
 where these qualities exist, the freedom and certainty of 
 execution, the annihilation of self-consciousness, which 
 excellence on the stage demands, are only to be attained 
 by actual exercise of the art. Unhappily the practical 
 schools of former days — the theatres of Bath, York, 
 Dublin, Edinburgh, and others — no longer fulfil that 
 office ; for they have ceased to have what is called stock 
 companies. The vile system which now prevails in 
 provincial theatres of trusting to companies, travelling 
 with one or more special pieces, has made the acquirement 
 of ease and self-command, and of variety of expression, 
 in the regular work of an established company, aU but 
 impossible for a young actor or actress. 
 
 But this state of things, and the essentially unpoetical 
 character of the plays which have of late years chiefly 
 possessed our theatres, together with the great encour- 
 
THEATRICAL REFORM. 177 
 
 agement which has been given to female members of the 
 profession, to whom the honest earnings of a laborious 
 vocation are of secondary importance, has had a no less 
 injurious effect upon the stage as a profession. It has 
 kept out of it many a man, and, still more, many a woman, 
 not without the qualities for the art, whose self-respect 
 would not permit them to pursue a career in which any- 
 thing short of the success which genius can enforce has 
 to be sought under the greatest diflSculties and the most 
 unpleasant conditions. It wiU take time, and the exist- 
 ence of a higher tone both on and off the stage, before the 
 best class of recruits can be induced to enter the ranks. 
 But the obvious signs that the public demand a better 
 style of entertainment, and a higher level of acting, can 
 scarcely fail to have an effect upon some at least of the 
 metropolitan managers. In their own interests they will 
 be glad to give openings to plays of a higher order, and 
 to performers with the intelligence and the breeding which 
 are essential for the interpretation of such plays. For 
 the two things must go together. The written and the 
 acted drama always have been, and always will be, much 
 upon the same level. When good plays, well acted, fiU 
 the manager's exchequer, the public will get them, but 
 not tni then. 
 
 It is, therefore, not to any spasmodic attempt to set up 
 a special theatre that we look for the improvement which 
 is now so loudly called for, but to a skilful use of one or 
 two existing metropolitan theatres, the managers of which 
 shall address themselves to bringing together the best 
 available materials for the performance of pieces of a class 
 suited to the size of the theatre and the abilities of their 
 company. Mr Hare, Mr Bancroft, and Mr Irving, for 
 example, have found this system answer ; and their ex- 
 
 M 
 
178 THEATRICAL REFORM. 
 
 ample shows that further experiments in the same direc- 
 tion are all hut certain to succeed. They would give to 
 actors of promise the opportunities of practice and of 
 rising in their profession which are so important to the 
 novice. They would make it an actor's ambition to be- 
 long to theatres conducted upon sound principles, as it 
 was the ambition of the fine actors of former generations 
 to belong to Covent Garden, Drury Lane, or the Hay- 
 market. Let a fair field be but given for that ambition, 
 and no question but it will bring back something of the 
 old spirit which made position and reputation, and the 
 delight of practising his art under favourable conditions, 
 outweigh in the actor's mind the mere question of salary. 
 How that spirit worked is to be gathered from the Memoirs 
 of Macready (see ante, p. 154), which tell us that actors 
 and actresses of assured eminence accepted salaries much 
 below what they could have obtained elsewhere, in order 
 that they might help in the establishment of a theatre 
 worthy of their art. 
 
 The public of the present day seems to be only too 
 ready to second any effort of this kind ; for, having prac- 
 tically no guidance from the press, and having all but 
 lost its own critical faculty from want of standards to 
 direct its judgment, it gives to talent of but moderate 
 proportions the admiration and applause which should be 
 reserved for genius. It was no less than pitiable, for 
 example, to see how people, who profess to be learned in 
 matters of art, went mad over the feeble performances 
 last summer of Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt. Surely it was 
 not necessary to have seen great actresses to make one 
 indisposed to recognise in that lady the qualities which 
 go to make them. "Without the power to feel more deeply 
 and to think more nobly than ordinary mortals, actresses 
 
THEATRICAL REFORM. 179 
 
 can never be great They may not be able to write poetry, 
 or even to put -wliat they think or feel into plaia prose — 
 that is a special faculty. But they must have the intui- 
 tions, the imaginative sympathies, of poets, otherwise they 
 cannot live into, and look and be, the beings whom the 
 imagination of poets has created. Their own lives, their 
 own aspirations and habits of thought, must be congenial 
 with those of the heroines they have to impersonate, or 
 how will they command the looks, the movements that 
 are to satisfy the eye, or still more the inflections of voice 
 that are to thrill the heart, but which cannot move unless 
 they vibrate from the inner depths of the speaker's soid % 
 Spenser's words are as true as they are beautiful — 
 
 " Yes, of the soul the body form doth tate, 
 For soul is form, and doth the body make." 
 
 Who that knows what the lady we have spoken of is 
 — and unhappily the incidents of her life have been too 
 hberaUy blazoned before the world — wUl venture to ex- 
 pect in her the " ethereal qualities that touch the heart," 
 the power of impersonating woman in her higher and 
 most heroic aspects, as the outcome of such a nature and 
 such a hfe? 
 
 But to descend from this higher ground to the lower 
 level of mere physical attributes, where in her are those 
 qualities of person, the unstudied grace of motion which 
 belongs only to a symmetrical and finely poised frame ; 
 the plastic features to reveal the working of thoughts and 
 emotions as they rise ; the resonant voice, which can be 
 drawn upon at will to express every varying shade of 
 feeling, from the most winning tenderness to the wildest 
 bursts of passion ? These are the requisites without which 
 no actress can be entitled to claim rank with those who 
 
180 THEATRICAL REFORM. 
 
 have made the stage illustrious. "Wiere are they to be 
 found in the meagre form, the hard immobile face, the 
 voice of a few notes, of MdUe. Bernhardt? We speak 
 not of the other qualities to be found in a great actress — 
 the utterance which seems to grow out of the thought or 
 emotion of the moment ; the absorption of self in the 
 woman sought to be portrayed, so that not for an instant 
 are we allowed to think of the actress as apart from her ; 
 the unstudied effects of gesture and emotion which come 
 with the impulse of the scene. "Where these are not — and 
 assuredly they are not to be found in the monotones and 
 carefully studied poses of MdUe. Sarah Bernhardt — we 
 dechne to bow down and worship genius in what is no 
 more than a practised cleverness, an aptitude for pictur- 
 esque effect within a limited range, and a command of the 
 ordinary resources of art, so far as art can be taught. 
 
 Will those who wrote so fervently of Mdlle. Bem- 
 hardt's genius imagine to themselves what she would 
 make of any of Shakespeare's heroines ? — of Constance, 
 of Lady Macbeth, of Juliet, of Beatrice, of Portia ? How 
 far would her powers carry her towards presenting any of 
 these ideal yet most real women, with all they ask for of 
 subtle development of character, of exquisitely modulated 
 speech, of the ebb and flow of passion, and of high phys- 
 ical requisites, to impress the eye and the imagination of 
 those who know their Shakespeare? Grant that the 
 lady can play on a few chords of the heart ; still they are 
 few, and she can strike them but feebly. Let us re- 
 member that we have had, and may again hope to have, 
 actresses to satisfy the heart and the imagination in their 
 personations of Shakespeare's women ; let us remember 
 what a range of power goes to that achievement ; and, so 
 remembering, let us refuse to join in that foolish cry of 
 
THEATRICAL REFORM. 181 
 
 admiration by which not a few, who might have heen 
 expected to know better, made themselves ridiculouS, 
 and brought upon English theatrical criticism the contempt 
 of the French themselves. 
 
 It win go hard if the same tendency to overpraise some 
 of our own performers do not spoil them for rising to 
 greater heights in their art. "When people are continu- 
 ally being told that everything they do is perfect, they 
 must have a virtue more than mortal if they do not slacken 
 that struggle after perfection which is the very life of all 
 art. It is only genius of the highest order which is not 
 to be so spoiled ; for it alone knows the ideal at which it 
 aims, and how far short of that ideal its very happiest 
 efforts fall. To the artist truly worthy of the name, on 
 the stage as in the studio, the work he has to do is always 
 of more account than the opinion of the world as to how 
 he has succeeded. The actress who can worthily play 
 Juliet, or Imogen, or Rosalind, will never rest satisfied with 
 her own achievements, but wUl go on to the end of her 
 days finding fresh traits of character, fresh shades of feel- 
 ing, fresh impulses of passion, fresh subtleties of tone or 
 expression to be developed. There wUl be nothing stereo- 
 typed in her performances ; and they will be always fresh, 
 because to her the beings whom she has to embody are 
 living realities, and, Hke all noble women, have in them a 
 " something that never can be wholly known." 
 
 Of the great actor in the great parts of Shakespeare this 
 will be no less true. Thus it was that Garrick never 
 played one of them down to the time he left the stage 
 without making a fresh study of it. Thus, too, it was 
 that it could be said of his Hamlet, when he was over 
 sixty, that not only had it more of the fire and elasticity 
 of youth than the Hamlet of any other actor, but that it 
 
182 THEATRICAL REFORM. 
 
 was the very " young Lord Hamlet " of th.e poet's fancy. 
 Greedy as Garrick was of jpraise — and, if we are to believe 
 Goldsmith, "who peppered the highest was surest to 
 please " — ^praise never made him relax his study, or trifle 
 with his work, or le'Ss zealous to improve it to the highest 
 point of finish. 
 
 But artists of this class must always be rare — " as rare 
 as phoenix." Those whom excessive praise will spoil will 
 ever be in the majority. And if it be bad for them, it is 
 not less bad for the pubUo also ; for in matters of art man- 
 kind are of a sheep-like nature, and ready to foUow bold 
 and self-asserting leaders, however their natural instincts 
 may fiU them with misgivings that the road they are being 
 led is not altogether the right one. Somewhat more of 
 reserve, of moderation of tone, in speaking of the leading 
 popular favourites of the day, would certainly do them no 
 harm ; while, if paias were taken by critics to temper with 
 judgment the enthusiasm of too admiring audiences, and 
 lead them to ask for reasons from themselves for the faith 
 that is in them, that wholesome reaction from the front of 
 the proscenium upon those behind it would in time be 
 established, which actors need for guidance as well as for 
 encouragement. When critics, trained to their art, shall 
 speak boldly out, — ^when audiences shall get into the habit 
 of thinking for themselves, and of using their own com- 
 mon-sense and wholesome natural feeling in judging of 
 acting, — actors wiU soon find this out, and many a ramp- 
 ant vice of vulgarity, and stagines?, and vicious conven- 
 tionality wUl disappear from the stage. 
 
 The recent production of the ' Merchant of Venice ' at 
 the Lyceum is another of Mr Irving's hopeful efforts 
 towards the improvement of the general level of stage 
 representation. To say that it is wholly satisfactory is 
 
THEATRICAL REFORM. 183 
 
 impossible ; for with the best intentions on Mr Irving's 
 part, the means for such a representation are not witMn 
 his reach. 
 
 This play has suffered sorely in stage treatment since 
 the days of Shakespeare. Nay, even in his own time he 
 could never have seen his conception carried out ; for, to 
 go no further, where was to be seen, in any performance 
 of his day, " the counterfeit presentment " of his Portia 
 — that Portia ia which his genius has portrayed the very 
 ideal of a woman, in whom the highest culture is com- 
 bined with the highest qualities of heart, and the refine- 
 ment of the highest breeding? The play early dropped 
 out of the list of acting plays ; and when it was restored 
 to the stage in 1701, it was so mangled by Lord Lans- 
 downe's recast of it, that it was Shakespeare's in little 
 more than name. Shyloeh became a subject for mirth 
 under the treatment of Doggett, the low comedian ; and 
 Portia, who is the ruling spirit of the play, almost as 
 completely as Rosalind is the ruling spirit of ' As You 
 Like It,' passed into the hands of the comic lady of the 
 theatre, and her heroic rescue of her husband's friend 
 from the deadly clutch of the Jew came to be treated as 
 a kind of joke. Even when MackHn brought back the 
 original play to Co vent Garden stage in 1741, divested of 
 the miserable frippery with which Lord Lansdowne had 
 degraded it, who was his Portia ? No other than Kitty 
 Clive, the merriest, the most buxom, the most hard-hitting 
 of comic actresses — the matchless Nell of ' The Devil to 
 Pay,' and Fine Lady of ' Lethe.' She played the part in 
 Garrick's company, and the tradition that it was by right 
 the privilege of the light comedy lady of the theatre long 
 lingered on the stage. It is not very long since we have 
 seen Mrs Charles Kean, so far infected by the prevailing 
 
184 THEATRICAL REFORM: 
 
 tradition, so little studied ia the Portia -whom Shakespeare 
 drew, that she made her exit after the trial scene, tucking 
 her arms under the hack of her doctor's gown, and tripping 
 with the affected gait of the Old Bailey barrister of the 
 stage. We have fortunately got beyond the point when 
 such a feat could be executed with impunity. 
 
 Shakespeare's plays, when they are studied at all, are 
 now studied as a whole, and not with reference to single 
 characters, or favourite passages merely. It will be neces- 
 sary for the manager of the future to bear this well in 
 mind. And here let us note by the way that the spec- 
 tacle which most theatres present in these days during a 
 Shakespearian performance, of numbers of people conning 
 the book, as though it were the libretto of an opera, in- 
 stead of following the business of the scene, says but little 
 for their education. Shame to the full-grown English 
 man or woman who does not blush to make such open 
 avowal of an unpardonable ignorance ! Let us hope that 
 the day is not far distant when such an exhibition will 
 be impossible. But even now in every theatre there are 
 many — and their numbers are increasing — who have fairly 
 mastered the play as a whole, and who expect to see its 
 general scope and object clearly indicated, at least, if not 
 fully worked out. In the ^ Merchant of Venice ' of the 
 Lyceum their demands will, as we have said, meet with 
 only a partial satisfaction. 
 
 In scenery, appointments, and in stage arrangements 
 every reasonable wish is fulfilled. The local colouring 
 is well preserved, and a fine framework and background 
 provided for the figures of the picture. Venice, with its 
 noble architecture, its busy port, its ruffling gallants, its 
 stately halls, is well suggested. Nor can a fairer Belmont, 
 both within and without, be desired for the " lady richly 
 
THEATRICAL REFORM. 185 
 
 left," who is its owner, and " of such wondrous virtues " 
 that they outvie her wealth. The eye is pleasantly re- 
 galed, hut not distracted, by the scenic accessories. So far 
 all is well. The same may he said of the costumes, which 
 are well studied in contrasts of colour, true to the period, 
 and handsome. 
 
 But have the characters of the play been equally well 
 studied and made out? Passing for the moment over 
 Shyloch and Portia, what is to be said of the Antonio, 
 Bassanio, Oratiano, Salanio, and Sdlarino, the Nerissa 
 and the Jessica? 
 
 Antonio, the Merchant, who gives his name to the play, 
 and who is a character of really first importance, is reduced 
 by the actor to an insignificance which disturbs the balance 
 of the drama. Let us consider for one moment what 
 Antonio is, as Shakespeare drew him. The words which 
 begin the play are spoken by him, and in them he strikes 
 the first note of the not too sad minor key which ever 
 and anon is heard in a faint undertone throughout it. He 
 is kept prominently in tiew all through the play, and 
 becomes an important feature at its close. In fact, his 
 fortunes are the pivot on which the play turns, and there- 
 fore is it called the ' Merchant of Venice.' It is his gener- 
 ous friendship which enables Bassanio to try his fortune 
 at Belmont ; it is the peril at which he does this act of 
 affection which creates the main interest of the piece, and 
 brings out the distinctive qualities of its two most im- 
 portant characters, Shyloch and Portia. He, the great 
 and honoured Christian merchant, is the contrast and foil 
 to the oppressed and rancorous Jewish money-broker. It 
 is the knowledge of what a friend he is that makes Portia 
 face the task, from which her natural timidity would have 
 shrunk — 
 
186 THEATRICAL REFORM. 
 
 " The kindest man, 
 The best conditioned ; an unwearied spirit 
 In doing courtesies ; " — 
 
 and the very last things Pmiia says show us, that in 
 helping his friend to win her, he will not, as he feared he 
 might, lose that friend for himself. In the man there is 
 a dignity which, coupled as it is with a large and kindly 
 heart, wins for him the mingled affection and respect of 
 the yoimg Venetian nobles by whom he is surrounded. 
 See how Salanio speaks of him in the speech heginning 
 
 " A kinder gentleman treads not the earth," 
 
 where the parting from Bassanio, and the pang it cost 
 him, are described ; 
 
 " His eye being big with tears, 
 Turning his face, he put his hand behind him, 
 And, with affection wondrous sensible, 
 He wrung Bassanio's hand, and so they parted." 
 
 Observe Salarmo's rejoinder — " I think he only loves the 
 world for him,'' and his call to his friends to join him 
 in trying to beguile the heaviness of the now solitary 
 Merchant. Again, Portia's words tell us how Shakespeare 
 would have us think of Antonio, when she rates him as 
 worthy to be the peer of her Bassanio — 
 
 " For in companions, 
 That do converse and waste the time together, 
 There needs must be some like complexion 
 Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit." 
 
 In all ways, therefore, Antonio is a personage of primary 
 importance. So far from this, however, the Antonio of 
 the Lyceum is from first to last presented in a manner so 
 feeble, so commonplace, that he seems as little fitted to 
 be the object of ShyloeKs " lodged hate," as of the love 
 
THEATRIGAL REFORM. 187 
 
 and respect which he commands from every other person 
 of mark in the play. 
 
 In quoting, as we have done, two brief passages of 
 what is spoken by Salanio and Salarino, enough has been 
 cited to show that they are not the skipping feather- 
 brained fops who are presented to us at the Lyceum, — 
 gentlemen, who run off their words at a gallop, as if they 
 were actiag in a farce, and who seem to think that rush- 
 ing to and fro upon the stage is the legitimate mode of 
 expressing the vivacity of high-bred Venetian gentlemen. 
 What would have been thought of them in Venice, if 
 they had borne themselves in this fashion on the open 
 streets ? There is not one of them that is not a man of 
 breeding as well as of brains. Gay, bright-witted gentle- 
 men they are, with youth and health and fine spirits. 
 But they are gentlemen ; and what each of them says is 
 marked by distinct character, and shows him to be a man 
 who both thinks and observes well and closely in a fashion 
 of his own. The Salanio, the Salarino, and the Lorenzo 
 of the Lyceum, on the contrary, are all of the same type, 
 " as like one another as halfpence are,'' a sort of weak 
 Gratianos — anything, in a word, but persons to whom a 
 man of Antonio's staid and thoughtful character would 
 have said, "Your worth is very dear in my regard." 
 Only the Lorenzo (Mr K Eorbes) aims at giving signifi- 
 cance and emphasis to his part ; but even he does not do 
 so untU we see him in the famous moonlight scene of 
 the fifth act. Up to that point he is, like the rest, little 
 better than a well-dressed fop. 
 
 Gratiano is an ungracious part at the best, and requires 
 from the actor a high-bred and airy grace to carry off his 
 frivolity without annoyance to the audience. Still, there 
 must have been a charm about the fellow, else Bassanio, 
 
188 THEATRIGAL REFORM. 
 
 who hits off his character in a sentence, as " speaking an 
 infinite deal of nothing more than any man in Venice," 
 would never have taken him with him when he went to 
 Belmont, or when he returned thence to Venice on his 
 sad errand to Antonio. But he has the fault of many 
 excellent fellows of not knowing when to hold his tongue; 
 and when he carries this vice into the court of Venice, 
 and baits the Jew with iU-timed banter, we are apt to 
 lose patience, and to share Shylock's contempt for his wits. 
 A skilful actor wiU therefore take care to keep Gratiano's 
 " skipping spirit " well toned down. This seems to be 
 felt by Mr F. Cooper, the Gratiano of the Lyceum ; and 
 except that in his performance the tone and quality of a 
 high-bred gentleman are not sufficiently suggested and 
 maintained, it is upon the whole not unsatisfactory. 
 
 Why Jessica and N&rissa should have been regarded as 
 of so little importance as to be intrusted to two young 
 ladies, who would be weak in the smallest of comediettas, 
 one is at a loss to conceive. In the case of Nerissa it is 
 inexcusable, for N&rissa is the companion of Portia. She 
 is not the lady's maid, but the lady-in-waiting, with whom 
 the great Italian heiress makes free interchange of her 
 thoughts ; and much of the impression which Portia has 
 to make in her fiist scene depends upon the way Nerissa' s 
 portion of the dialogue is maintained. It is not to the 
 insipid undeveloped girl into which Nerissa is turned at 
 the Lyceum, that Portia would hold discourse of her 
 lovers in a strain so intellectual and so brilliant ; neither 
 would such a Nerissa venture to remind her friend of the 
 Venetian, " a scholar and a soldier, who came hither in 
 the company of the Marquis of Montferrat," as being "of 
 all the men that ever her foolish eyes looked upon the 
 best deserving a fair lady." On the way this is done 
 
THEATRICAL REFORM. 189 
 
 depends much of the effect of Portia's rejoinder : " I 
 remember him well ; and I remember him worthy of thy 
 praise," which should be given, but is not given by Miss 
 Ellen Terry, in a way to let it be seen that Bassanio was 
 no braggart in teUing Antonio, in a previous scene, that 
 " sometimes from her eyes he did receive fair speechless 
 messages." As little would such a Nerissa be chosen by 
 Portia to aid her in her enterprise at Venice. If this be 
 a specimen of the way the demand is to be met for 
 completeness and ensemble in the production of Shake- 
 speare, much good advice has been thrown away in vain. 
 To degrade Nerissa to the level of a soubrette is to lower 
 Portia. She wisely judged men by their friends, and the 
 audience insensibly judges of Portia by the same rule. It 
 would have been impossible for the real Portia to have 
 had a Nerissa who did not show some "like complexion" 
 to herself "in manners and in spirit." But, indeed, it 
 would be idle to dwell upon the want of judgment which 
 could place a character of this importance in such hands. 
 
 Of the Portia we find it impossible to speak in the 
 terms of unqualified rapture with which Miss Ellen Terry's 
 performance has generally been greeted. We place our 
 ideas of Poiiia high, — not higher, however, than Shake- 
 speare meant them to be placed, by speaking of her as 
 
 " Nothing undervalued 
 To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia," 
 
 by the elaborate care with which he has depicted the 
 impression she produced on aU around her, and by the 
 way he has developed her charms of heart and mind 
 throughout the action of the piece. She is the ideal of 
 the high-born woman, gloriously endowed_in body and in 
 mind, and with her intellect cultivated to the highest 
 
190 THEATRICAL REFORM. 
 
 point to wliich female culture could be brought. Only 
 such a woman could have carried out the task which her 
 old friend Bellario's illness forced upon her, preventing 
 'him, as it did, from obeying the Doge's summons, and 
 coming to Venice to determine the question a,t issue 
 between Antonio and Shylock. It is with the knowledge, 
 and upon the express recommendation of the great juris- 
 consult, that she takes his place. He knew that he could 
 safely trust her to make a sound exposition of the points 
 on which to rely for the discomfiture of the Jew. For 
 observe, his own reputation was at stake, and any break- 
 down on Portia's part would have compromised his 
 character fataUy with the Doge. But she had, as he 
 well knew, the knowledge and the "undaunted mettle" 
 to carry her through an enterprise to which she was 
 prompted, not merely by love, but by humanity. She 
 had the higher power, which enabled her to use the 
 knowledge in her own way, and the noble forbearance of 
 the Christian woman, to keep in the background her 
 weapon for discomfiting the Jew, until she had found 
 that every appeal either to his heart or to his avarice was 
 of no avail. 
 
 It is in the trial scene that the character of Portia 
 culminates. Her appearance there may surprise us ; but 
 the actress should previously have made us feel that she 
 is equal to what she has undertaken. It is the splendid 
 development of the splendid qualities of heart and mind, 
 with which all we have previously heard and seen of her 
 have made us familiar. Severe as the ordeal is to which 
 she is exposed, the noble gravity and self-command with 
 which she bears herself throughout the scene, should 
 seem but a natural phase of her strong and beautiful 
 nature. Most subtly, too, the womanly element breathes 
 
THEATRIGAL REFORM. 191 
 
 througliout her treatment of the situation, even while her 
 penetrating look and intellectual vigour hold the Jew 
 firmly in her grasp. She proves him, step by step, to see 
 if he be indeed the wretch "void of any drachm of mercy" 
 she has been told he is ; and leads him on to an avowal of 
 the malice which nothing short of Antonio's death will 
 appease. From that point she has him at her mercy ; 
 and, since he would have nothing but his bond to the 
 letter, she discomfits him by holding him to the letter of 
 his bond. The tender woman's heart, that has up to a 
 certain point had pity for the Jew, is from that moment 
 sternly closed against him, and she becomes as grandly 
 stem as the mouthpiece and organ of the court in declar- 
 ing the law, as she had hitherto been beautiful and per- 
 suasive in her appeals to the better feelings for which she 
 had given Shylook credit. Her arguments are no " pretty 
 sophisms," as an admiring critic of Miss Terry's Portia in 
 one of the leading journals called them. She has law and 
 reason on her side. The Jew is self-convicted of com- 
 passing the death of a Venetian citizen; and it is by 
 no legal quibble, but by the laws of Venice — "thyself 
 shall see the act," she tells the Jew — that she defeats 
 his purpose. 
 
 If we are right in this conception of Portia, then Miss 
 Terry's impersonation fails in its most essential point. 
 Even those who have racked the language of panegyric in 
 its praise have shrunk from claiming unqualified admira- 
 tion for her in the trial scene. They might well do so, 
 for at no one point in it does she indicate that she appre- 
 ciates the situation, or how it should be treated. The 
 words are spoken, but so spoken that one marvels why 
 they should issue from the Ups of one who looks so little 
 in earnest, who takes so little note of Shylock, or Antonio, 
 
192 THEATRICAL REFORM. 
 
 of the Doge, and of the court, every one of -whom it is 
 her business to impress by the manner in which she 
 discharges the function of determining the matter at issue, 
 which has been delegated to her by the Duke. 
 
 We have spoken first of this scene because it is the 
 touchstone of the actress's powers, and because our love of 
 Shakespeare forbids us to be blinded by the attractions of 
 either actor or actress to any failure in a due conception 
 of the characters he has drawn for us with so firm a hand. 
 But the shortcomings of Miss Terry, in our apprehension, 
 begin at an earlier stage. She turns the character "to 
 favour and prettiness ; " but she does not even aim at the 
 distinction and the dignity which essentially belong to it. 
 She is not the great lady of Belmont, the self-possessed 
 queenly creature, whose very presence turns men of ordi- 
 nary mould into poets, and attracts, even while she holds 
 them at bay in admiring reverence. She fails especially 
 to suggest the Portia that, as Shakespeare most carefully 
 makes us aware, would have sacrificed even her love for 
 Bassanio, deep as we see it is, had he failed to win her 
 by the process appointed by her father. How little this 
 feature of the character is felt by the actress is made ap- 
 parent in the treatment of the passage where she urges 
 Bassanio to tarry, " to pause a day or two," before he tries 
 his fortune with the caskets. Throughout all this fine 
 speech she holds him caressingly by the hand, nay, al- 
 most in an embrace, with all the unrestrained fondness 
 which is conceivable only after he had actually won her. 
 This, too, when all eyes are fixed upon her, and when 
 her demeanour would have made her secret known to all 
 the world in the last way a lady would court under any 
 circumstances, but especially when, had her lover chosen 
 wrong, she must have been parted from him at once and 
 
THEATRICAL REFORM. 193 
 
 for ever.^ There is altogether a great deal too much of 
 what Rosalind calls " a coming-on. disposition " ia Miss 
 Terry's bearing towards her lover. It is a general fault 
 with her, but in Portia it is painfully out of place. 
 
 A similar forgetfulness of what truth to the character 
 and the situation demands, while the Prince of Morocco is 
 making choice among the caskets, is visible in the far too 
 marked demonstrativeness with which Miss Terry follows 
 his movement from casket to casket. The room is full 
 of people, servants, and others, any one of whom could 
 tell in a second from Miss Terry's looks and movements 
 when, in the words of the old game, he was hot, and when 
 he was cold, and could have sold the information to the 
 next wooer that arrived. It requires subtler touches than 
 this lady seems to have at command, to indicate, without 
 exaggerating, the emotion proper to a nature disciplined 
 like Portia's to self-control. 
 
 There is, notwithstanding what we have said, much that 
 is agreeable and attractive in Miss Terry's Portia, and no 
 one will be surprised that uncritical people, who have not 
 
 ^ K we are right in blaming the Portia, Mr Barnes, the JSassanio 
 of the Lyceum, must share in the blame ; for a just conception of 
 Portia, and of his position towards her, would hold him aloof from 
 any such display of caressing physical fondness. There is something 
 singularly incongruous in the contrast between all this "fingering 
 of palms," and laying of hands on arms, before he wins her, with the 
 exceedingly reverential manner in which Bassanio, after he has the 
 right to " claim her with a loving kiss," obeys this suggestion by 
 bending courteously over Portia's hand and kissing it. The Bassanio 
 of the Lyceum has to contend against disadvantages of person, and 
 a bluntness of manner, little in harmony with the characteristics of 
 the poet's Bassanio ; but he plays with so much earnestness, and 
 speaks with such an appreciation of the significance of what he has 
 to say, that one is well inclined to " piece out his imperfections with 
 our thoughts," and to be content. 
 
 N 
 
194 THEATRICAL REFORM. 
 
 made their own separate study of the play, should be de- 
 lighted with it. What we do wonder at, however, and 
 most deeply regret, is the unmeasured terms of praise with 
 which the critics of nearly aU the journals have received 
 it. Our wonder would be greater, if most of their criti- 
 cisms did not at the same time show .how little pains the 
 writers had taken to make themselves masters of Shake- 
 speare's text and of the intentions it reveals. One can only 
 hope that Miss Terry's good sense will protect her from 
 accepting too greedily the eulogies of undiscriminating ad- 
 mirers. They are certainly doing their best to spoil her. 
 
 To the same insidious influence Mr Irving is exposed, 
 to a degree that, for his sake, would make us welcome the 
 appearance of some other actor who should carry off a 
 little of the extravagant enthusiasm of which he has at 
 present the monopoly. But Mr Irving has the undoubted 
 merit of not having been misled by it into dealing care- 
 lessly with his art. His Shylock is a decided advance, 
 and perhaps, as a whole, his best Shakespearian perfor- 
 mance. It is based upon a broad clear conception, and 
 carried out in aU its details with great finish and great 
 picturesqueness. Mr Irving makes no attempt to create 
 special sympathy for Shylock, but shows him — as Shake- 
 speare, we fancy, meant him to be shown — as a man in 
 whom the persecution of his race, and the indignities in- 
 flicted on himself by those with whom he had to cope 
 upon the mart, had begot a settled abhorrence of aU 
 Christian men, intensified and concentrated into " a lodged 
 hate" of Antonio. Antonio has treated him with con- 
 tumely, has thwarted him in trade, has " hindered him of 
 half a mUIion," has denounced his usuries, and, finally, 
 baflled his revenge by "delivering from his forfeitures 
 many that have at times made moan to " the Christian 
 
THEATRICAL REFORM. 195 
 
 merchant. "Cursed be my tribe if I forgive him," are 
 among Shylock's first words ; and he means to the letter 
 what he says when he vows, if once " he catches him upon 
 the hip, he will feed fat the ancient grudge he bears him." 
 Of course Shylock has aflfeotions of some kind. What 
 man has not ? But Shakespeare has been at no pains to 
 call attention to this side of his character. His servant 
 and his daughter have little to say in his praise, and it will 
 never do to lay great stress on his tenderness over his 
 turquoise ring, which he had " of X^eah when he was a 
 bachelor.'' Pity for him Shakespeare certainly did not set 
 himself to excite, beyond that pity which one feels for 
 any human creature hardened by cruel usage, by the per- 
 secution of his religion, by sordid avarice, and finally 
 maddened, by the elopement of his daughter with a Chris- 
 tian, into the cunning, stony-hearted, merciless wretch, 
 whose own calculated device in " the merry bond " is fitly 
 turned against him to his ruin. 
 
 This is the man Mr Irving sets before us. If he had 
 a voice that did not break into painful dissonances in 
 transports of passion, and greater robustness of physique 
 to give emphasis to his rage, there would be little left to 
 desire. No man, be his conception ever so fine, can go 
 farther than his physical resources will carry him ; and it 
 is ungracious t6 point to failures in particular passages, 
 when, merely from a defect of this kind, the actor can- 
 not make out thoroughly all he would. Ifotably this is 
 obvious in the famous scene with Tubal, where the wUd 
 transitions of rage and disappointment and vindictive 
 menace are better suggested than expressed. The fine 
 scene just before with Salanio and Salarino fails somewhat 
 of effect from the same cause. But one forgets the 
 cracked and screaming tones, and the occasional want of 
 
196 THEATRICAL REFORM. 
 
 articulateness, in the powerful action, the visible intensity 
 of the feeling, the thoroughness with which the ruHng 
 idea is worked out. 
 
 In his first iaterview with Antonio, however, Mr 
 Irving commits what seems to us a grievous mistake. 
 When Shylock changes from reproach to fawning ui the 
 speech heginning, " Why, look now, how you storm ! " 
 he comes close up to Antonio, and touches him on the 
 breast with an air of familiar entreaty. Antonio recoils 
 from him vnth contemptuous scorn, and Shylock bows 
 low, while he wiaces at the rebuke. This has been 
 praised as a fine stroke of truth. But is it so ? Antonio 
 has just told Shylock that he is " as like to spit on him 
 again, to spurn him too." Would Shylock with these 
 words fresh iu his ears, forget himself so far as to lay a 
 finger on the haughty merchant, never haughtier than at 
 that moment, when asking a loan from a man he despised 1 
 Again, is such an action conceivable in one who feels the 
 pride of race so strongly as Shylock? For one of "the 
 sacred nation " Hke himself to touch the Christian mer- 
 chant would in his mind be viewed as nothing less than 
 contamination and defilement. The momentary stage 
 efi'ect, which Mr Irving gains by the introduction of this 
 novelty, is surely dearly purchased at the sacrifice of all 
 probability. 
 
 Mr Irving's treatment of the trial scene is excellent. 
 He never forgets, as most Shylocks have done, that he is 
 in the great court of Venice, and he bears himself with a 
 restrained intensity suitable to the situation. He lays no 
 stress upon the incident of whetting the knife, but deals 
 with it as merely something by the way. It is in the 
 calm, immovable rigidity of aspect, in the concentrated 
 force which he throws into his words, that he leaves, and 
 
THEATRICAL REFORM. 197 
 
 rightly leaves, the audience to read the triumphant inflex- 
 ibility of his purpose. This contrasts finely with the 
 momentary flashing out of a passionate delight, where 
 Portia's words to Antonio, " You must prepare your bosom 
 for his knife,'' seem to put within his grasp the object of 
 his hate. It contrasts still more finely with the total 
 coUapse of mind and body, when at a glance the full 
 significance of the words — "This bond doth give thee 
 here no jot of blood," bursts upon his keen intellect. In 
 these words, and what follows, he seems to receive his 
 death-blow. It matters little whether they strip him of 
 his fortune, or tell him, as the condition of saving his 
 life, that he shall presently become a Christian. His 
 doom is written. His pulse will soon cease to beat. We 
 feel the prop is in effect gone "that doth sustain his life." 
 But he keeps a firm front to the last, and has a fine curl 
 of withering scorn upon his lip for Oratiano, as he walks 
 away to die in silence and alone. As he leaves the scene, 
 we feel that we care not to know how this or that great 
 actor of other days has treated it. This treatment is 
 good, and it is a fitting climax to the Shyloch of the 
 previous acts. 
 
 si sie omnia I Oh that the same care had been 
 bestowed upon the study of all the other characters that 
 has been bestowed upon this — the same pains taken to 
 make them as true to Shakespeare and to human nature ! 
 It would be idle to expect that the general run of actors 
 and actresses should do this for themselves. This is the 
 office of the head of a great theatre — call him manager, 
 stage director, or what you will. His should be the mind 
 to preside over the production of every play of this kind 
 — to observe where characters are taken up wrongly, 
 where action is introduced discordant with the characters. 
 
198 THEATRICAL REFORM. 
 
 or uiitrue to tte feeling of the scene — ^to see that the 
 meaning of what is spoken shall be brought clearly out — 
 and generally to make every one engaged do his best to 
 create the impression which the author had in view. 
 If such a mind had been at work at the Lyceum, the 
 graver faults to which we have called attention could not 
 have arisen. A few vivid suggestions, firmly enforced, 
 would probably have set all to rights, at least with the 
 minor performers ; for they all show sufficient ability and 
 familiarity with the stage to make it clear that they could 
 profit by them. It would only be returning to the practice 
 of the great patent theatres to have a director of this kind. 
 And until the necessity be recognised for the presence at 
 rehearsals of a predominating mind capable of ful fi lling 
 these functions, no theatre will ever fully satisfy an in- 
 telligent audience, or even do justice to the abilities of its 
 performers. 
 
 One word in conclusion, /Would it not be well for Mr 
 Irving to set the example of trying to put a stop to the 
 vulgar and distressing practice of recalling actors at the 
 end of acts, or even scenes % It has long ceased to be a 
 compliment to them, while it is simply an ofience to all 
 who deprecate so incongruous a disturbance of the illusion 
 of the scene. We once saw Juliet in a London theatre — 
 happily she was a foreigner, Mdlle. Stella Colas — rise 
 from her bed in the great potion-drinking scene to curtsey 
 to a clamorous knot of admirers. But we doubt if even 
 this was worse than the spectacle of Shyloek leading in 
 Portia in her doctor's dress, for the same purpose, at the 
 end of the trial scene, which may be nightly witnessed at 
 the Lyceum. 
 
THE MEININGEN COMPANY AND 
 THE LONDON STAGE. 
 
 (From 'Blackwood's Magazine,' August 1881.) 
 
 HAKESPEAEE und Kein' Ende" was, if 
 we remember rightly, the name of a little 
 sketch by Goethe, to whom the everlasting 
 talk about the great poet had become in- 
 tolerable. But what would he have said had he lived to 
 see the flood of Shakespeare literature with which the 
 press, and especially the German press, has continued to 
 be deluged from his day down to the present 1 Forty-five 
 closely printed octavo pages of the last volume of the 
 'Annual of the German Shakespeare Society' (Weimar, 
 1881), scarcely suffice to contaia the appalling catalogue 
 of the additions to Shakespearian bibliography which 
 have appeared in 1879 and 1880. Ten pages are filled 
 with the chronicle of merely German contributions to 
 this " too, too solid " mass of commentary and analysis. 
 But happily for Germany, this activity has not been con- 
 iined to the library. It has extended to the stage ; and 
 
200 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 in th.e same volume a catalogue is given of the perform- 
 ances of Shakespeare's plays in Germany from the 1st of 
 July 1879 to the 31st of December 1880, from which 
 it appears that within that period 1143 performances of 
 Shakespeare's plays had heen given on the various stages 
 of the German empire and of the German-speaking por- 
 tions of Austria. 'Hamlet' had been acted 139 times, 
 'Othello' 113, 'The Merchant of Venice' 104. Next 
 iu popularity seems to have been ' The Taming of the 
 Shrew,' which was acted 95 times, and at 60 different 
 theatres ; whUst lowest on the list comes the Second Part 
 of ' King Henry VI.,' which did not reach a second per- 
 formance. It is remarkable that while ' The Midsummer 
 Night's Dream ' found a footing in 30 theatres, and was 
 played 82 times, ' King Lear ' was only performed 40 
 times, and ' Macbeth ' 29, the former at 22 theatres, the 
 latter at 17. ' Much Ado About Nothing ' and ' Twelfth 
 Night ' appear to run each other close in popularity, the 
 former having been played 46, and the the latter 45 
 times. But the finest comedy of all, ' As You Like It,' 
 does not appear in the list. This says much for the good 
 sense of German managers ; for a Rosalind in the hands 
 of such actresses as the German stage can boast at the 
 present time would be too painful to contemplate. Oh 
 that some of our English managers would profit by the 
 example, and repress the ill-advised ambition which 
 prompts so many young ladies to don the doublet and 
 hose of " heavenly EosaHnd " without one of the qualities 
 of soul or of person by which she brought sunshine into 
 the shady places, and fiUed with an atmosphere of en- 
 chantment the woodland glades of the forest of Arden ! 
 
 At the head of this movement to make Shakespeare 
 kno-\vn on the stage, where alone he can be truly known, 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 201 
 
 seems to have Iseen the Meiningen Company. For years 
 the world has heard much of what these actors had heen 
 doing in this way in the little capital of their Duchy ; 
 and the result of their labours has within the last three 
 or four years been communicated to many of the leading 
 towns of Germany. ' Julius Csesar,' ' The Wiater's Tale,' 
 and ' Twelfth Night,' have apparently commanded the 
 greatest success, having been acted during the last two 
 years respectively 32, 29, and 13 times at 8 different 
 theatres. The echo of the Meiningen Company's reputa- 
 tion had reached England, and had been caught up with 
 the alacrity which makes us prone to believe in the 
 dramatic skill of every nation but our own. When, 
 therefore, the Ducal Company opened their campaign this 
 summer at Drury Lane, expectation was highly pitched, 
 and a welcome of more than wonted cordiality was given 
 to the propagators of what we had been widely told was 
 the true faith in regard to our great poet. 
 
 It was delightful to see the magnificent stage of Drury 
 Lane, best of all stages for the display of the qualities of 
 a fine actor, fiUed in a manner which to many recalled 
 performances that in past years had charmed the imagin- 
 ation and the heart, and to which they still cling with 
 grateful remembrance. To the great body of the audience, 
 who had no remembrances to look back upon, there was 
 a novel charm in the completeness of the mise en sckne — 
 the beauty of the costumes, the picturesque grouping, the 
 thoroughness with which the intentions of whoever pre- 
 sided over the getting up of the plays were carried out by 
 all the performers. Under the influence of this charm 
 they were carried away into enthusiasm ; and everywhere 
 one heard that never had so much been done to illustrate 
 Shakespeare and to show him to the best advantage. In 
 
202 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 their first excitement, people forgot that Shakespeare ap- 
 peals to the heart and to the imagination ; that he trusted 
 little or nothing to what scenic accessories could do for 
 his work ; and that amid aU this exuberance of scenic 
 decoration, this restless activity of picturesque crowds 
 that thronged the stage and distracted attention from 
 the central figures of the play, there was no little danger 
 of overwhelming the poet in the splendour of the trap- 
 pings with which he was invested. 
 
 In falling into this excess of scenic illustration, the 
 Meiaingen presiding spirit has made the same mistake 
 which has more than once been committed on the Eng- 
 lish stage. Until the days of John Kemble no attempt 
 was made there either at archseological accuracy or at 
 fulness of illustration. Costume and scenery were both 
 of secondary consideration ; and it speaks volumes for 
 the genius of Mrs Pritchard, of Garriok, and others, that 
 their audiences were so absorbed in the spirit of the scene 
 by the actors' powers of expression, that they found no 
 iacongruity in Lady Macbeth appealing, in a modern 
 hoop, to the " spirits that tend on murderous thoughts " 
 to unsex her and turn her " woman's mUk to gall " ; or 
 in Hamlet, following, pale, breathless, horror-struck, his 
 father's ghost to the battlements of Elsinore, in a black 
 velvet Court suit and a tie-wig. The souls of the audience 
 were riveted to the action of the scene, — voice, look, ges- 
 ture were true to the situation. What the actor wore 
 was of small account. But this was a state of things 
 which could not last, as men came to know more of the 
 history of costume and the proprieties of scenic decoration. 
 It was felt that, as a fine picture profits by an appropriate 
 frame, so good acting was set off by adjuncts which gave 
 local or historical truth to the scene, if only these were 
 
ARD THE LONDON STAGE. 203 
 
 kept in due sutordination. But the great size of the two 
 patent theatres of Covent Garden and Drury Lane was 
 in itself a snare to those who wished to work a reform in 
 this direction ; for the temptation naturally was to make 
 the scenery magnificent, and to fill the vast spaces of the 
 stage with crowds of supernumeraries. 
 
 From this snare even John Kemble, despite his edu- 
 cated taste, seems not to have escaped. His friend and 
 warm admirer, Sir Walter Scott, in his admirable review 
 of Boaden's ' Life of Kemble,' admits this much, and finds 
 it not amiss to remind the playgoers of that day of the 
 principle by which the treatment of such details ought to 
 be regulated. 
 
 "The muse of painting,'' he saya, "should be on the stage the 
 handmaid, not the rival, of her sister of the drama. Each art 
 should retain its due preponderance within its own proper region. 
 Let the scenery be as well painted, and made as impressiTe, as a 
 moderate-sized stage will afford ; but when the roof is raised to 
 give the scene-painter room to pile Pelion upon Ossa ; when the 
 stage is widened that his forests may be extended or deepened, 
 that his oceans may flow in space apparently interminable, — the 
 manager who commands these decorations is leaving his proper 
 duty, and altering entirely the purpose of the stage." 
 
 Again, in the same essay, while admitting that the 
 use of "dresses suited to the time and country, and of 
 landscape and architecture equally coherent," must be of 
 advantage, Scott qualifies his admission by insisting " that 
 this part of the theatrical business shall be kept in due 
 subordination to that which is strictly dramatic. Pro- 
 cessions and decorations," he adds, " belong to the same 
 province as scenes and dresses, and should be heedfully 
 attended to, hut at the same time kept under, that they 
 may relieve the action of the scene, instead of shouldering 
 aside the dramatic interest. 
 
204 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 If, as seems to have been th.e case, John Kemble 
 occasionally overstepped the boundary which true taste 
 would have prescribed, he avoided this error as a rule 
 in the plays of Shakespeare Only ia 'Julius Csesar' 
 and in ' Coriolanus ' did he fill the stage with crowds. 
 The management of his mob in ' Julius Csesar ' was ad- 
 mitted to be excellent by Ludwig Tieck, who did not 
 admire Kemble's Brutus, which he thought, in the teeth 
 of the opinion of all other critics, "was not acted, but 
 only declaimed with intelligence." The scene of the 
 mob, "the great Forum scene,'' he writes, "with its 
 swaying to and fro from turbulence to calm, was ex- 
 tremely well given" (' Dramaturgische Blatter'). The 
 costumes, too, he admitted, were excellent. But accord- 
 ing to the same shrewd critic, Shakespeare was " shoul- 
 dered aside " in ' Coriolanus ' for the sake of mere page- 
 antry and spectacle, large and important portions of the 
 play being cut out for the sake "of a procession with 
 trophies and eagles, which, entering at the back of the 
 stage, and extending over its whole expanse, consumed 
 a great deal of time." This procession, however, for 
 which no fewer than 240 supernumeraries were em- 
 ployed, was in its day regarded as a perfect miracle of 
 scenic splendour. People raved about it, as people raved 
 last winter about the scenery and costumes at the Lyceum 
 in Tennyson's ' Cup.' But when it was first presented, 
 with Mrs Siddons as the Volumnia, there was something 
 beyond the mere pageant to justify their delight. 
 
 " She was no longer Sarah Siddons," wrote Charles Young, " tied 
 down to the directions of the prompter's book — or trammelled by 
 old traditions — but the proud mother of a proud son and conquer- 
 ing hero ; so that, instead of dropping each foot at equidistance in 
 its place, with mechanical exactitude, and in cadence subservient 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 205 
 
 to the orchestra, deaf to the guidance of her woman's ear, but sen- 
 sitive to the throbbings of her haughty mother's heart, with flash- 
 ing eye, and proudest smile, and head erect, and hands pressed 
 firmly to her bosom, as if to repress by manual force its triumph- 
 ant swellings, she towered above all around, and rolled, and almost 
 reeled across the stage, her very soul, as it were, dilating and reel- 
 ing in its exultation, until her action lost all grace, and yet became 
 so true to nature, so picturesque, and so descriptive, that pit and 
 gallery sprang to their feet electrified by the transcendent execu- 
 tion of an original conception." 
 
 Without this feature, it is easy to conceive how tedious 
 and misplaced this interpolated pageant, for which Shake- 
 speare gives no warrant, must have seemed in the eyes of 
 a critic like Tieck ; and yet we have heard the splendour 
 and effect of this same procession descrihed by eyewit- 
 nesses as casting into the shade everything of the same 
 kind which was subsequently done either by Macready or 
 by Charles Kean. Certainly no man had a finer eye for 
 stage arrangements of this kind than Macready ; no man 
 could better put into his stage mob all the fluctuations of 
 feeling, of passion, and of unreason by which the mobs of 
 Shakespeare are swayed. In 1838 he got up ' Coriolanus ' 
 at Covent Garden, when for the last time it was worthily 
 presented in England. See what Miss Trances Williams 
 Wynn says of the stage arrangements — and she had seen it 
 under John Kemble's management, with his distinguished 
 sister as the Volumnia : — 
 
 " I never saw a play so beautifully, so correctly got up. It was 
 not only the costume, the scenery, the numberless accessories that 
 were carefully attended to, but the far more difScult task of regu- 
 lating the by-play of the inferior actors was also accomplished 
 The effect given by the number of the mob, by the variety of action, 
 which seemed to give Shakespearian individuality to every member 
 of it, is indescribable. The cowed, degraded appearance of the 
 Volscians in the Triumph was very striking. Coriolarms sitting at 
 
206 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 the hearth of Aufidias, was as fine a picture as can be imagined." — 
 ' Diaries of a Lady of Quality' (London, 1864), p. 304. 
 
 Those who remember the Shakespearian revivals by 
 Mr Macready during his too brief tenure of Drury Lane 
 Theatre, will recall many other instances of his powers as 
 a stage director. His love of the picturesque was governed 
 by a true sense of proportion. His accessories were kept 
 in their place, not allowed to interrupt the action or in- 
 trude upon the higher interests of the scene. The move- 
 ments and the general disposition of his crowds were as 
 varied as those of a real crowd would be, while they all 
 tended to stimulate and give expression to the feeling 
 with which the poet intended to animate the spectators. 
 For it should not be forgotten that when Brutus or Marc 
 Antony, for example, addresses the Eoman mob, it is to 
 us, the spectators in stalls and boxes and galleries, that 
 their words are addressed. If we axe not made to feel 
 and to be swayed by their rhetoric, the primary purpose 
 of the poet is missed, and all the agitation and tumult, the 
 waywardness and the shouting of the stage mob appeal to 
 our eyes and other senses with comparatively trifling efi^ect. 
 Macready thoroughly imderstood this fundamental prin- 
 ciple of good stage management; and in the latest in- 
 stance in which his skill in this direction was called into 
 play — ^the management of the tumultuous mob of Ghent 
 in Sir Henry Taylor's ' Philip van Aitevelde,' — his fine 
 perception of the point to which scenic accessories can be 
 carried without injury to the higher interest of a drama 
 was pre-eminently conspicuous. 
 
 In this quality Charles Kean was not less pre-eminently 
 deficient, although for a time he took the town by storm 
 by the redundant splendour of pageantry and spectacle in 
 his so-called " revivals," under which all that is most pre- 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 207 
 
 cioTis in Shakespeare was smothered and obscured. Play- 
 after play was produced, in which every resource of the 
 carpenter, the antiquarian, and the costumier was ex- 
 hausted. The stage groaned under masses of supernu- 
 meraries too vast to be manageable, and only capable of 
 following with dismal monotony the stereotyped action of 
 leaders almost as guiltless as themselves of intelligence 
 and poetical feeling. Fascinating at first to audiences 
 who sought only to be amused, this species of entertain- 
 ment ended in paUing even upon them, for it was impos- - 
 sible to find fresh stimulus to tastes that had been sur- 
 feited with the mere excitements of pageantry and cos- 
 txmie. But this was not the only evU that resulted from 
 a system, which was indeed " quite from the purpose of 
 playing." Fine acting was absolutely incompatible with 
 aU this gorgeous splendour and mere appeal to the senses. 
 The better class of spectators, those who reverenced their 
 Shakespeare, were driven from the theatre ; while actors 
 who aimed at moving the imaginations of an audience by 
 the graces of speech and action, and by the careful de- 
 velopment of the poet's purpose, were discouraged. What 
 the effect has been upon the Enghsh school of actors has 
 long been apparent in the all but total disappearance from 
 among us of the power to put upon the stage any of Shake- 
 speare's plays in a manner for which an educated English- 
 man does not blush. 
 
 To how low a pitch the standard of English acting in 
 the higher drama is reduced was never more apparent 
 than in 'Hamlet,' 'OtheUo,' and 'King Lear,' as pre- 
 sented at the Princess's Theatre last winter, during the 
 performances given there by America's finest actor, Mr 
 Edwin Booth. With very few exceptions, the performers 
 were such as twenty years ago would not have found en- 
 
208 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 gagements at any of the established provincial theatres, 
 much less have been tolerated on a London stage of any 
 pretensions. None of the characters were made out, 
 because obviously none of them were understood by the 
 actors themselves. The rhythmic value of blank verse 
 was an idea which seemed never to have entered into 
 their minds ; nay, the very rudiments of the actor's art — 
 the management of the voice, articulate speech, appropriate 
 grace or dignity of deportment, assumption of individual 
 character — had not only never been mastered, but to all 
 appearance were not even aimed at. And yet it was said 
 at the time that every effort had been made, and no ex- 
 pense spared, by the manager to find the strongest troupe 
 that could be got together to support Mr Booth. If this 
 were so, pitiful indeed must be the resources available to 
 any one who aspires to re-establish the old reputation of 
 the English stage for the acting of a poetical drama. 
 
 How grievously Mr Booth suffered from the incompe- 
 tence of those around him, needs not to be told. Even 
 genius on the stage cannot show itself at its best, when 
 all around is feeble or absolutely bad. But to an actor of 
 his stamp, who charmed not by the flashes of genius, but 
 rather by finish and high accomplishment, wrought of care- 
 ful study and long experience, aided by a fine voice, ad- 
 mirable elocution, genuine sensibility, and the natural 
 grace of a well-balanced and elastic figure, the results 
 were simply disastrous. Kept in a constant state of irri- 
 tation by the bad acting of those who surrounded him, 
 the public were not always in the mood to do him justice, 
 and occasionally visited upon him the sins for which he 
 was not responsible. 
 
 It indeed spoke volumes for the genuine merits of Mr 
 Booth, that, in spite of every disadvantage, he established 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 209 
 
 himself in tlie esteem of the best judges of his art ; and 
 indeed in certain passages — such as the mad scenes of 
 'King Lear' — he rose to a height of excellence which 
 explained and justified his great reputation throughout 
 America. Not for many a day has there heen seen on 
 our stage so fine an example as these scenes afforded of 
 what the actor can do to irradiate the pages of the dram- 
 atist. The most thorough student of Shakespeare would 
 be the foremost to admit that Mr Booth threw a flood of 
 fresh light upon these great scenes. His action, as he sat 
 watching the simulated vagaries of Edgar, with looks 
 which, by their very intenseness of credidity and wonder, 
 showed how his own reason was beginning to totter, — 
 " my wits begin to turn," — was in the best style of the 
 actor's art. But there was an approach to genius — that 
 rarest of gifts — in the portrayal of actual madness in the 
 subsequent scene, and in the way the actor usfed the hand- 
 ful of straws which he carried to give to it the semblance 
 of complete reality. At one time it became in his hand 
 the bow to " draw me a clothier's yard," and send it home 
 to the " clout "j at another, each separate straw seemed 
 to be to the poor mad king a living creature, against whom 
 he launched the shafts of his sarcasm and railing. Such 
 acting, once seen, becomes a permanent boon to the stu- 
 dent. It clings to the memory like something witnessed 
 in actual Hfe, being, as it is, a living commentary on the 
 text, which, when of this quality of excellence and truth 
 to nature, outweighs all that can be done in the way of 
 exposition by the subtlest or most eloquent of critics.-' 
 Admirable as, in the main, Mr Booth's King Lear was, 
 it did not maintain this high level of excellence through- 
 
 1 "The skilful actor," says Gervinus, "will always be a better 
 interpreter of Shakespeare than the most learned of commentators." 
 
 O 
 
210 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 out ; but this seemed to be due not so muct to any defect 
 of conception as to a weakness of phydque, possibly tem- 
 porary, which prevented him from giving full force to the 
 outbursts of wayward anger, or adequate depth of pathos 
 to the oveifflowings of passionate tenderness, which are 
 demanded for a wholly satisfactory rendering of this char- 
 acter. We have called this weakness " possibly tempor- 
 ary," because it was well known that during the latter 
 portion of this gentleman's performances he was suffering 
 from a domestic anxiety calculated to impose a very severe 
 strain upon a nature obviously most sensitive. 
 
 It was fortunate for Mr Booth that he did not leave 
 England without an opportunity of being seen under more 
 favourable conditions at the Lyceum Theatre, where he 
 alternated with Mr Irviag the characters of Othello and 
 lago. Very far short of excellence as the general per- 
 formance of ' Othello ' was at that theatre, still it con- 
 trasted favourably with the cast of the same play at the 
 Princess's Theatre. The Gassio, it is true, was colourless 
 and commonplace; but the Gassio of the Princess's was 
 simply an outrage upon propriety. On the other hand, 
 the Roderigo of the Princess's was as far above the 
 Roderigo of the Lyceum as an actor of average ability, 
 trained upon good models, is above one whose ability, 
 such as it was, had obviously enjoyed no such advantage. 
 For Mr Living and Miss Ellen Terry, it is needless to say, 
 there were no counterparts at the Princess's ; and in the 
 Brdbantio of Mr Mead — a good specimen of an actor of 
 the old school — a striking contrast was afforded to the 
 Brabantio of the Princess's. Little as Brabantio has to 
 do and say, that little, especially in the scene of the 
 Venetian Council, is of radical importance; and in Mr 
 Mead's hands not a point was lost. He was just the 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 211 
 
 father who, while by his own coldness and want of sym- 
 pathy he had driven Desdemona to seek sympathy else- 
 where, yet was cut to the very heart when he woke up to 
 find that she had chosen a husband and a future for her- 
 self. When we heard, at the end of the play, that he 
 had died of grief, we remembered how consistent such an 
 ending was with the heart-stricken look and quivering 
 tones of the actor, as he spoke the few significant words 
 with which he resigned his daughter to Othello. 
 
 'No more marked contrast of styles could well be im- 
 agined than that between the styles of Mr Irving and Mr 
 Booth. The lago and the Othello of Mr Irving were both 
 more calculated to strike the imagination than those of 
 Mr Booth, for in conception no less than in treatment 
 they were full of novelty, and enlivened by a miuuteness 
 of detail which ran over at times into something border- 
 ing on extravagance. If Mr Booth's Othello wanted fire 
 and force, Mr Irving's was without the exquisite tender- 
 ness and the native dignity by which Othello maintains 
 his hold upon our sympathies, ia spite of the aU but 
 incredible credulity with which he allows himself to be 
 made the dupe of logo. But of the two, Mr Irving's 
 conception, upon the whole, seemed as though it would 
 have come nearer to the Othello whom Shakespeare drew, 
 if only nature had endowed him with what is wanted to 
 give utterance to the intense and concentrated passion 
 which is demanded by the volcanic nature of the Moor. 
 As logo, however, Mr Booth's impersonation was much 
 more hkely than Mr Irving's to impress those around him 
 with the belief of his "-exceeding honesty." It had the 
 outward semblance of frankness and geniality by which 
 people are thrown off their guard ; while the utter hard- 
 ness of heart, and unscrupulous selfishness of the man, 
 
212 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 who has said to himself, " Evil, be thou my good," flashed 
 out upon occasions with tenfold force by contrast with 
 the careless ease of his general bearing. Every word told 
 without having undue stress laid upon it. Mr Booth's 
 soliloquies were those of a man really thinking aloud, and 
 they let the audience into the secret of logo's character, 
 without any of those conscious asides and knittings of 
 the brows in which only stage lagos ever indulge. About 
 Mr Irving's lago, on the other hand, there was too much 
 effort, too much " affectation of a bright-eyed ease," too 
 palpable a simulation of foppish jauntiness not consistent 
 either with logo's character or position, too constant a 
 desire to provoke attention when others were by. Along 
 with this, the actor, it seemed to us, had recourse in his 
 soliloquies to an excess of little artifices, intended to give 
 an appearance of spontaneousness to the act of thinking, 
 but which produced exactly the opposite effect, while 
 throughout there was too much of the crafty restless look 
 and of the cynical self-gratulation, which are more appro- 
 priate to the viUain of melodrama than to the ingrained 
 and polished hypocrite of the Machiavellian type. 
 
 One advantage Mr Booth had in both characters over 
 his brilliant coadjutor in his clear and musical utterance 
 of Shakespeare's verse. Nor was his example without a 
 beneficial influence on Mr Irving, who, under it, seemed 
 to shake off in no small degree that affectation — for surely 
 it is affectation — of a mode of delivery which, however 
 attractive to some, is a great drawback to his best per- 
 formances. 
 
 In Tennyson's ' Cup,' Mr Irving seemed to us to have 
 already entered upon a new course in this respect. It 
 was well for the poet that he did so ; for to our thinking 
 not one of the resources of the actor's art but was neces- 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 213 
 
 sary to give attraction to what, as a mere piece of dra- 
 matic writing, was of very ordinary merit. With the 
 critics, Miss Ellen Terry's Gamma carried off the honours ; 
 hut, with all deference to their infalUhUity, the poet owed 
 much less to the Qamma than to the Synorix of the 
 Lyceum. In ordinary hands Synorix WQjild have been 
 revolting : but this Mr Irving's skill prevented. He had 
 obviously taken immense pains over the character, and his 
 performance was fuU of nice points of detail, which 
 showed how much the actor had done to strengthen the 
 work of the poet where it was weakest. 
 
 The part of Camma, is as gracious as that of Synorix is 
 the reverse ; and the actress is assured of the sympathy 
 of the audience from the first. Moreover, the poet has 
 given her ia the last scene a splendid opportunity for that 
 silent acting which is the test of true histrionic power — 
 an opportunity, however, of which only an actress gifted 
 with a poetic imagiaation could take advantage. Of the 
 strange and deadly revenge devised by Gamma no hint 
 in words can be given by the poet ; for to do so would be 
 fatal to the interest of the denouement. But what the 
 dramatist must not do, the actress might and ought to 
 have done, by making the audience feel through all the 
 early portions of the scene that she is possessed by some 
 great purpose which shaU explain the mystery of her con- 
 sent to marry the profligate Tetrarch, the assassin of her 
 husband. Again, when the poison she has shared with 
 Synmix begius to take effect upon Gamm-a's brain, and 
 she imagines she hears the voice of Sinnatus caUiug to 
 her, voice and look and gesture should be such as to 
 convey to the audience the impression of a mind begin- 
 ning to waver from the effects of the draught, and of a 
 frame slowly penetrated by the paralysing influence of 
 
214 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 the poisoB, But on the occasions of oui visits to the 
 theatre, we looked in vain, in the impersonation of the 
 actress, for any such clues to the language or purpose of 
 the poet. What an actress of genius might have made 
 of this scene it is impossible to say, hut great effects have 
 been produced in. much less striking situations. As it 
 was, however, not only this scene, but the whole play, 
 viewed as a drama, was singularly ineffective; and but 
 for the unrivalled beauty of the scenery, and the general 
 excellence of the mise en schne, not even the curiosity and 
 admiration with which Mr Tennyson's name invests all 
 his work could have made it keep its hold upon the stage 
 for any time. The Sinnatus of Mr Terriss^was of great 
 value in the general effect of the piece. It was a thor- 
 oughly well made out sketch, and showed the abilities of 
 this promising actor at their best. 
 
 Since the days when Mr Macready produced ' Acis and 
 Galatea ' at Drury Lane, with Stanfield's scenery, nothing 
 so beautiful in mere scenic adjuncts has been seen in 
 England. Nor was the selection of the costumes, and the 
 disposition of the priestesses of Artemis, who thronged 
 her temple, less to be admired. The latter would cer- 
 tainly have been improved by a little of that variety of 
 action, and of that highly developed skill in grouping, 
 for which the Meiningen company are conspicuous. And 
 the accomplished director of that establishment. Heir 
 Chronegk, has his company too well in hand for such a 
 thing to be possible as that the high priestess of Artemis 
 should, like her representative at the Lyceum, indulge 
 her peculiar notions of the dignity which befits that office 
 by sitting on the altar-steps hugging her knees whUe a 
 solemn ceremony is going forward. Eeading, as the 
 public had done, of Gamma's matchless grace and eleva- 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 215 
 
 tion — of the way in which she " fell, as if by chance, into 
 positions which rival the best of the Greek sculptures," — 
 an action so contrary to every notion of what was appro- 
 priate to the character and the situation, must have had a 
 rather bewildering effect upon that portion of the audience 
 who take au serieux the commentaries of theatrical critics. 
 In former days there was always, we have understood, 
 some controlling power in every leading London theatre, 
 which would have made such an impropriety impossible, 
 even if it had been attempted to be indulged in — which 
 is most improbable — by any member of the company. 
 There are innumerable signs that ia most of our theatres 
 no such control is exercised now; and yet, without an 
 authoritative voice to regulate every arrangement of the 
 stage, one can very well see how vain it is to hope for 
 that general excellence which, if it cannot inspire an 
 audience with enthusiasm — for this only genius can do — 
 will at least send them away instructed and content. It 
 would be unjust, however, not to admit that such man- 
 agers as Mr Hare and Mr Bancroft do not merely recog- 
 nise the necessity for such a control, but exercise it with 
 rigour, and with the best results, to the reputation of 
 their theatres, and ia the gratification of their audiences. 
 " The study of perfection " would seem to be their law. 
 What is the consequence? Simply this, that nowhere, 
 not even in Paris, are pieces to be seen put upon the 
 stage or acted with greater finish or vraisemblance than at 
 the St James's Theatre or the Haymarket. The pieces 
 themselves may be slight ; but, such as they are, they are 
 admirably given, and with a spirit, freshness, and indi- 
 viduality sufficient to show that, under favourable con- 
 ditions, a school of acting might be revived in England, 
 capable of holding its own against any in Europe. 
 
216 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 One hopeful sign is, tliat our best managers and actors 
 seem not to be above learning wbatever of good their 
 foreign rivals have to teach them. Lessons from abroad 
 they have had in plenty during the last three or four 
 years. Italy, France, and Holland have all sent to London 
 excellent specimens of their various schools — none more 
 excellent than the little troupe of Dutch actors who, last 
 summer, surprised their much too scanty audiences by 
 performances in which the fine qualities and great artistic 
 skiU of the leading artists were scarcely more conspicuous 
 than the individuality of character and pantomime by 
 which every minor actor, down to the merest supernumer- 
 ary, gave an air of reality to the scene as delightful as it 
 is unwonted. By this example some of our theatres have 
 already profited; and if English histrionic art has any- 
 thing to learn from the Meiningen company, it is in this 
 direction also. 
 
 Germany, like England, has at this moment but few 
 actors of mark in the poetic drama, and the price set upon 
 the services of those few, there as here, puts out of the 
 question any attempt to concentrate them in any one 
 establishment. The Grand Duke of Meiningen has there- 
 fore wisely confined his efforts in the cause of the drama 
 to making the most of such talent as can be made avail- 
 able upon easier terms. He has brought together a com- 
 pany of actors of more than average ability. He has 
 given to them permanent engagements and every motive 
 for working together in the friendly rivalry of true artists, 
 under the discipline of a stage director of paramount 
 authority. Each is bound to co-operate in giving strength 
 to the cast of the pieces produced, by taking, if necessary, 
 a subordinate part in them, — a condition impossible in 
 England, where actors judge of themselves and are judged 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 217 
 
 of ty the public according to the nomiaal importance of 
 the parts in which they appear ; but practicable in Ger- 
 many, where no such rule prevails, and where Schroder, 
 the greatest actor of his time, when at the height of his 
 fame, thought the Ghost in ' Hamlet ' a part not un- 
 worthy of his powers. No pains, apparently, are spared 
 to make the members of this company respect themselves 
 and the art which they profess. AU that a liberal sub- 
 vention can do is done to give richness and local colour 
 to the appointments of the stage, and these are selected 
 with a skUl, and apphed with an energy, which helps 
 to keep alive in the establishment a spirit of emulation, 
 and a wholesome pride in the successful results of a 
 common effort. 
 
 It was a bold enterprise to transfer to London not 
 merely the actors, but aU. the scenic appointments of a 
 theatre conducted upon such principles, and to place 
 London playgoers in a position to judge of its merits and 
 defects, as favourable as though they had made a pilgrim- 
 age to Meiningen itself. In the spacious area of the 
 Drury Lane stage, the qualities in which these represen- 
 tations chiefly excel had ample opportunities for display. 
 For, as already indicated, the strength of the Meiningen 
 theatre lies not in the pre-eminent excellence of its actors 
 so much as in the pomp and prodigality of the scenic 
 accessories. For this mode of treatment ' Julius Csesar ' 
 affords the fullest scope, especially during the three first 
 acts. In them the mob of Eome play a not insignificant 
 part, and Herr Chronegk turned to the best account the 
 opportunity of making them serve as a striking back- 
 ground to the main action. The wholesome operation of 
 a system which allows no point, however small, to be 
 slighted, was at once brought home to the audience in 
 
218 THE MEININaEN COMPANY 
 
 the spirit and individuality given to the individuate in 
 the mob, to whom Shakespeare has assigned short speeches 
 at the opening of the play. They were represented by 
 actors weU studied in their art, fit mouthpieces for the 
 shallow, unstable populace, w&o were made visibly to wince 
 imder the taunts of Mareellus for the fickleness which 
 had led them to bestow on Gcesar the same acclamations 
 which Uusj had so recently given to his rival Pompey. 
 The key-note was well struck for what was to foUow in 
 the processional entry of Gcesar, with an array of attend- 
 ants wellnigh regal ; and the striking figure of the sooth- 
 sayer, with his single sentence, "Beware the Ides of 
 March ! " admirably delivered, was a further proof of the 
 care taken to give due effect to the smallest incidents of 
 the play by placing every character in competent hands. 
 
 As the play advanced, the working of the same prin- 
 ciple was everywhere apparent. In the scene with Portia 
 (Act II. sc. 4), and again in the Senate House (Act III. 
 sc. 1), the soothsayer became a most imposing figure. 
 Scarcely less admirable was the small part of Artemi- 
 dorus ; and although the minor characters of Lucitis, of 
 Goeaar's servant, and other attendants, were intrusted to 
 young women, probably from, the impossibility of getting 
 boys to fill them, the parts were really acted, the words 
 were well spoken — ^not walked through and mumbled as 
 is almost invariably the case upon our stage. Indeed, 
 several of them were represented by actresses who sub- 
 sequently acquitted themselves with distinction in im- 
 portant characters in the other plays of the Meiningen 
 repertoire. 
 
 For all this, every true lover of the drama felt grate- 
 ful ; and scarcely less so for the beauty of the scenic 
 arrangements — with the exception of a very futile and 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 219 
 
 misplaced attempt to -depict what should have been left 
 to the imagination, " the tempest dropping fire," and the 
 general electrical disturbance, described by Gasca, on the 
 night before Gcesar's death. Nothing but good, however, 
 is to be said of the manner in which the scene in Ccesar's 
 house and that of his assassination were presented, or of 
 the way in which the grouping and action of the char- 
 acters were devised and carried out. The actors wore 
 their Eoman dresses well, and maintaiaed each his own 
 individuality in broad and marked lines. These scenes, 
 so splendidly conceived by the poet, were, in short, pre- 
 sented in a way at once to stimulate and to satisfy the 
 imagination. If or do we remember to have seen a more 
 impresave picture than when Mare Antony, left alone 
 upon the stage, went up to the dead Gcesar as he lay 
 swathed ia his purple robes, and, standing at his head, 
 poured out his hitherto suppressed anguish and purpose 
 of revenge in the speech, admirably spoken by Herr 
 Bamay, beginning — 
 
 " Oh, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth," &c. 
 
 In all this the stage director had given true assistance 
 to both actor and poet ; and we were again reminded of 
 the excellence of the Meiningen system in the genuine 
 pathos which the young lady who played Antony's servant 
 threw into the exclamation, " Oh, Caesar ! " as she caught 
 a sight of his body, and fell on her knees beside it. It is 
 by little touches of this kind, quite as much as by elabor- 
 ate accessories, that the Meiningen company justify their 
 claims as reformers of the stage. These touch the heart, 
 and foster the proper mood for appreciating the purpose 
 of the poet ; whereas there is always danger that this 
 
220 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 mood may be disturbed, if the appeals to the eye be too 
 frequent or too vivid. 
 
 Something of this danger was incurred in the imme- 
 diately following scene in the Porum. Every resource of 
 the establishment was called into play in order to give a 
 sense of reality to this scene — a scene in which Shake- 
 speare's genius grappled, and successfully grappled, with 
 what was certainly one of the most striking events in 
 Eoman story. In the various costumes of the vast crowd 
 which filled the stage, the student of antiquity was de- 
 lighted to see the results of the most scholarly research ; 
 while the artist's eye was gladdened by contrasts of colour 
 and variety of grouping, in which there were suggestions 
 for many pictures. The general disposition of the scene 
 was excellent, and quite sufficient for all dramatic pur- 
 poses. But it was in the way that the crowd became a 
 living, seething mass of Ul-instructed, excitable, passionate 
 human creatures, — " a fierce democratie sway'd at will " 
 by the rhetoric first of Brutus and then of Antony, — that 
 the presiding spirit of the company made his power felt. 
 Not a hint given by Shakespeare in the interjected 
 speeches of the first, second, third, and fourth citizens, 
 but was turned to profit. The representatives seized and 
 directed the variable moods of the mob with admirable 
 skUl, moving in and out among them, and driving home 
 their speeches with the tones and action of accomplished 
 actors. The crowd itself, moreover, listened to the two great 
 orators as if, indeed, a portentous issue hung upon their 
 words, and step by step it was wrought up to the frenzy 
 of passion, which in Shakespeare finds vent in the words — 
 
 " See. Cit.—Oo fetch fire ! 
 Third Cit. — Pluck down benches ! 
 Fourth Cit. — Pluck down the' forms, windows, anything ! " 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 221 
 
 and which in reality made the Eoman populace lay hold 
 of every inflammahle thing within their reach, musical 
 instruments included, to make a funeral pyre for Caesar's 
 hody in the Forum, not three hundred yards from the spot 
 where Marc Antony spoke his craftily devised harangue. 
 
 But the very vividness with which aU this was acted 
 could not fail to do some violence to Shakespeare, who 
 naturally throws more stress upon Brutus and Antony as 
 the moving spirits of the scene than upon those whom 
 they address, whereas upon the stage they were somewhat 
 overshadowed hy the prominence of the mob. An actor 
 of less power and accomplishment than Herr Bamay 
 would have run great risk of heing utterly eclipsed. Only 
 his imposing voice and presence enabled him to tower over 
 aU the weltering turbvdence of the scene, and, despite the 
 somewhat too frequent interruptions of assent from the 
 crowd, to keep the attention of the audience fixed upon 
 himself as the central figure. It was in this scene, as in 
 the previous scene in the Senate House, that Herr Bamay 
 — ^who," we hear, is not a permanent member of the Mein- 
 ingen troupe — proved himself to be of a far higher order 
 than those with whom he was associated. His elocution, 
 unforced and incisive, aided by a flexible penetrating 
 voice, and by the graces of free and appropriate action, 
 told with immense effect. When he descended from the 
 rostrum to a place beside the bier, his tall and command- 
 ing figure prevented him. from being dwarfed, as otherwise 
 he must have been, by the crowd which was allowed to 
 press too closely and eagerly upon him. Not soon will 
 be forgotten by those who saw it, the admirable way in 
 which he illuminated with voice and action the speech 
 beginning, " If you have tears, prepare to shed them now ! " 
 — ^working up his audience to the highest pitch of sym- 
 
222 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 pathy, till he had prepared them for the climax of his 
 rhetoric, as he threw back the mantle from Omsai's face, 
 with the words — 
 
 " Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold 
 Our Caesar's vesture wounded ? Look you here, — 
 Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors." 
 
 By this time he had moved the audience in front, as 
 well as those upon the stage. He sent the same thrill 
 through them hy showing to their eyes that " poor and 
 bleeding piece of earth," to which the civilised world had 
 hut the day before been bowed in homage. 
 
 The Gassius of Herr Teller was a performance of great 
 merit. He had "the lean and hungry look": of the 
 ascetic republican, who "thought too much," and filled 
 CcBsar with distrust. An actor of large experience, trained 
 in the light of good traditions, he threw himself into the 
 part with the sincerity of a true artist. His Gassius was 
 therefore a figure to remember ; and this all the more that 
 in subsequent performances, the same actor proved himself 
 as much at home in comedy, as in the higher poetical 
 drama. The Brutus was not so satisfactory, — lacking the 
 dignity of an ardent nature, disciplined to self-command, 
 which Shakespeare has so wonderfully drawn. In the 
 beautiful scene with Portia, the absence of this charac- 
 teristic became most conspicuous ; and its absence had an 
 evil effect upon the Portia who, beside a Brutus of the 
 highest stamp, would not, as she did, address her remon- 
 strances to him with a noisy vehemence, strangely at 
 variance with the mingled dignity and tenderness which 
 breathes through every word that Shakespeare has placed 
 in her mouth. And yet the actress, FraiHein Haverland, 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 223 
 
 showed kerself a mistress of her art in the only other 
 scene where Portia appears (Act II. sc. 5), where she is 
 hurried into the street by her anxiety to learn the news of 
 the attempt she knows is ahout to he made on Gcesar's 
 Ufe. Into this scene she threw an intensity which carried 
 the audience by storm, and to which they delighted to 
 give a hearty recognition. 
 
 In ' The Winter's Tale,' which almost rivalled ' Julius 
 Csesar ' in popularity, a severer test was applied to the 
 powers of the Meiaingen system to do justice to the finer 
 poetical elements of the Shakespearian drama. The play 
 affords scope in Leontes and ia Hermione for the subtlest 
 histrionic power ; while the episode of Florizel and Per- 
 dita, sweetest of idyls, demands the most delicate hand- 
 ling, not only in their representatives, but also in the 
 portrayal of the ideal pastoral life in which their story is 
 set. The Drury Lane audience were better able to form 
 a comparative judgment ia this case, for the play has been 
 seen, and at no very distant date, on both the London 
 and provincial stages. In exquisite beauty of costumes 
 and of grouping, the Meiningen performance left nothing 
 to be desired. At every turn it seemed as if some of the 
 great pictures of the Venetian school had come to life. 
 The scenery, too, with one exception, was all that could 
 be wished ; and everywhere was apparent the same fine 
 sense of colour, of picturesque arrangement, of the value 
 of little incidents of detail, as in the 'Julius Csesar,' 
 carried in some respects to even a higher pitch of ex- 
 cellence. 
 
 As a mere piece of scenic splendour and stage effect, it 
 would be difficult to imagiae anything superior to the 
 scene of Hermione's trial, and the effect upon the awe- 
 
224 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 struck crowd of the thunderbolt that sweeps from heaven, 
 in answer to Leontes' sacrilegious words — 
 
 " There is no truth at all i' the oracle " — 
 
 that has -just proclaimed Hermione's innocence. But how 
 dearly was the showy effect of such a scene purchased by 
 the violation of truth to Shakespeare, and to all probabil- 
 ity ! Shakespeare places the scene in " a court of justice." 
 Here it was in a public street. No doubt Hermione 
 complains of having been hurried 
 
 " Here to thia place, i' the open air, before 
 I have got strength of limb " — 
 
 but this merely means that she, in her yet delicate state, 
 has been hurried " through the open air " to the place of 
 trial. The temptation to strain the words of the poet 
 had, however, been obviously too great, for it gave the 
 stage director the opportunity of bringing in his weU- 
 drUled crowds to express, by looks and exclamation, their 
 sympathy with the unhappy queen, and to keep up a run- 
 ning commentary of byplay upon the words of the leading 
 actors. But the mischief did not stop here. From the 
 desire to compose his groups well, he subjected Hermione 
 to an act of unmanly rigour, of which not even Leontes 
 would have been guilty ; for in place of beiag conducted 
 to a seat, as befitted a woman fresh from childbed, and 
 that woman an emperor's daughter, and herself a queen, 
 she was made to stand on a raised platform, almost jostled 
 by a mob of bystanders, throughout a scene of more than 
 ordinary length. Placed in such circumstances, it was 
 perhaps not strange that the speeches of Hermione were 
 given by Fraulein Haverland with an almost masculine 
 energy of tone and gesture, little suited to express that 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 225 
 
 touching combination of wounded dignity and tenderness 
 ■with martyr -like sweetness and heart -searching pathos 
 which Shakespeare has infused into every line of this 
 scene. 
 
 In this mode of treating a scene of exceptional poetic 
 value, we must decline to adopt the teaching of the Mein- 
 ingen school, for it is, in the worst sense, a " shouldering 
 aside of the dramatic interest " for the sake of what is of no 
 moment whatever to the right imderstanding of the play 
 — ^nay, more, for what, hy its intrusive prominence, actu- 
 ally impedes the performers from giving due effect to the 
 conception of the poet. 
 
 The same absence of sympathy with Shakespeare's 
 purpose was not less conspicuous in the last scene of 
 the play, where, after sixteen years spent by Leontes in 
 mourning for the wrong he has done to the wife whom 
 he believes to be dead, she is restored to him by Paulina. 
 The situation is one of the finest in Shakespeare ; he has 
 been at peculiar pains to invest it with every circumstance 
 of solemnity. Hermione, sanctified by long years of seclu- 
 sion and grief, through which she has been sustained only 
 by the promise of the oracle that her lost daughter shall 
 be restored to her, is to be given back to the husband, all 
 whose remorse could not, until that child was found, win 
 her again to his arms, so wide was the gulf which had 
 been placed between them by the outrage done to her 
 as wife, as mother, and as queen. Like a strain of sad 
 sweet music, the scene brings all the pain and misunder- 
 standing of the earlier acts to a harmonious close. So 
 anxious has Shakespeare been to indicate the way he 
 wished it to be treated, that he places it in "a chapel 
 in Paulina's house." How great, then, was the surprise 
 
226 THE MEININGEN COMPANY 
 
 of those wlio knew this, when the curtain rose upon one 
 of those impossihle fairy groves of raiabow hues which 
 precede the transformation scene of a pantomime ; and 
 this, although the text in as many words indicates that 
 the curtained recess to which Paulina leads Leontes stands 
 at the end of a picture-gallery along which she has just 
 brought him ! If the stage director had not felt the situa- 
 tion, as little did the actors seem to do so. H&rmione, not 
 robed to resemble a statue, but wearing the royal apparel 
 in which she had appeared in the first act, inspired no 
 reverence, for she wore no trace on her looks of the 
 " woman, bright with something of an angel light," with 
 which long years of holy meditation had suffused them. 
 Here, too, Herr Barnay as Leontes proved quite unequal 
 to the situation. Where were the amazement, the awe, 
 the pang of remembrance, the weUing-up of the old pas- 
 sionate love at the sight of his much-wronged queen, 
 which finds vent in the words — 
 
 " Oh, thus she stood, 
 Even with such life of majesty, warm life, 
 As now it coldly stands, when first I woo'd her " ? 
 
 Where, too, was aU the trembling ecstasy of mingled hope 
 and fear, as, while he gazed, the figure before him seemed 
 to stir with life ? Eemembering what this scene was, as 
 last it was seen in London, with Macready as Leontes, and 
 what its effect upon the audience was, we felt that our 
 German visitors have yet much to learn before they can 
 interpret worthily what is best and highest in the Shake- 
 spearian drama. What waste of power, too, — what dis- 
 regard of the sense of proportion — to expend so much 
 labour and wealth of illustration on all the preceding 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 227 
 
 portions of the play, and then to let it come to a close 
 so flat and unimpressive! 
 
 Space faUs us, otherwise we might further illustrate 
 this blindness to the finer poetic aspects of the play by 
 the manner in which the episode of Fjorizel and Perdita 
 was treated. Hard indeed, we own, must it always be to 
 find a young actor and actress equal to parts of such ideal 
 beauty ; and if their Meiningen representatives were little 
 like what the imagination pictures, one is too much ac- 
 customed to such disappointments to complain. But the 
 scenes where they are the central figures were overlaid 
 by the introduction of a great deal too many figures, by 
 too many garish dresses, and dances of the baUet type, 
 which merely delayed the action, and distracted attention 
 from what was of more importance. All praise, however, 
 was due here, as in ' Julius CsBsar,' to the care taken with 
 the minor parts throughout the play. This exemplary 
 quality, indeed, distinguished aU the performances ; and 
 set before those who take upon themselves the responsi- 
 bility of conducting a theatre an example which, if fol- 
 lowed, may do much to raise the character of the English 
 stage. 
 
 We must not close our remarks on the play without a 
 word of warm commendation for the Paulina of Frau 
 Moser-Spemer, into which the actress threw aU that in- 
 tensity of feeling which this admirably drawn character 
 requires, and with the skill of emphasis and action which 
 only an accomplished artist can command. 
 
 Eesults of an average excellence so marked as that of 
 the Meiningen company, speak volumes for the industry 
 and modestly artistic spirit with which they must have 
 worked through many years to produce so prevailing a 
 
 t/ 
 
228 THE MEININOEN COMPANY 
 
 completeness of ensemble. For it is only by years of work 
 pursued in this spirit that such results are to he obtained. 
 There is no royal road to excellence on the stage, any more 
 than in any other art. Yet when we see how far short of 
 what could be wished is what even these patient, intelli- 
 gent, and practised artists can achieve, we may well wonder 
 at the courage of those young gentlemen from Oxford who 
 seem to have deemed it to be their vocation to show 
 London, at the Imperial Theatre, a few weeks ago, how 
 ' Eomeo and Juliet ' ought to be acted. In the ' Aga- 
 memnon ' of .^chylus, with which they entertained their 
 friends last year, they were safe from criticism. Nine- 
 tenths of their audience did not understand a word of 
 spoken Greek, and the other tenth were very tolerant 
 of an attempt which had at least the merit of being novel, 
 if not amusing. A little common-sense — ^which, however, 
 does not always accompany a knowledge of Greek — might 
 have taught these young gentlemen to distrust the praises 
 of such lenient critics, and to return, with laurels all un- 
 tarnished, to " strictly meditate the thankless Muse,'' or to 
 prosecute those other pursuits which their Abna Mater 
 is supposed to foster. Instead of this, they have rushed 
 before the town ia ' Eomeo and Juliet ' — ^the play which 
 perhaps of all others iu Shakespeare imposes the very 
 highest demands upon those who woxdd embody it on the 
 stage. The foolish praise of personal friends has no doubt 
 not been wanting to gratify the vanity which prompted an 
 attempt, the audacity of which amounts to mere imperti- 
 nence. But it would be idle to waste criticism upon the 
 outcome of what had no doubt absorbed an infinite quan- 
 tity of time, unwisely taken from more fitting pursuits. 
 Of aU arts, as Voltaire long ago said, the art of acting 
 
AND THE LONDON STAGE. 229 
 
 is the most difficult. When will amateurs learn to real- 
 ise this truth? If act they must, let them do so hy 
 aU means ; but let them first qualify themselves by aU 
 the hard study, and still harder practice, which the art 
 demands. If the young Oxford amateurs wish to find 
 out whether nature meant them for the stage, let them 
 take to it as a profession. Judged by what was seen of 
 them at the Imperial Theatre, they wUl scarcely provoke 
 very eager competition at present amongst managers for 
 their services. 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 (Fbom the 'Quaeteblt Review,' April 1883.) 
 
 N James Wright's ' Historia Histrionica,' pub- 
 lished in 1699^a very rare pamphlet, in- 
 cluded by Mr Alber in the second volume 
 of his valuable series of reprints, called ' The 
 English Gamer ' — are to be found some of the most in- 
 structive facts connected with the history of the English 
 stage. The writer had not seen the theatres and actors 
 of the Shakespearian era, but he was old enough to have 
 talked with those who had. " Shakespeare," says one of 
 the speakers in the Dialogue, into which the pamphlet 
 is cast, — " Shakespeare (who, as I have heard, was a 
 much better poet than player), Burbage, Hemmings, and 
 others of the older sort, were dead before I knew the 
 town." So, too, was their " fellow," Edward Alleyn, who, 
 he tells us, " having no issue, built and largely endowed 
 Dulwich College in 1619, for a master, a warden, four 
 fellows, twelve aged poor people, and twelve poor boys," 
 &c. " A noble charity," adds the speaker, little thinking 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 231 
 
 to what truly noble proportions it has since developed. 
 Of the successors of the actors of Shakespeare's day, Lowin, 
 Taylor, and others, who had inherited their traditions, he 
 tells us that in his time, " before the Civil Wars, Lowin 
 used to act with applause Falstaff, Morose, Volpone, and 
 Mammon in ' The Alchemist,' Mdantius in ' The Maid's 
 Tragedy.' Taylor acted Hamlet incomparably well ; lago, 
 Truemt in ' The Silent Woman,' and Fan in ' The Al- 
 chemist.' And at the same time Amyntor was played by 
 Stephen Hammerton, who was at first a most noted and 
 beautiful woman actor; but afterwards he acted with 
 equal grace and applause a young lover's part." 
 
 The chief among the next race of actors were Hart, 
 Mohun, Burt, Lucy, Clun, and ShotterelL Those who 
 had seen their predecessors thought them as far inferior 
 to the earlier men as they were themselves superior to 
 those who followed them. "I dare assure you," says 
 one of the speakers in Wright's Dialogue, " if my fancy 
 and memory are not partial — for men of my age are apt 
 to be over-indulgent to the thoughts of their youthful 
 days — I say, the actors I have seen before the wars, Lowin, 
 Taylor, Pollard, and some others, were almost s& far be- 
 yond Hart and his company as those were beyond these 
 now in being I " 
 
 It is curious to observe how early the complaint begins, 
 that the actors of the present generation are never equal 
 to those of the past. What does Pope tell us about 
 Betterton, the great actor of the Eestoration period ? " I 
 was," he says, "acquainted with Betterton from a boy. 
 . . . Yes, I really think Betterton the best actor I ever 
 saw ; but I ought to tell you at the same time, that in 
 Betterton's days the older sort of people talked of Hart's 
 being his superior, just as we do of Betterton's being su- 
 
232 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 perior to those now.'' Pope himself did not fall, how- 
 ever, into the cant of the " laudator temporis acti " ; for, 
 though admiring Betterton as he did, and familiar with 
 the excellence of Barton Booth, on whom Betterton's 
 mantle was supposed to have fallen, he told Lord Orrery, 
 after seeing Garrick in ' Eichard III.', " that young man 
 never had his equal as an actor, and he will never have a 
 rival." Contrast with this the remark of Lady Louisa 
 Meyrick, when having heen taken to see Mrs Siddons, who 
 was then drawing all London in homage to her feet, she 
 protested that, compared with Mrs Porter, the favourite of 
 her youth, Mrs Siddons's grief was " the grief of a cheese- 
 monger's wife." Lady Louisa Meyrick may have been a 
 very clever person, but one may safely back the instinctive 
 admiration of the public on a question of this sort against 
 her predilections for her youthful favourite's powers of 
 pathetic expression. It was not chiefly in pathos, how- 
 ever, but in passion, that Mrs Porter was thought to excel. 
 Of Mrs Porter, Dr Johnson, speaking to Mrs Siddons, 
 said, that he had never seen her equalled " in the vehe- 
 mence of rage." This view is confirmed by Victor in his 
 ' History of the Theatres,' who speaks of " the elevated 
 dignity of her mien," and her " spirited propriety in all 
 characters of rage ; " but, he adds, " when grief and ten- 
 derness possessed her, she subsided into the most affecting 
 softness."^ One sees, therefore, that Lady Meyrick's 
 prepossession was not wholly without warrant. StiU, 
 
 ' ThiB was what CoUey Gibber had said, and in almost the same 
 words, of Betterton's contemporary, Mrs Barry. " In characters of 
 greatness, she had an elevated dignity, her mien and motion superb, 
 and gracefully majestic ; her voice f uU, clear, and strong, so that no 
 violence of passion could be too much for her ; and when distress 
 or tenderness possessed her, she subsided into the most affecting 
 melody and softness." 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 233 
 
 against her verdict may be set that of Mrs Kitty Clive, 
 as good a judge as any woman of her time, and one who 
 spoke with the ripe experience of a retired actress, who 
 said in 1782 of Mrs Siddons's acting, that it was " all 
 truth and beauty from beginning to end." 
 
 But to return to "Wright's pamphlet. At the time the 
 Civil "Wars broke out, he tells us there were in London 
 no fewer than five theatres, the companies at which 
 " all got moiiey, and Uved in reputation, especially those 
 of the ' Blackfriars,' who were men of grave and sober 
 behaviour ; " whereas in 1699, after the Eestoration, there 
 "were only two, and these could hardly subsist." The 
 reason assigned for this is, that although London was not 
 ia the early days half so populous, the prices of admission 
 were small, and the behaviour of the audience decorous, 
 " which made very good people think a play an innocent 
 diversion for an hour or two, the plays being then, for 
 the most part, more instructive and moral." After the 
 Restoration, however, the female part of the audience 
 was largely composed of very equivocal elements, plying 
 their trade "with vizard - masks, occasioning contiaual 
 quarrels and abuses; so that many of the more civilised 
 part of the town are imeasy in the company, and shun the 
 theatre as they woidd a house of scandal." 
 
 On the stage, too, as well as in front of it, the state of 
 things was such as to drive quiet citizens away from the 
 theatres. Swords were occasionally drawn in the brawls 
 which arose on the stage itself (from which it wiU be 
 remembered, the public were not in those days excluded), 
 between rival gallants for the favours of the lona rohas 
 of the scene. And Langbaine, writing in 1691, records 
 that he " once saw a real tragedy in the pit of Drury 
 Lane Theatre, where Mr Scrope received a mortal wound 
 
234 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 from Sir T. Armstrong, and died presently after being 
 removed to a house opposite the theatre." 
 
 Such being the state of the audiences, the plays became, 
 as a matter of course, fitted to the taste and character of 
 the idle and profligate fops and debauchees, of whom they 
 were largely composed. The stage always has reflected, 
 and always will reflect, in a great measure the tone and 
 quality of the public that supports it. " The drama's 
 laws the drama's patrons give;" and that we had fine 
 plays in the days of Elizabeth and James was simply due 
 to the masculine tastes of the public for whom they were 
 provided. And what that public must have been — what 
 strong heads and sound hearts used to be found within 
 the area of the Globe or the Fortune theatres, no one 
 that is conversant with the dramatic literature of the 
 period can have much difficulty in divining. Of one 
 thing we may be sure — the men who wrote for these 
 theatres were careful not to write over the heads of their 
 public. To have done so would have been ruin. So 
 when they put into their work all that vigour of concep- 
 tion in plot and character, all that wealth of thought, that 
 richness of imagery, that fire and luxuriance of diction, 
 that splendour and variety of rhythmical cadence, which 
 we find in them, it must have been because they knew 
 they were speaking to ears that were sensitive to the 
 charms of well-graced speech, and that theu" work would 
 find a sympathetic response in the intellect and the imagi- 
 nation of their hearers. Who wiU say that in our own 
 days of boasted culture and widely spread education, the 
 qualities that distinguish the writers of what is called the 
 Elizabethan drama would find the same amount of appre- 
 ciation in any of our theatres,— that their thoughts would 
 be understood, their deHcate fancies be followed, their 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 235 
 
 subtle suggestions of motive or character be caught and 
 relished, their fearless grappling with the great problems 
 of life here and hereafter be welcomed, as they must have 
 been when the great plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Mid- 
 dleton, Jonson, Chapman, Massinger, or Webster, were 
 first put upon the stage 1 It was, let us always remember, 
 to the brains and hearts of their hearers, and to them 
 alone, that these writers had to trust in order to piece out 
 and give reality to the inventions of their muse. " What 
 here shall miss, our toil shaU strive to mend," says the 
 speaker of the Prologue to 'Eomeo and Juliet' That is, 
 we shall try by our acting to make you forget our short- 
 comings in scenery and stage appointments ; but the 
 essential condition towards accomplishing this result was, 
 that their hearers should "with patient ears attend." 
 Audience had to unite with actor in making a play's suc- 
 cess. "Work, work, your thoughts," says the Chorus 
 ('Henry V.,' Act III), 
 
 " And therein see a siege : 
 Behold the ordnance on their carriages, 
 With fated mouths gaping on girded Harfleur ! " 
 
 The meagre appointments of the stage could do nothing 
 towards carrying the spectator either to the field of Agin- 
 court, the streets of Verona, or the ducal palace of Venice. 
 The actor by fine acting might enthral " the very faculty 
 of eye and ear ; " but the roused imagination of the listen- 
 ing crowds had to do the rest. Only then could they 
 hear in fancy the nightingale singing her nigljtly song on 
 the pomegranate tree in Capulet's garden ; or picture to 
 themselves the brooks, and thickets, and woodland life of 
 the Forest of Arden ; or the rising tumult of the Forum 
 under the stimulus of Marc Antony's eloquence, as he 
 
236 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 pointed to " the wound the envious Casca made " on the 
 hody of the mighty Julius. As -well remarked in Wright's 
 pamphlet : — 
 
 " It is an argument of the worth of the play and actors of the 
 last age, and easily inferred that they were much beyond ours in 
 this, to consider that they could support themselves merely from 
 their own merit, the weight of the matter, and the goodness of the 
 action, without scenes and machines, whereas the present plays, 
 with all their show, can hardly draw an audience, unless there be 
 the additional in-ritation of a Signer Fideli, a Monsieur I'Abb^, or 
 some such foreign rigale expressed in the bottom of the bill." 
 
 The argument mil apply to our own day. Contrast the 
 amount of eager iutelligence in the audience that went to 
 the appreciation of ' The Jew of Malta,' or ' Othello,' or 
 ' The Alchemist,' when they were first produced, or the 
 histrionic power which then sent home, as we know it 
 did, to their hearts and feelings what Marlowe, Shake- 
 speare, or Ben Jonson had given in these plays for the 
 actors to interpret, with the listless languor of a modem 
 audience, the trivialiiy of most of the dramas, and the 
 want of nervous force, or ideal elevation in the actors of 
 the new school, and what must be the verdict? Not 
 flattering, certainly, to our self-esteem, whether we regard 
 authors, actors, or audience. 
 
 The reason, it seems to us, is not far to seek. The 
 theatre of the Elizabeth age, poor and shabby as it was ia 
 its appointments, was not resorted to merely as a place of 
 amusement. Life itself to the men of those days was as 
 " full of seriousness " as it was to Dr John Brown's dog. 
 It was an arena of noble effort to raise the individual and 
 the nation to a higher level of comfort, security, and 
 influence, by strenuous action and high and patriotic 
 thoughts. Englishmen were proud of their heritage, and 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 237 
 
 animated by a steadfast resolve not only to maintain it, 
 but to transmit it enricbed and strengthened to tbeir suc- 
 cessors. Life, bard tbougb it migbt be in many respects, 
 was never doubted by them to be worth living. It was 
 God's best gift, and as sucb, to be worthily and reverently 
 used. For them, as for us, it was f uU of terrible enigmas ; 
 and bound in with impenetrable darkness. StiU, through 
 all its clouds the blue sky shone here and there; and 
 men's hearts were sustained by the hope that all its in- 
 equalities and seeming unfairnesses would be redressed in 
 a hereafter, as to which they had no misgivings. Books 
 were few, and there were no journals from which men 
 could take their opinions ready-made. They had to think 
 for themselves, with such help as they could get from the 
 pulpit and the stage. Their minds were not emasculated 
 by frivolity, nor their manhood sapped by selfish indul- 
 gence. Woman stiU preserved for them her ideal charm ; 
 and they delighted to contemplate in such characters as 
 their dramatic poets placed before them the beauty and 
 purity of soul, the patient heroism, the spirit of devotion 
 and seK-sacrifice, which in homelier forms they cherished 
 and reverenced by their own firesides. To such men, a 
 theatre, which placed " high actions and high passions " 
 before them, which spoke to them " thoughts that breathed 
 in words that burned," — which condensed in beautiful 
 language that clung to the memory the thoughts that had 
 been struggling within themselves for utterance, — which 
 showed them human beings under every variety of trial, 
 suffering, and temptation, — which, above all, widened 
 their sympathies by calling iuto play the great universal 
 emotions that are shared alike by kaiser and by peasant, 
 such a theatre was no mere place of " innocent diversion 
 for an hour or two.'' It was a place to which men went 
 
238 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 with tteir faculties braced up to listen intently, and to 
 profit by what they listened to, — a place from wbicb they 
 took away food for after - rumination, impulses which 
 might influence their lives, and memories of ideal men 
 and women that would be thenceforth as real for them as 
 any of their own kinsfolk, if not iadeed more real, better 
 comprehended, and better worth comprehending. 
 
 Well might the best brains in England devote them- 
 selves to the work of writing plays for audiences such as 
 these.^ In what other way was a poet's best reward to 
 be won 1 for in what other way was influence over the 
 hearts and souls of Englishmen so sure to be obtained? 
 It is not every one who can read to profit, or, as Touch- 
 stone says, " Second a man's good wit with the forward 
 child understanding." But the dullest could appreciate 
 the fine expression of a pregnant or noble thought, or 
 understand the play of passion, or conflict of emotion, in 
 Hamlet or Macbeth, when these were enforced by the 
 action and irradiated by the eloquent utterance of a fine 
 actor. And that the actors of that time were of no 
 ordinary stamp cannot be doubted. The plays they had 
 to act would otherwise have been intolerable ; for just in 
 proportion as a drama is worthy in itself, strong in its 
 
 ' The stage, as elevated by their writings, was far in advance 
 of every other stage in Europe. Edward Gayton, in his strange 
 farrago of thoughts, facts, and fancies, called 'Festivous Notes 
 upon Don Quixote,' published in 1644, says of the English stage — 
 " It was so well reform'd in England, and growne to that height of 
 language, and gravity of stile, dependency of parts, possibility of 
 plot, compasse of time, and fulnesse of wit, that it was not any- 
 where to be equaU'd ; nor are the contrivers ashamed to permit 
 their playes (as they were acted) to the publick censure, where 
 they stand firme, and are read with as much satisfaction, as when 
 presented on the stage they were with applause and honour." — 
 P. 272. 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 239 
 
 plot, powerful in its diction, and true to nature in its 
 delineation of character, so surely will it tlie more readily 
 fall to the ground, if its interpretation be committed to 
 incapable hands. We may therefore implicitly believe 
 the records of the excellence of such an actor, for example, 
 as Burbage,-"- and feel sure that it was in no mere spirit 
 of empty compliment that Ben Jonson, in one of his 
 epigrams, says of Edward AUeyn — 
 
 " Wear this renown ! 'Tis just, that who did give 
 So many poets life, by one should Uve." 
 
 What makes good acting Shakespeare has told us m 
 Hamlefs advice to the players, condensing in a few 
 sentences all that is really to be said upon the subject, 
 both as to what the actor should aim at, and how he is 
 to achieve his aim. No one was ever in a better position 
 than he to give such a definition, for in his days much 
 more had to be done by the actor than he has now to do. 
 Scenery and costume, as already indicated, which play so 
 large a part in producing effect on the modern stage, lent 
 him no assistance. He had to engage and keep the in- 
 terest and attention of his audience by throwing himself 
 thoroughly into the character he was called upon to 
 personify, by compelling the spectators, in fact, by sheer 
 fascination of speech and truthfulness of impersonation, 
 to foUow him through every stage of its development. 
 
 ' For these, see his Life in Mr J. P. Collier's 'Memoirs of the 
 Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare, 1846. ' Burbage, like 
 Edmund Kean and Garrick, was a small man : 
 
 " Thy stature small, but every thought and mood 
 Might throughly from thy face be understood," 
 says a contemporary elegy. Burbage was the first Hamlet. Borneo, 
 Richwrd III., Brutus, Coriolamis, Shyloek, Lear, Pericles, Othelio, 
 are all enumerated in the same elegy among his triumphs. 
 
240 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 Even those who played secondary parts were bound to 
 give them individuality, and to speak what they had to 
 speak with suitable emphasis and discretion. In no other 
 way could the attention of spectators, by no means com- 
 fortably accommodated in the matter of places or seats, 
 have been kept alive through five long acts, — acts so long, 
 indeed, that, even abridged as they are for our modem 
 requirements, they are found to be too long for a luxurious 
 and impatient public. In order to realise to ourselves how 
 heavy the straia must have been upon the players of those 
 days, and what gifts were needed to meet it, let those who 
 have gone into raptures over ' Hamlet ' or ' Eomeo and 
 Juliet, ' as presented by Mr Irving's company at the 
 Lyceum, picture to themselves, if they can, what impres- 
 sion the performance of these plays would have left upon 
 them stripped of aU their magnificent scenic adjuncts. 
 Having done this, let them then ask themselves, whether 
 there is so much saving grace in the Lyceum acting, that if 
 such acting were all that was to be had in Shakespeare's 
 time, these plays could possibly have taken the hold upon 
 his contemporaries which they did ? 
 
 Of course, there were bad actors then as now. The 
 " periwig-pated feUow, tearing a passion to tatters, to very 
 rags,'' was no stranger to the stage, any more than was 
 the bombast " in King Cambyses' vein," from which even 
 Marlowe of the " mighty line " was not free, and which 
 Shakespeare delighted to ridicule. He had his admirers, 
 too, just as the gentleman of strong lungs can still " bring 
 down the house," charming a certain class of hearers by 
 that " gait of neither Christian, Pagan, nor man,'' which 
 has apparently at all times passed current for fine acting, 
 just in the degree that it is far away from nature. All 
 we contend for is, that, as the plays of that period de- 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 241 
 
 pended for their attraction solely upon good acting, good 
 acting mnst have been the rule, and actors must have 
 reached a general level of educated intelligence and 
 genuine histrionic power. 
 
 The break up of the regular companies at the time of 
 the Civil Wars could not fail to be injurious to histrionic 
 art. It caused the loss of many of the most valuable 
 traditions, in which were embodied the conclusions of the 
 genius and experience of the best actors as to the methods 
 of expression and of treatment proper to the performance 
 of the plays which had kept their hold upon the stage. 
 ISoi aU of these were lost, however, for it is known that 
 Betterton used often to acknowledge his obligations to 
 Taylor of the Blackfriars, and to Lowin, senior,^ the 
 former of whom had been instructed in the character of 
 Hamlet, and the latter in that of Henry VIII. by Shake- 
 speare himself. But when the companies were dispersed, 
 nearly all the leading actors, Eobinson, Mohun, Hart, 
 AUen, and others, took service with the King, and such 
 few as survived their unsuccessful struggles in the field 
 were scarcely able to make up one company after the fall 
 of their royal master. Thenceforth, up to the time of the 
 Eestoration, they could earn no more than a precarious 
 subsistence by acting in noblemen's houses, and elsewhere, 
 by stealth and on sufferance. 
 
 With the Eestoration the stage came again into favour. 
 But the theatre was no longer what it had been. The 
 general tone of society was lower. On the Court, and 
 
 ^ This was .no doubt the Lowin who in his later days kept the 
 "Three Pigeons" inn at Brentford, and who died at a great age, 
 eighty-three or ninety-three, according as we accept one or other 
 of two parish registers, where the name supposed to be his occurs. 
 Taylor also lived to a good age, and died at Richmond in Surrey. 
 
242 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 those who affected the manners of the Court, the theatres 
 were mainly dependent ; and the morals of both actors 
 and audience shared in the taint, which the example of 
 a sovereign of the loosest habits, and of a Court shameless 
 in its vices infused into the life of the metropoUs. A 
 crop of comedies then flooded the stage, which was cal- 
 culated to foster and to propagate this evil in a perilous 
 degree. There is, indeed, no lack of wit, of well-drawn 
 characters, or of striking situations, in the works of the 
 comic writers of the Eestoration. But despite the ex- 
 tenuating pleas set up for them by Leigh Hunt and 
 Charles Lamb, it is impossible for grown men nowadays 
 to read them without a blusL Many of them are, in 
 truth, so vile in plot, and so shameless in dialogue, that 
 it is hard to imagine how players could at any time have 
 been got to perform, or audiences to endure them. 
 
 For a time the profession of one of the King's players 
 seems to have been a profitable one. " I have been in- 
 formed," says Wright, " by one of them, that for several 
 years after the Eestoration every whole sharer in Mr 
 Hart's company got £1000 per annum," an iacome for 
 those days .almost equal to the magnificent revenues of 
 some of the popular favourites of the present day. The 
 same authority tells us that this was owing mainly to the 
 fact that the expenses in the theatres were small, there 
 being no costly scenery and other accessories to eat into 
 the receipts. But the meagre simplicity of the old stage 
 was in no way suited to the taste of the time — to people 
 who cared only to be amused through the eye or tickled 
 through the ear, with as little demand as might be upon 
 the intellect or the imagination. Sir "William Davenant 
 set the example of costly scenic accessories at the Duke's 
 Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Betterton followed suit 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 243 
 
 at his theatre in Dorset Garden, and, striving to eclipse 
 Davenant ty costlier scenery and decorations, and hy 
 " the addition of curious machines,'' made serious havoc 
 upon the incomes of the actors. Then began the tamper- 
 ing with Shakespeare, from which the stage interpretation 
 of his plays was doomed to suffer for more than a century. 
 Then it was that Locke's music was introduced into 
 ' Macbeth,' which had been manipulated by Davenant 
 for the purpose, the play, as described by Downes in his 
 'Eoscius Anglicanus,' "being drest in all its finery, as 
 new cloaths, new scenes, machines, as flying for the 
 witches, with all the singing and dancing in it. . . . 
 Being aU excellently performed," he adds, and " being in 
 the nature of an opera, it recompensed double the ex- 
 pense." ' The Tempest ' was also found to afford a good 
 vehicle for similar treatment. Even ' King Henry YIII.' 
 was made attractive by pageantry of the most imposing 
 kind. In short, no play had a chance of success without 
 the added allurements of music and dances, and fljdng 
 fairies or angels, as the case might be. Ludicrous enough, 
 these last seem to have been, if we may judge by an 
 allusion in ' The Rehearsal/ which was produced in 1671, 
 where Bayes says to some of his company, " You dance 
 worse than the angels in ' Harry the Eight,' or the fat 
 spirits in 'The Tempest,' i'gad." 
 
 With the rival theatres running a race against each 
 other in the way of mere pageantry and spectacle, the 
 result of the competition could not be doubtful. The 
 taste for " inexplicable dumb show," for glare and glitter 
 and imreal imitation of reality, required ever-new stimu- 
 lants. Shows, processions, and dances took the place of 
 careful and weU-studied acting ; the " men of grave and 
 sober behaviour " who graced the stage in its earlier days 
 
244 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 became fewer and fewer, and the bulk of those who trod 
 the boards, both male and female, as they did little to 
 maiatain either the dignity of their art, or the blameless- 
 ness of their private life, gave encouragement to the cen- 
 sure of those, of whom there will always be not a few, 
 who regarded the theatre with distrust and aversion, and 
 the actor's calling with supercilious contempt. 
 
 At this no one can be surprised who is familiar with 
 the theatrical annals of the period. Decent people could 
 scarcely go to theatres when, as Evelyn writes (October 
 16, 1666), "they were abused to an atheistical liberty. 
 Foul and indecent women now, and never tiU now, were 
 permitted to act." It was only six years previously that 
 women had begun, for the first time, to appear on the 
 English stage. Evelyn's censure was undoubtedly too 
 sweeping ; but the charge was in the main true, and, at 
 any rate, the actresses who made a market of their charms 
 of person or of wit were most in. the public eye. Pepys 
 has shown us three of the most famous of them behind 
 the scenes — Mrs Knipp, Nell Gwynne, and Beck Mar- 
 shall. " Lord, to see what base company of men comes 
 among them, and how lewdly they talk ! " he writes, 
 5th October 1667 ; and again on the 7th of May 1668 :— 
 
 " To the King's house ; where going in for Knipp, the play being 
 done, I did see Beck Marshall come dressed off of the stage, and 
 look mighty fine, and pretty and noble ; and also Nell in her boy's 
 clothes mighty pretty. But, lord ! their confidence, and how many 
 men do hover about them as soon as they come off the stage, and 
 how confident they are in their talk ! " 
 
 AH the fops and gallants of the town had free access 
 behind the scenes, and used it ; and, like their successors 
 in our own days, the young brainless fools who haunt 
 certain stage-doors to carry off ia their broughams the 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 245 
 
 Lotties and Miimies and Nellies of Burlesque and Opera 
 Bouffe, they became the ready prey of the unscrupulous 
 sirens, who captivated them by the glamour which the 
 stage seems to throw around women of very ordinary 
 attractions, either of person or of mind. Evelyn laments 
 that many of them became either the wives or mistresses 
 of various nobles and gallants. " Witness," he says, " the 
 Earl of Oxford, Sir H. H^oward, Prince Eupert, the Earl 
 of Dorset, and another greater person than any of them, 
 who fell into their snares to the reproach of their noble 
 families, and to the ruin of both body and soul.^ 
 
 There were not wanting some, however, to whom acting 
 was an art, and who kept steadily before them " the 
 purpose of playing," as Shakespeare had defined it. Of 
 these was Hart, who was pre-eminent in characters that 
 demanded passion and dignity and power, who died in 
 1681. In 'Alexander' (Nat Lee's) it is recorded of him 
 by Downes that he acted " with such grandeur and agree- 
 able majesty, that one of the Court was pleased to honour 
 him with this commendation, that Hart might teach any 
 king on earth how to comport himself." "He prepos- 
 sessed and charmed people's eyes by his action," says 
 Eymer, " before aught of the poet's could approach their 
 ears " — a quality of the first moment in an actor, and un- 
 happily in these, our days, a rare one. We get a further 
 
 ^ The Earl of Oxford, having secured poBsession of Rebecca Mar- 
 shall (Pepys's Beck Marshall) by a false marriage, threw her off after 
 a time. She appealed to the King, wto compelled the Earl to 
 allow her an annuity of £500, and would not let him marry while 
 her son by the Earl lived. The King's own relations with Nell 
 Gwynne, Mary Davies (who ravished the town by her singing of the 
 lovely ballad, "My Lodging is on the Cold Ground"), and others of 
 their stamp, are glanced at by Evelyn in the other " greater person " 
 of this passage. 
 
246 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 hint of what he must have been from one of his remarks, 
 preserved for us hy Sir Eichard Steele : — 
 
 " It is impossible," he said, " to act with grace except the actor 
 has forgot that he is before an audience. Till he has arrived at 
 that, his motion, his air, his every step and gesture has something 
 in them vphioh discovers he is under a restraint for fear of being ill 
 received ; or, it he considers himself as in the presence of those 
 who approve his behaviour, you see an affectation of that pleasure 
 run through his whole carriage." 
 
 This faculty of losing himself in the part is, in truth, 
 what makes the true actor. In one of his letters Garriok 
 says, " I'art d'un grand acteur est de se faire oubUer jusqu'i 
 son nom, quand U parait sur la scfene." 
 
 Betterton, who, like Burbage, handled the portrait- 
 paiuters' brush with considerable skUI, worthily handed 
 on the tradition of the dignified and noble style, to which 
 the weight of Hart's own character contributed so largely. 
 Even at the age of twenty -two we learn from Downes 
 that he ran the veteran Hart close, " his voice being then 
 as audibly strong, full, and articulate as ia the prime of 
 his acting." And what that voice could do, even when 
 it had to speak the vapid fustian of contemporary trag- 
 edies, Colley Gibber tells us. "There cannot," he says, 
 "be a stronger proof of his harmonious elocution than 
 the many even unnatural scenes and flights of the false 
 sublime it has lifted into applause." ^ Gibber had known 
 Betterton ia his prime. Sir Eichard Steele could only 
 have seen him when well up ia years. But he gives a 
 
 ^ George III., who learned elocution from Quin, knew the value 
 of this power. " Did I deliver the speech well ? " he said to Lord 
 Eldon, as he was coming away from the House of Lords. " Very 
 well, sir." "I am glad of it," replied the King, "for there was 
 nothing in it." 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 247 
 
 picture of him in Othello^ almost as vivid as Gibber's 
 well-known description of his Hamlet. In the same 
 paper he speaks of him in glowing terms as — 
 
 " A man whom I had always very much admired, and from whose 
 action I had received more strong impressions of what is great and 
 noble in human nature, than from the arguments of the most solid 
 philosophers or the descriptions of the most charming poets I had 
 read." 
 
 And this, though Betterton laboured, like Le Kain and 
 Talma, under the disadvantage of a bad, almost clumsy 
 figure, with a large head and short thick neck. But " the 
 mind he swayed by " triumphed over these disadvantages. 
 His aspect, as Antony Aston tells us, " was serious, ven- 
 erable, and majestic ; " and although " his voice was low 
 and grumbling, yet he could tune it by an artful climax,' 
 which enforced universal attention, even from the fops 
 and orange-girls."? 
 
 Betterton's wife, like himself, was welcomed on the 
 stage long after the attractions of youth had gone by. 
 She had been one of the first women actors on the stage, 
 and, Hke her husband, had made herself respected in. 
 her private life. Even when far advanced in years, says 
 CoUey Gibber, she "was so great a mistress of. nature, 
 that even Mrs Barry, who acted the Lady Macbeth after 
 
 1 'Tatler,' No. 167, May 4, 1710. 
 
 2 Mr Percy Fitzgerald, in his ' New History of the English 
 Stage' (London, 1882), with strange inaccuracy quotes this as 
 having been said by Aston of Gibber (vol. i. p. 325). This is the 
 less excusable, as Aston's pamphlet opens with this description of 
 Betterton. The pamphlet is entitled, 'A Brief Supplement to 
 CoUey Gibber, Esq. ; his Lives of the late famous Actors and 
 Actresses,' by Anthony (vulg6 Tony) Aston. Printed for the 
 author, (no date). The original is of extreme rarity, but the book 
 has recently been made accessible in the reprint of CoUey Gibber's 
 'Apology,' by Mr R. W. Lowe, London, 1889. 
 
248 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 her, could not in that part, with all her superior strength 
 and melody of voice, throw out those quick and careless 
 strokes of terror from the disorder of a guilty mind which 
 the other gave us, with a facility in her manner that ren- 
 dered them at once tremendous and delightful." 
 
 This description recalls what Lord Harcourt, in de- 
 scrihing his impressions of Mrs Siddons, records of Mrs 
 Pritchard vo. the same character. Mrs Siddons's "coun- 
 tenance " he says, " aided hy a studious and judicious 
 choice of head - dress "—that head - dress which the fine 
 picture of Sir Thomas Lawrence in the Garriok Club has 
 made familiar — " was a true picture of a mind diseased in 
 the sleeping scene, and made one shudder, and the effect 
 as a picture was better iu that than it had ever been with 
 the taper, 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." ^ Which of the two actresses best inter- 
 preted Shakespeare in this scene the words we have 
 marked in italics place beyond a doubt. 
 
 In Mrs Barry Betterton found an actress with whom 
 he delighted to work, because she came up to that high 
 level of excellence which produced the harmony and ew- 
 semlle in which a true artist delights. She excelled both 
 in comedy and tragedy. "In the art of exciting pity," 
 says Gibber, " she had a power beyond all actresses I have 
 yet seen." Her face was the index of her mind. Emo- 
 tion or passion, humour or sarcasm spoke in it, before she 
 spoke. ^ "Her face," writes Tony Aston, "somewhat 
 
 ^ Cited in note to the ' Walpole Correspondence,' vol. viii. p. 315. 
 
 " So with Garrick, says Murphy, " every sentiment rose in his 
 mind and showed itself in his countenance before he uttered a 
 word." 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 249 
 
 preceded her action, as the latter did her -words ; her face 
 ever expressing the passions. Her elocution was ex- 
 quisite. ... To hear her speak the following speech 
 in ' The Orphan ' was a charm : 
 
 " I'm ne'er so well pleaaed, aa when I hear thee speak, 
 And listen to the music of thy voice," 
 
 " In tragedy," he adds, " she was solemn and august ; 
 in free comedy, alert, easy, and genteel; pleasant in her 
 face and action ; filling the stage with variety of gesture." 
 To aU this excellence she had attained by patient labour ; 
 for her first essays in her art were unsuccessful " For 
 some time," says Aston, "they could make nothing of 
 her." Colley Gibber confirms this statement, prefacing 
 his remarks upon her by the observation that " the short 
 Ufa of beauty is not long enough to form a complete 
 actress." She is one of the figures that stands out 
 honourably in the stage history of her time. 
 
 How charming, too, upon the stage, as weU as ex- 
 emplary off it, was Anne Bracegirdle, Colley Gibber has 
 told us. But not less vivid, though less known, is Aston's 
 description of her : — » 
 
 " She was of a lovely height, with dark-brown hair and eyebrows, 
 black sparkling eyes, and a fresh blushy complexion ; and whenever 
 she exerted herself, had an involuntary flushing in her breast, neck, 
 and face ; having continually a cheerful aspect, and a fine set of 
 even white teeth, never indkvng an exit Tmt that she left the audience 
 in am imitation of her pleasant countenance. Genteel comedy was 
 her chief essay, and that, too, when in men's clothes, in which she 
 far surmounted all the actresses of that or this age. Tct she had a 
 defect scarce perceptible — viz. , her right shoulder a little protruded, 
 which, when in men's clothes, was covered by a long or campaign 
 peruke. She was finely shaped, and had very handsome legs and 
 feet ; and her gait and walk was free, manlike, and modest, when 
 in breeches." 
 
250 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 A delightful picture ! And it is pleasant to know that 
 as she was admired on the stage, so she was respected off 
 it. She retired in the heyday of her powers, and enjoyed 
 an honourable ease for many years. Long after she had 
 ceased to turn the heads of playgoers, twenty years after 
 her persistent adorer Congreve was in his grave, Aston 
 tells us he met her in the Strand, — he gives the date 
 (30th July 1747) as if it were an epoch in his life — 
 "with the remains of the charming Bracegirdle." 
 
 But we must not linger among the figures of the 
 theatrical gaUery of that epoch. Many, beside, those we 
 have named, might well claim our attention. It was no 
 light labour the players of that time had to encounter, for 
 dramatic authors were prolific. Much unthankful work 
 was given them to illustrate, into which their art could 
 alone infuse any sparks of life, but which not even their 
 best skill could keep from early death. At the same time, 
 much work was given them that afforded ample play for 
 their highest powers. Otway, Dryden, Southern, Eowe, 
 Wycherley, Gibber, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh, were 
 writers to put actors upon their mettle ; and for their 
 works strong powers of expression, tragic as well as comic, 
 were demanded. If such plays as ' Venice Preserved,' or 
 ' Isabella, or the Fatal Marriage,' or ' Jane Shore,' for ex- 
 ample, have now been lost to the stage, this is due not to 
 their want of merit, but to the disappearance of the high 
 order of tragic power which is demanded for the imper- 
 sonation of their heroines. Even when mutilated and 
 greatly toned down, to suit the modern taste, some 
 of the work of Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar 
 leaves upon an audience of to-day an impression of 
 a richness of humour, a brilliancy of dialogue, a variety 
 of genuine character, and a breadth of dramatic effect 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 251 
 
 beyond what is to be found in the writers of our own 
 time. 
 
 We have now reached a period, when we are enabled 
 by contemporary portraits to judge of the personal appear- 
 ance of the leading players. Unhappily, of Anne Brace- 
 girdle,^ a vile mezzotint, by Smith after Vincent, palpably 
 worthless as a portrait, representing her as the Indian 
 Queen, in one of Sir Robert Howard's plays, is all that 
 exists. But Betterton, Barton Booth, Wilks, Anthony 
 Leigh, and Mrs Oldfield, are familiar to the connoisseur 
 either in pictures, or in admirable mezzotints. The line 
 is continued well through the century. Excellent por- 
 traits, by the best engravers, exist of Macklin, Quin, 
 Spranger Barry, of Mrs Clive, Mrs WofiSngton, Mrs 
 Susannah Gibber, and Mrs Pritchard, all of whom are in- 
 teresting, as having helped to maintain the glories of the 
 English stage from the time of Booth up to and through 
 the Garrick period. With these before us, we are quite 
 prepared to accept as true the recorded praises of their 
 excellence — for they are aU faces full of intelligence, 
 with features well marked, and strongly individualised, 
 which are visibly capable of the most varied play of 
 expression. 
 
 Thus, in the rare print of Betterton, by WiUiams after 
 KneUer, he seems all that Aston described him, — " serious, 
 venerable, majestic." Booth, again, as we know him 
 from his portraits, or from the fine bust on his monument 
 in Poets' Corner, has the weU-bred air of the scholarly 
 gentleman he was. Looking at these, we can understand 
 that masterly reserve, which gave dignity to his most 
 
 1 In the Garrick Club there is a portrait, said to be of Mrs 
 Braoegirdle ; but it in no degree answers to the descriptions of her, 
 and its pedigree is most doubtful. 
 
252 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 heart-searching pathos, and can believe it to he as was 
 said of him, that 
 
 " he had the deportment of a nobleman, and so well became a 
 Star and Garter, he seemed born to it ; and would have made as 
 good a figure in the drawing-room as on the stage. His counte- 
 nance had a manly sweetness, so happily formed for expression, 
 that he could mark every passion with a strength to reach the eye of 
 the most distant spectator, without losing that comeliness which 
 charmed those who sat near him." 
 
 So, when we look at Mrs Oldfield's well-balanced, 
 comely face, with its fine full languorous eyes, we under- 
 stand the effect with which she used them, when '" in 
 some particular comic situations she kept them half-shut, 
 especially when she intended to give effect to some 
 brilliant or gay thought." Though picked out from the 
 bar-parlour of the Mitre tavern, kept by her aunt in St 
 James's Market, she, like Mrs Abington, ia Garrick's 
 time, who sprang from a still lower sphere, acquired with 
 singular rapidity all the grace of deportment and the self- 
 possessed air of one trained to move from childhood in 
 the best circles. She was a favourite with, and set the 
 fashions to, ladies of the highest rank. Such characters 
 as Lady Betty Modish, or Lady Tovmly, sat upon her so 
 easUy, that it was said of them that " they appeared to be 
 her own genuine conception. She slided so gracefully 
 into the foibles, and displayed so humorously the ex- 
 cesses of a fine woman, too sensible of her charms, too 
 confident of her power, and led away by her passion for 
 pleasure, that no succeeding Lady Tovmly arrived at her 
 many distinguished excellences in that, character.'' How 
 she was so unlucky as to incur the wrath of Pope is un- 
 known. Let us hope it was not out of any small spite 
 that he took such pains to fix an unpleasant immortality 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 253 
 
 upon the frail and fascinating heroine of Gibber's best 
 works, as he did in the merciless Hnes upon Narcissa, 
 ending 
 
 " One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead ; 
 And, Betty, give this cheek a little red." 
 
 In Peg Woffington a worthy successor was found for 
 Mrs Oldfield in many of her best parts. Like her, Wof- 
 fington shone in serious as well as comic characters. In 
 the former she had to struggle with the disadvantage of 
 an unmelodious Toice ; but she threw herself into what- 
 ever she undertook with so much earnestness, that she 
 triumphed over this natural defect ; while in comedy her 
 sparkle and vivacity and general sense of enjoyment carried 
 aU before them. A person singularly handsome, and a 
 face alive with expression, made her always a welcome 
 feature in a play. She had abundance of natural wit. 
 " Dallying and dangerous " on and off the stage, many an 
 admirer paid dearly for having been caught in her " strong 
 toil of grace.'' Hogarth delighted to paint her ; and her 
 presence has been made familiar not only by his graphic 
 skill, but by that of many other able artists, aU of whom 
 caught something of her charm. The little water-cress 
 girl, reclaimed out of the Dublin streets, who made her 
 way to the top of the tree in her profession, and who held 
 her own among the most brilliant wits of her time, must 
 have been a notable personage. Seized, when only about 
 forty-four years old, with something like paralysis, as she 
 was speaking the Epilogue in 'As You Like It' (May 
 17th 1757), she disappeared from public view into her 
 quiet viUa at Teddington, where she died about two years 
 afterwards.^ 
 
 ^ Tate Wilkinson, who has described with great effect the circum- 
 stances of her seizure, which he witnessed, says that she afterwards 
 
254 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 Of a very different stamp, as to private character, was 
 wortliy Mrs Pritchard, great also in comedy as well as 
 tragedy, tut so great in the latter, that on hearing of her 
 death Garrick said that " tragedy was now dead on one 
 side." She had, it is ohvious from her portraits, no charm 
 of beauty in figure or in face to ingratiate her with her 
 audience. But she had genius, she had intuitions that 
 brought her up to the level of the best writers, and she 
 always kept nature in view ; from " whose various lights," 
 to borrow a happy phrase of Gibber's, " she only took her 
 true instruction." This made her cast aside "the good 
 old manner," as Victor calls it, which had crept in among 
 players, " of singing and quavering out their tragic notes," 
 — a kind of musical plain-song, from which her contem- 
 porary, Mrs Susannah Gibber, fine actress as she was, was 
 not wholly free. This must have been one of. the bonds 
 of sympathy between her and Garrick, who preferred 
 playing with her to aU other actresses, and who, like her, 
 had broken away from the measured and sonorous mouth- 
 ing to which the public had been familiarised by Quin 
 and others. To see these two upon the scene together 
 must have been no ordinary treat. But one must have 
 noted well the hard unattractive lines of Mrs Pritchard's 
 face and person, and the diminutive proportions of Gar- 
 rick's figure, to appreciate fully the eulogium of Churchill, 
 
 " That when the light of genius fires the eye, 
 Pritchard's genteel and Garrick six feet high." 
 
 " existed as a mere skeleton, sans teeth, sams eyes, sans taste, scms 
 everything ; " but this could not have been the case, as we see from 
 the picture of her by Pond, presented by me to the National Por- 
 trait Gallery, where she lies in bed, blooming and bonny in feature 
 and complexion, and with the old fascination in the eyes — a very 
 charming ruin. 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 255 
 
 In the Garrick Club there is a little picture hy Hay- 
 man of them as Banger and Mrs Strickland in ' The Suspi- 
 cious Husband,' which furnishes an excellent illustration 
 of these lines. 
 
 With Garrick, who flashed like a meteor upon the 
 London public in 1741, began a new era. In all arts, 
 and in none more than in the actor's art, there is a ten- 
 dency to run into conventional methods. Some man or 
 woman of genius strikes out a new style, which is in some 
 inexplicable way congenial to the taste of the public. It 
 lays a strong hold upon audiences, partly because of this, 
 but chiefly because there are behind it a vigorous grasp 
 of character, and the force and fire of strong natural 
 sensibility. The mode of expressing these qualities is 
 certain to be marked by strong characteristics, possibly 
 even by mannerisms, which, it may be, go towards mak- 
 ing up his or her peculiar charm. To copy these peculi- 
 arities, Colley Gibber said — and modern experience con- 
 firms the truth of the remark — " commonly is the highest 
 merit of the middle rank of actors," and they are not only 
 copied by them, but exaggerated. Thiis the stately de- 
 portment and elocution of the early school of actors had 
 through these imitators degenerated into the solemn stride, 
 the pompous cadence, " the singing and quavering out of " 
 blank verse lines to which allusion has just been made, 
 and which, when Garrick appeared, was the prevailing 
 vice of the men who held the foremost places on the 
 stage. Such of us as remember how " the middle rank 
 of actors" imitated in their blundering way the large 
 stately manner of Mrs Siddons and John Kemble without 
 any of their fire, or natural dignity and grace, can form 
 some notion of what this species of declamation was like. 
 Garrick had to bring back the public to nature and sim- 
 
256 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 plicity. At once they recognised his power. Here was 
 a true interpreter of human character, as various as the 
 people he represented ; a man who gave to poetry all the 
 emphasis, and sustained it by all the elevation of deport- 
 ment, which it needed, and who moved in tragedy equally 
 as in comedy with the ease and freedom of actual life. 
 London acknowledged him from the first as a master in 
 his art ; and the judgment which London had pronounced, 
 the public of Dublin — then, and down to a very recent 
 period, a public with a fine appreciation of excellence both 
 in music and acting — fuUy confirmed. 
 
 Garrick's success was fraught with the happiest results 
 for the English stage. Actors and their art had fallen 
 somewhat into discredit. He determined by his example 
 to make both respected. The good fortune which enabled 
 him to become the manager of Drury Lane Theatre put 
 him in a position to carry out his purpose. He brought 
 round him all the ablest professors of his art, and he 
 spared no pains to inspire them with something of his 
 own determination to raise the character of his theatre to 
 the highest point. AH through his career he delighted 
 to have his own efforts on the stage seconded by the emu- 
 lation of the best actors and actresses he could attract into 
 his company. Off the stage, his accomplishments, his 
 brilliant social qualities, the example of a home presided 
 over by a charming wife to whom he was devoted, and 
 who was universally admired, made his society courted by 
 the foremost men of his time. Thus the tone and status 
 of his profession were sensibly raised in the thirty years 
 during which he practised it. He was not only ambitious 
 of praise and fame for himself; nothing pleased him 
 better than that his actors should win them too, and he 
 worked hard to put them in the way to do so. " Won- 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 257 
 
 derful sir," Kitty Clive writes to him in 1774, " you have 
 for these thirty years been contradicting the old proverb 
 that you cannot make bricks without straw, by doing 
 what is infinitely more difficult, making actors and ac- 
 tresses without genius." Not by example merely, there- 
 fore, but by hard drilling at rehearsals, he tried to cure 
 them of the conventional vices of the old school, and to 
 make them look to nature as their guide. The rant and 
 fustian of the tragedies of Dryden, Lee, and others, in 
 which some of them delighted, were naturally odious to a 
 man so deeply imbued with the spirit of Shakespeare. 
 When Powell, a young actor of promise, performed Lee's 
 'Alexander' at Drury Lane, while Garrick was absent 
 on the Continent in 1764, he was very angry, and wrote 
 to Coleman: "Every genius must despise such fustian. 
 If a man can act it well — I mean, to please the people — 
 he has something in him that a good actor should not 
 have, ... I hate your roarers — damn the part." 
 
 Lake all managers who wish to keep out of the bank- 
 ruptcy court, Garrick had upon occasion to humour the 
 vulgar taste for pomp and spectacular show. Those who 
 see and hear with mindless eyes and ears at a theatre are 
 many; those who think and feel and judge are few. But 
 he never yielded to the hard necessity of captivating the 
 crowd without, reluctance, his aim and purpose both as 
 manager and actor being to educate and keep his public 
 up to a high intellectual level. As an actor, nothing 
 would induce him to stoop to the vicious taste of an 
 audience in order to catch a momentary applause. " A 
 true genius," he wrote to Powell, " will convert an audi- 
 ence to his manner, rather than be converted by them to 
 what is false and unnatural ; " and in the same letter he 
 advised his young friend to keep Shakespeare constantly 
 
 R 
 
258 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 atout him as his charm against the temptation to 
 sacrifice true feeling and taste to the caprices of the 
 puhlic. 
 
 Although Garrick leapt into fame at a hound, his con- 
 science as an artist would not allow him to relax in study 
 down to the end of his career. Gifted as he was with a 
 Protean power of transforming himself into characters of 
 the most diverse kind, his Abel Drugger heing as admirable 
 in its way as his Hamlet, his Scrub or Sir John Brute as 
 his King Lear, he would not — it might more truly be said 
 he could not — allow his impersonations to become stereo- 
 typed into something merely mechanical. Life, he held, 
 was not long enough, to work up any great display of 
 human character into perfection, to enliven it with the 
 thousand little touches, to stamp it with the semblance of 
 spontaneous ease, by which the actor counterfeits nature. 
 To others the traces of this study were imperceptible ; all 
 looked so apt to the situation, so begotten of the impulse 
 of the moment, so inseparable, as it were, from the main 
 idea of the character. But what Michael Angelo said of 
 Eaphael was no less true of him : " Che non hebbe quest' 
 arte di natura, ma per lungo studio." He kept on to the 
 last night he acted bringing observation, thought, and ex- 
 perience to the perfecting of his impersonations ; and, on 
 the days he performed, he shut himself away from all in- 
 terruption, in order to devote himself without distraction 
 to fresh study and meditation. He might be UI, suffering, 
 quivering with pain, but the audience saw nothing of 
 this. When he stepped on the stage, the man was lost 
 in the character he had to present ; bodily weakness was 
 forgotten for the time, and his impersonation was bright, 
 full of fresh life, and new and vivid touches, so that, 
 however often he had played a part, custom could not 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 259 
 
 "stale his infinite variety," and his public came away 
 with their old impressions of delight heightened and 
 intensified. 
 
 Garrick was lucky both in his critics and his paiuters. 
 With their aid we are almost able to picture what he 
 must have seemed to the playgoers of the Drury Lane pit. 
 What he could do with that wonderful face of his wiU be 
 at once seen by comparing the engraving, published in 
 1745 — the earliest of his portraits — after the picture by 
 Pond, with the engraving by Hogarth and Grignion, pub- 
 lished ia 1746, after Hogarth's picture of him as Eichard 
 in. The contrast between the calm face of the hand- 
 some young man with the same face under the agony of 
 Eichard's dreams is a study of what true histrionic power 
 can do, and a lesson also as to the natural qualifications of 
 feature which it demands. Again, who but must be struck 
 with admiration for this rare gift of facial expression on 
 lookiag at his Abel Drugger ia. ' The Alchemist,' either in 
 Zoffany's picture or in Dixon's fine mezzotint after it? 
 Only when we have studied it can we understand, and 
 then only faintly, how, in a scene which to the reader is 
 absolutely void of suggestion, Garrick used to hold his 
 audience in ecstasies of laughter. To turn over a portfolio 
 of the best contemporary portraits of Garrick is indeed the 
 best way to form an idea of what he must have been to 
 those who came under the speU of a face capable of ex- 
 pressing emotion of every kind and characters of every 
 mood, in a degree never witnessed upon the stage before 
 or since. This too, let it be remembered, was but one 
 part of his excellence, for in giving voice to these emotions, 
 and individuality to these characters by movement and 
 bearing, he was no less pre-eminent. Shut such a port- 
 folio, and then take up Lichtenberg's account of Garrick 
 
260 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 as lie saw him on the stage in 1775, and you get very near 
 the idea of what he must have been. 
 
 " In his face," says Liohtenberg, " every one can descry the bright 
 graceful mind upon the radiant forehead, and the keen observer 
 and man of wit in the quick, sparkling, and frequently roguish eye. 
 There is a significance and vivacity in his very looks which are oop- 
 tagious. When he looks grave, so do we ; when he wrinkles his 
 brows, so also do we ; in his quiet chuckle, and in the friendly air, 
 with which in his asides he seems to make confidants of his audience, 
 there is something so engaging that we rush forward with our whole 
 souls to meet him." 
 
 The influence of Garrick upon the actor's art and the 
 popular estimation of it was felt long after his death ■ 
 That event, if it did not " eclipse the gaiety of nations," 
 which, pace Dr Johnson, not even Garrick's death could 
 do, left the stage with no one to fill the void. StiU, there 
 were upon it many able performers of both sexes, aU of 
 whom had seen him, and had profited by the example of 
 his healthy, natural, vivid style. Henderson, King, Gentle- 
 man Smith, Dodd, Lewis, Quick, Edwin, among the men, 
 — Mrs Abington, Miss Farren, and Miss Younge, among 
 the women, — honourably maintained the repute of the 
 English stage in comedy. In tragedy Mrs Siddons, who 
 had failed when in Garrick's company in 1775-76, took the 
 town by storm when she returned in 1783 to the London 
 stage. Her genius revived the taste for the tragic drama, 
 which had been for some time on the wane. Old and 
 forgotten tragedies were dragged once more to light, and 
 galvanised into ephemeral popularity. The feeling she 
 had inspired was sustained by her gifted and accom- 
 plished brother, John Kemble ; and a new school of 
 actors, modelled more or less upon their style, gradually 
 gathered around them. Shakespeare was brought back to 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 261 
 
 tlie stage, and the new light shed upon his characters by 
 the Kembles and their followers was welcomed as a reve- 
 lation by many, who had their eyes opened by fine acting 
 to beauties which their own reading had never discovered. 
 The fiery and less seK-controlled genius of Edmund Kean 
 came to put a new life into the domain of tragedy, when 
 it was beginning to fall back into the grandiose and over- 
 elaborated style, to the reign of which Garrick, more than 
 half a century before, had put an end. The town and the 
 critics might be divided into parties, each giving the palm 
 of supremacy to one or other of the schools, but there 
 could be no question that there was genius in the leaders 
 of both, and that the principal characters, at all events, of 
 all our best plays were very adequately represented by Mrs 
 Siddons, by the Kembles, Kean, Young, Macready, Miss 
 O'NeiU, and other players of note who were associated 
 with them in the tragic drama. 
 
 But during this period, however admirable individual 
 actors might be, there was obviously too little care taken 
 to have plays weU acted throughout. In the metropolitan 
 theatres of the Continent the same mistake was not made. 
 Garrick, we know, had tried to establish a better system. 
 But owing to the lack of a true artistic spirit theatrical 
 people are sure to get into the habit of giving undue 
 prominence to leading actors or aetresses — a habit as 
 vicious, and as contrary to sound taste, as our modern 
 practice of concentrating the glare of a lime-light upon 
 the hero or heroine of a drama, and, while bringing them 
 into unnatural prominence, throwing all the other actors 
 of the scene into shade. The vice takes various forms. 
 Now the subordinate characters are put into incapable 
 hands; now their parts are cut down, and their chance 
 destroyed of making them effective ; now they are placed 
 
262 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 at great disadvantage in tte arrangement of the scene, or 
 compelled to act their characters in whatever way the con- 
 trolling spirit of the hour thinks will enable him or her 
 self to produce the most telling effect, no matter whether 
 true to the situation or not ; or, in these later days, it takes 
 the shape of having plays written — " one-part pieces," we 
 believe they are called — where everything is made to give 
 way to keeping the particular actor or actress full in the 
 eye of the audience all through the play. But at the 
 period of which we now speak — between 1815 and 1820 
 — the fault lay in leaving the minor characters in incapable 
 hands, and in neglecting to arrange the business of every 
 scene so as to give the fullest effect to the intention of 
 the author. Thus the great people of the play were weU 
 attended to, but they seem to have given themselves little 
 care about the minor folk, or the scenes in which they 
 had themselves no share. When Tieck came over to 
 London in 1817, he was amazed at a state of things which 
 at Berlin, or Dresden, or Vienna, would have been im- 
 possible, because there the play, as a whole — especially if 
 it were Shakespeare's — was the first thing thought of, 
 however eminent the performers in it might be. A sen- 
 tence in a letter of Lord Campbell's from Paris (Sep- 
 tember 3, 1815), puts the state of the case in a few 
 words. He had been for many years the theatrical critic 
 of a London paper, and spoke from knowledge. Nothing 
 struck him more about the French stage than the finish 
 which prevailed from the highest character to the lowest. 
 "In England," he says,^ "we never have above one or 
 two good actors on the scene, and the details are very 
 much neglected. Here all is perfection." The rank and 
 file of the Parisian stage, it is well known, were then no 
 ^ Lord Campbell's Life, vol. i. p. 319. 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 263 
 
 ■better than the rank and file of the London stage. The 
 best French actors stood quite as high above them as did 
 ours. But the system was better. Leading actors or 
 actresses were content to play secondary parts, and greater 
 care and finish were the rule in regard to what is techni- 
 cally known as stage management, all those details being 
 skUfully studied which help to give the air of vraisem- 
 hlance to the scene. 
 
 As years advance, and we come into a time still within 
 living memory, there was much less to complain of as to 
 the general ability of the leading companies in London. 
 When, for example, Mr Webster managed the Haymarket 
 Theatre, comedies both old and new had full justice done 
 to them. But it was not tUl Mr Macready became a 
 manager in 1837 that tragedy and the poetical drama 
 had a chance of being adequately interpreted. When he 
 threw up Drury Lane Theatre ia 1843, and the fine and 
 well-trained body of performers he had gathered round 
 was dispersed, the higher drama in. London fared ill 
 indeed. It was not tiU many years afterwards that Mr 
 Charles Kean contrived to create a spasmodic and trans- 
 itory interest in it by producing a few pieces with an 
 element in them of literary charm, but mainly by a series 
 of Shakespearian revivals, in which unhappily the actor's 
 art was made wholly subservient to that of the scene- 
 painter and the costumier. Just in proportion as the 
 scenery and the pageant became more splendid the acting 
 grew worse, the interpretation got further and further 
 away from the poet's meaning and intention. An un- 
 healthy appetite for mere scenic display having once been 
 created, it could only be satisfied by having recourse to 
 expenditure more and more profuse. But even despite 
 this stimulant the 'public taste grew jaded, and Mr Kean 
 
264 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 had to abandon his enterprise to save himself from ruin- 
 ous loss.^ 
 
 Charles Kean had none of his father's genius. He was 
 an actor made, not bom, and artificial to the core. He 
 did nothing in his own person worthy to be remembered 
 in any of the great characters of the poetical drama, or 
 to guide the younger race of actors into the right path. 
 Curiously enough, it was from a Frenchman that our 
 stage now received a strong impulse in the right direction 
 both as to acting and stage management. When Charles 
 Fechter came to England he brought from Paris an 
 established reputation as an actor of the picturesque 
 drama. He was young, in.teliigent, handsome, master of 
 the technique of his art, in which his model had been his 
 friend Frederic Lemaitre, a man of unquestionable genius. 
 His freshness and originality, backed by his grace and 
 distinction of bearing, to which our stage had long been a 
 stranger, and also by great fervour in scenes of strong, 
 emotion, soon won him a way to popularity, despite the 
 drawback of a marked foreign accent. Even in ' Hamlet ' 
 this was forgotten, so captivated were his audience by the 
 novelty of his conception, and by sustained exceUenoe in 
 all its details. Every one blessed him for having broken 
 away from the stale conventions which made ordinary 
 Hamlets a terror to playgoers, and for showing us a 
 human creature swayed by emotion in a way that all 
 could recognise as true to nature, and working up scene 
 
 ' Mr Booth, the sound and highly cultivated American actor, 
 told me that he was misled hy Mr Kean's first successea into pro- 
 ducing in New York a similar series of Shakespearian revivals. 
 As his houses filled, however, his exchequer emptied. The cost 
 incurred was enormous, and in the end he lost a fine fortune in a 
 mistaken effort to give a scenic completeness to Shakespeare which 
 his plays do not really require. 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 265 
 
 by scene into a picture such as educated men were glad to 
 associate with the old familiar text. Fechter's gifts were 
 not of the kind, however, to keep him up to the level of 
 Shakespeare. His Othello, as was truly said at the time, 
 had in hitn more of the modem Zouave than of the noble 
 Moor. Nor were his stage arrangements of this play 
 happy. They reached a climax of triviality in the last 
 terrible scene, where Desdemona was shown with a hand- 
 mirror lying on her bed, in order to give Othello an oppor- 
 tunity of taking it up, then, as he looked at his own face 
 in it, exclaimuig " It is the cause, it is the cause, my 
 soul ! " and throwing it out of the window. This was 
 iadeed to reduce tragedy to the level of melodrama ; and 
 although Fechter by his excellence in lago somewhat 
 retrieved the ground he had lost in Othello, he had the 
 good sense to try no further experiments with Shake- 
 speare. In melodrama he was in his true element. He 
 had a painter's eye for grouping and effect, and the 
 French love of completeness in all stage arrangements. 
 The example set by him during his few years of manage- 
 ment at the Lyceum Theatre, helped materially to force 
 other managers to pay more attention to this part of their 
 business, for the public would no longer consent to be 
 put off with the paltry framework in which plays of all 
 kinds, from the lowest to the highest, were too com- 
 monly set. 
 
 Unhappily, however, the good he did in this way 
 brought evil with it. Plays mounted as plays were 
 mounted both by Charles Kean and by Fechter cost large 
 sums of money, and could only yield a return by holding 
 the stage for 'months. Thus, the greater their success, 
 the more mischievous was its effect upon the actors. 
 Not the genius of a Garrick or a Pritchard could have 
 
266 TEE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 resisted the deadening influence of performing the same 
 character continuously night after night for half a year or 
 more. Being what they were, creatures of quick sensi- 
 bility and themselves shaken hy the emotions they por- 
 trayed, to have attempted to perform through long runs 
 the parts which they sustained in either tragedy or comedy 
 would have heen simply impossible. Their bodies and 
 miads must have broken down beneath the strain. Under 
 such conditions, moreover, fine acting of great parts obvi- 
 ously becomes impossible. They lose their freshness and 
 zest for the actor, and he drops into a merely mechanical 
 reiteration of certain prearranged effects, at the back of 
 which there is no genuine feeling, and in the end scarcely 
 even active intelligence. 
 
 The effect of the pernicious system of long runs and 
 over - elaborate scenic adjuncts was felt in the gradual 
 dying out of actors capable of grappling with characters 
 that demanded dignity of conception and of treatment. 
 The art of speaking blank verse, so that it falls naturally 
 on the ear, without losing the subtle charm of a strong 
 emotional cadence, also became weUnigh lost. Individual 
 performers of merit were here and there to be found ; but 
 no combination of them sufficient to do justice to the 
 poetical drama. Plays that appealed to the higher 
 qualities of the mind, ceased to be written, simply be- 
 cause they could not be acted. There was no dearth of 
 ability, however, for work of a lighter sort, work more 
 congenial to the tastes of a public who go to the theatre 
 only to be amused, who affect a cynical contempt for 
 heroism of motive, and regard aU display of strong. emo- 
 tion as " bad form." The pleasant but flimsy dramas of 
 the school of Eobertson, Byron, Albery, and others, in a 
 sense reflect " the age and body of the time, its form, and 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 267 
 
 pressure," the hlase listlessness of its young men, the silly 
 or weakly sentimental side of girls of the period, the small 
 amhitions, the meanness, the social stratagems, the Mam- 
 mon-worship, the no-heliefs, the shallow morality of the 
 age, with here and there the zest thrown in of that 
 " playing with fire," which is the outcome of marriages 
 without love, and the pastime of lovers without honour or 
 conscience. The puppets are disposed with considerable 
 skill, and the changes rung with no small dexterity upon 
 themes in which there was little charm of novelty. But 
 neither in plays of this order, nor in our best melodramas, 
 in which there were generally to be found both stronger 
 situations and some genuine human interest, was there 
 any demand for histrionic power of the highest class, 
 and apparently that power could not have been found, 
 had the call for it existed. 
 
 All plays depend in a great degree upon good acting for 
 their success. Without it a fine play may miss its mark ; 
 while even bad ones, if they fall into capable hands, escape 
 what would else have been disastrous failure. But plays 
 of such slight texture as those which have for the most 
 part occupied our stage for the last fifteen years could 
 alone have been made palatable by the pains bestowed 
 upon the stage arrangements, and by actors strong enough 
 to put life and character and colour into the feeble outlines 
 sketched for them by the authors. At the Prince of 
 Wales's Theatre, under the management of the Bancrofts, 
 excellent illustrations were given of what might be done 
 by turning to account such resources as were available in 
 this direction. The plays they produced were indeed slight 
 in substance and in structure. But all the characters 
 were fairly, some admirably sustained, and the setting 
 m the way of scenery and stage arrangement was fin- 
 
268 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 ished up to a point sufficient to satisfy even a fastidious 
 taste. What could and what could not be done by a com- 
 pany quite equal to the tasks set them in Mr Eobertson's 
 dramas became very apparent, when the same people 
 grappled in the same theatre with the ' School for 
 Scandal ' and the ' Merchant of Venice.' A different 
 and far higher order of power was required to bring out 
 with effect the strong character and brilliant dialogue of 
 Sheridan, and the passion and poetry of Shakespeare, 
 and of that power little or no trace was visible. But in 
 the narrower orbit the performers showed excellent qual- 
 ities. The example set in this theatre was followed in 
 several others ; and at the Haymarket, St James's, and the 
 Court Theatres, although the pieces were far indeed below 
 the level at which the literature of the English drama 
 should stand, they are always put handsomely upon the 
 stage, and acted with a spirit and effect which went far to 
 conceal inherent weakness of plot and dialogue, and want 
 of individuality in the characters. So much ability, in- 
 deed, was shown at these and other theatres, as to inspire 
 a reasonable hope that, if the dramatist's work were of a 
 higher kind, actors would be found to carry it out with 
 effect, and at the same time to advance themselves in their 
 art by having to call into play a greater variety of resource, 
 and a higher and more intense power of expression. 
 There are on the stages we have named performers equal 
 to, and in many cases above, the average of the general 
 run of French actors. Give a larger scope for bringing 
 out what is in them, and who can doubt that they would 
 be able as well as anxious to profit by it ? 
 
 The public, we venture to think, has itself greatly to 
 blame, that the literary merit of our current drama is 
 so low. In the poor stuff set before them the mass of 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 269 
 
 ttose who frequent the theatres seem to get what they 
 want. A play is not to them what it was to their fore- 
 fathers, — a thing to beguile a few hours pleasantly, no 
 doubt, but also something more, a display of human 
 character and emotion, by which their sympathies were 
 to be strongly moved, and in which sentence after sen- 
 tence, pregnant for reflection or illustration, was to be 
 carried away and stored up in memory. They liked 
 some important social or moral problem to be involved 
 in the plot, and to the solution of which they might 
 somehow be helped by what passed on the scene. The 
 drama of other countries stiU retains this character in 
 no slight degree, and although we are far from adopting to 
 the fuU the views of Mr Archer, one of our ablest dra- 
 matic critics, in his volume on the ' English Dramatists of 
 To-day,' London, 1882, we are disposed to agree with him 
 that until audiences regain something of the old spirit, 
 " our drama wUl remain unliterary, frivolous, non-moral, 
 unworthy of its past and of our present stage of advance- 
 ment in other branches of literature and art." 
 
 At the same time there is undoubtedly in a large section 
 of the pubHc a yearning after something better. But it is 
 not in that section of it which rushes to the theatre, not to 
 see a fine play, or fine acting, being as to what constitutes 
 either as ignorant as it is indifferent, but simply to get a 
 new sensation, or to find a topic for the gossip of the five- 
 o'clock tea, or the tedious dinner-party. In what Euro- 
 pean country but our own would a theatre have been filled 
 for weeks, as theatres were both in London and in the 
 coimtry, merely to see a " professional beauty " who had 
 neither natural gifts nor acquired knowledge to justify her 
 in putting her foot on a metropolitan stage ? In what 
 country but our own would the actor's art be so lightly 
 
270 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 thought of, that such a proceeding would not have been 
 resented as an outrage on propriety? If that art were 
 generally understood to be, what it is, the most difficult of 
 all the arts, as Voltaire called it, — an art for which even 
 with decided natural endowments of face and voice and 
 person, a sensitive nature, an intuitive perception of char- 
 acter, and the ease and certainty which can alone come 
 with study both on and off the stage, are also indispen- 
 sable, we should not have adventitious popularity from 
 other causes used so often as it is used to turn the stage 
 into a mere vehicle for earning money. How can the 
 public expect a high tone to be cultivated and maintained 
 by those who have adopted the stage as a profession, with 
 resolves to practise their vocation in a serious artistic 
 spirit, when an adventurous interloper, about whom there 
 happens to be the spurious iuterest of a vulgar curios- 
 ity, may at any time draw larger audiences, and carry off 
 more substantial rewards in money, than they can ever 
 hope to compass % No wonder that a critic like Mr Archer, 
 feeling intensely what a factor in moral and intellectual 
 culture the theatre might become, should write with the 
 bitterness he does : — 
 
 " Modern Englishmen," he sayB, " cannot be got to take the 
 drama seriously. The theatre is supported by the most Philietinic 
 section of the middle class, and by the worse than Philistine, the 
 utterly frivolous section of the upper class. People of intellect and 
 culture go at long intervals to one or two theatres, and are perfectly 
 in the dark as to what is really good and bad. . . . Pleasure, and 
 that of the least elevating sort, is all that the public expects or will 
 accept at even our best theatres. People talk of the theatre as an 
 instrument of culture ; but they take very good care that it shall 
 be nothing of the sort. A drama which opens the slightest intel- 
 lectual, moral, or political question is certain to fail. . . . The 
 public likes to go to the theatre to-night, and to forget the name, 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 271 
 
 plot, and characters of the piece to-morrow. It will laugh always, 
 cry sometimes, shudder now and then, but think — never," 
 
 Mr Herman Merivale, a writer who puts more thought 
 and literary skiU into his plays than ahnost amy other of 
 the dramatists of the day, speaks to much the same effect 
 in the preface to his drama of ' The White PUgrim,' which 
 was a striking instance of what we have said, that a fine 
 play, if placed in incapahle hands, is foredoomed to failure. 
 Under more fortunate circumstances than attended its 
 production at the Court Theatre some years ago, it would 
 have found hosts of admirers. 
 
 " Authors," he says, " might put their best literary qualities, in 
 all their differing degrees, into a ' School for Scandal,' ' She Stoops 
 to Conquer,' ' Money,' or ' London Assurance,' which can always 
 be revived — for old favourites are sacred in England. But now- 
 adays they had better keep them out of plays, and use them 
 elsewhere. There will always be room for one man, with the intel- 
 lect and tact of Irving, to keep alive the immortal Shakespearian 
 legend by adapting it to the peculiarities of the day ; but— I fear 
 the rest is silence. Lord Ellenborough is reported once to have 
 said, as a warning to barristers, ' There are callings in which to be 
 suspected of literature is dangerous.' I am afraid that the calling 
 of the dramatist is one of them." 
 
 Who is to hlame for this? The puhlic, says Mr 
 Archer ! The public in a great degree, thinks Mr Meri- 
 vale, as we read between the lines of this passage. But 
 managers and actors too, he would no doubt tell us, 
 must bear their share of the blame — managers, who, 
 looking as men of business to what will bring in most 
 money, will not risk the production of pieces that might 
 possibly prove caviare to the bulk of their public, while 
 such pieces are to be had as ' Our Boys ' or ' The Colonel,' 
 which cost little to put on the stage, and run for years ; 
 actors, who, if they have attained any position, wiU look 
 
272 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 with favour on no piece in wliicli a part for themselves 
 is not written up in such a way as to concentrate all the 
 interest upon them, and to put all the other characters 
 more or less into the background. Sheridan, Goldsmith, 
 Bulwer were hampered by no such conditions. Their 
 plays, therefore, are good all round, every character work- 
 ing towards the general effect. It is certainly not because 
 ' The Eivals,' the ' School for Scandal,' ' She Stoops to 
 Conquer,' or ' Eichelieu ' are finely acted, that they are 
 even now very popular; but because, even in weak 
 hands, the strong dramatic and literary interest of these 
 plays is felt, and a very large section of the public find a 
 genuine pleasure in them for the play's sake. Could we 
 bring back such acting as made the first successes of these 
 plays, and others of a like kind, aU London would flock 
 to see them. That very large body of educated men 
 and women, who will not go to see the commonplace 
 stuff which forms the staple of most modern plays, 
 would again be found swelling the audience, and a better 
 taste would be generated among another considerable sec- 
 tion of the public, who are only content to take such sorry 
 fare as is now presented to them, because they can get 
 no better. 
 
 It is to the existence of a yearning for something more 
 worthy of the traditional glories of the English stage, 
 something more abreast of the true culture of the time, 
 that Mr Irving largely owes the immense success which 
 has attended his management at the Lyceum. There is 
 a flavour of sarcasm in Mr Merivale's allusion to the 
 tact, which has enabled Mr Irving to "keep alive the 
 immortal Shakespearian legend by adapting it to the 
 peculiarities of the day." This seems to point, among 
 other things, to the lowering of the general level of the 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 273 
 
 acting to the sKpshod unemotional speaking and the free 
 and easy deportment, which people call a natural style, 
 because it reflects the absence of courtesy, refinement, 
 and distinction of manner which is an ugly characteristic 
 of much of our modem social life. It also points, we 
 presume, to the enormous pains taken to captivate the eye, 
 and to hide the weakness of the actors in the splendour of 
 the scenery, the beauty and the archaeological fitness of 
 the dresses, and the exceptional skill of the stage group- 
 ing and general arrangements. Great as Mr Irviag's 
 success has been, we do not think it would have been 
 less, had more pains been bestowed in bringing up his 
 actors to the same point of excellence as his scenery and 
 general stage arrangements. What might be done in 
 this direction was seen when he associated himseK with 
 Mr Edwin Booth in the reproduction of ' Othello. ' "We 
 are not of those who think the acting of Mr Irving him- 
 self, and his popular coadjutor Miss Ellen Terry, so far 
 above the level of what should be attainable in any lead- 
 ing metropoUtan theatre, that for their sakes we can be 
 blind to the shortcomings of the performers on whom 
 the other characters of his Shakespearian revivals are de- 
 volved. It may be that no better actors are to be had ; 
 but surely something better could be got out of them. 
 What is the use of putting them into the clothes of the 
 men of rank and culture of the time of the Italian Ee- 
 naissance, if they show nothing of the refinement or dig- 
 nity of bearing characteristic of that age? Those who 
 represent, for example, the young high-bred gentlemen 
 who figure in the 'Merchant of Venice,' or the nobles 
 and princes of ' Much Ado About Nothing,' might surely 
 be instructed to subdue the jaunty swagger and common- 
 place delivery of pointed prose or vigorous blank verse, 
 
 s 
 
274 TEE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 and to remember that tte men they are impersonating 
 axe gentlemen of Mgh. breeding and men of priacely 
 blood. It is by things of this kiad, and by the frequent 
 sacrifice of truth and fitness to mere scenic efiect,^ that 
 the taste of the best class of Mr Irving's audience is 
 revolted. He hears, unluckily, little of this from the 
 critics of the journals ; but it is freely enough spoken of 
 in society by those who wish him well, and are sorry that 
 such blots should exist upon his otherwise meritorious 
 representations. 
 
 If, as we hear on aU sides, men of good birth and 
 education are now thronging iato the actor's profession, 
 fired with the ambition to bring back the higher drama 
 to the stage, let us hope that they wiU prove their feeling 
 to be that of true artists, by strenuous cultivation of the 
 habits of life and of thought, out of which alone can 
 
 1 A flagrant instance of this was the blaze of light with which 
 Juliet's bedchamber was filled, when even the moon's light was 
 waning, in order that the fierce ghastly livor of the lime-light 
 might fall upon the parting caresses of Romeo and JiiUet. A viola- 
 tion of propriety even graver was made in introducing the grand 
 altar of a church in the scene of the interrupted marriage of Glaudio 
 and Hero. It was surely an outrage to reverential feeling to have 
 the subsequent animated scene between SenedicJc and Beatrice 
 carried on close to the altar-rails. Mr Irving, in a pleasantly 
 written essay in ' Good Words ' on " Shakespeare on the Stage and 
 in the Study," says : " On the stage, accessories which are per- 
 fectly attuned to the story must greatly enhance its fascination." 
 Yes, under certain reserves ; but then the accessories in these 
 cases, and indeed in many others that might be mentioned, are not 
 " perfectly attuned to the story." A worse breach of sound aes- 
 thetic rules was committed by the utterly colourless performance 
 of Dogberry and Verges, and by the omission of the scene (Act iii. 
 scene 5), in which they fail in trying to get Leonato to take the 
 examination of Conrad and Borachio, as upon this failure the 
 whole of the serious action of what follows turns. 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 275 
 
 come those qualities which distinguished the great pro- 
 fessors of their art in days not yet forgotten, — ^namely, 
 grace ajid distinction of bearing, manly courtesy of de- 
 meanour to women,^ and the skill which infuses some- 
 thing of an ideal charm into impersonation without loss 
 of the simplicity of nature. "It would surprise the 
 misbeliever in the potency of Shakespeare on the stage," 
 Mr Irving writes, "to know how many university 
 students, not content with reading the poet, are ambi- 
 tious to embody his creations. It is one of the most 
 encouraging signs of the future of dramatic art, that 
 every year finds an increasing number of educated men 
 and women willing to brave aU the drudgery of an ardu- 
 ous calling, in the hope of rising some day to its highest 
 walk.'' This ambition, unfortimately, often exists without 
 the natural gifts or the resolute enthusiasm to carry it to 
 success. But to start on the path with the culture and 
 the tastes and habits and associations of people of good 
 education, and accustomed to good society, is much. 
 The educated men and women, of whom Mr Irving 
 speaks, labour, however, under the heavy disadvantage, 
 that, while a theatre is the only real dramatic school, 
 
 ' See how the absence of this courtesy degrades nearly every 
 love-scene on our present stage. The lady, as a rule, shows none 
 of that modest reserve, nor the gentleman any of the reverence, 
 which are the sure signs of a deep-seated passion. While the lan- 
 guage of the lover is frigid, the freedom of his advances to the very 
 person of his mistress very often amounts to vulgar impertinence. 
 Would that our actors would remember the advice of Le Kain, 
 when giving a lesson to a young actor, who in rehearsing a scene 
 with the lady he was in love with laid his hand upon her dress ! 
 " Monsieur, voulez vous avoir I'air passionnd, ayez I'air de craindre 
 de toucher la robe de celle que vous aimez." Young ladies who 
 suffer themselves to be wooed as we constantly see young la,dies 
 wooed upon the stage, are not worth the winning. 
 
276 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 the theatres are few indeed in which they can pass a 
 novitiate in their art. London is, of course, open to but 
 few of them ; and as there is not, we have been told, a 
 single theatre out of London with a permanent company, 
 they have not the opportunities of practice, by which 
 actors in former days trained themselves to rise to ease 
 and eminence in their ait. Nothing is left for them but 
 a place in nomadic companies, who go from town to 
 town, performing month after month one or two pieces, 
 which have made a hit in London. How this impedi- 
 ment to the formation of a higher school of actors is to 
 be overcome it is not easy to say. But if what Mr 
 bving says be true, and there be at the back of the 
 ambition of which he speaks the patience and persever- 
 ance of genuine histrionic ability, some remedy wiU no 
 doubt be found. It certainly will not come in the mati- 
 nees as they are called, in which Juliets and Bosalinds 
 and Paulines, Hamlets, Maebeths, and Richeli&us without 
 number have of late made Icarian flights, and sunk hope- 
 lessly in a sea of ridicule and scorn. We should have 
 more assurance of seeing Mr Irving's hopes realised, if 
 the aspirations of our novices were of a more modest 
 nature ; if such Rosalinds as have la,tely been seen were 
 content to play Phoebe, or the Hamlets to measure their 
 powers by essaying to do justice to Marcellus or the 
 King. 
 
 But if there be so great a rush of educated men and 
 women to the stage, it is important that they shoxdd not 
 go there with any idea that the actor's vocation is one to 
 be entered upon lightly, or that his art does not demand 
 qualities of a high order. Li this view it seems to us 
 unlucky that Mrs Fanny Kemble should have thought 
 it worth while to reprint, along with her ' Notes on some 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 277 
 
 of Shakespeare's Plays,' the essay " On the Stage," which 
 appeared about eighteen years ago in the ' ComhiU Maga- 
 zine.' That a Kemble should disparage the actor's art is 
 indeed strange ; and yet she says of it, " that it requires 
 no study worthy of the name ; it creates nothing, it per- 
 petuates nothing." And again, actors "are fitly recom- 
 pensed with money and applause, to whom may not justly 
 belong the rapture of creation, the glory of patient and 
 protracted toU, and the love and honour of grateful pos- 
 terity." No study worthy of the name ! What says 
 Garrick in his letter to Powell from which we have 
 already quoted ? " The famous Baron of France used to 
 say that an ' actor should be nursed on the lap of queens,' 
 by which he means that the best accomplishments were 
 necessary to form a great actor. Study hard, my friend, 
 for seven years, and you may play the rest of your life." 
 As for himself, he always studied ; acting was never 
 "play" to him. What, again, is the counsel given by 
 MdUe. Clairon to a young actress ? " lustruisez-vous ; 
 cherchez constamment la v^rite ; \ force de soin, d'etude, 
 rendez-vous digne de former un nouveau public, et mettez- 
 le dans la n&essite de convenir que vous professez le plus 
 difficile de tons les arts, et non pas le plus avili des 
 metiers." Such study of itself will not make a great 
 actor. His inspirations come from his heart and his 
 imagination. Hear Clairon again. " Je ne connais point 
 de rfegle pour apprendre k penser, k sentir ; la nature seule 
 peiit donner ces moyens que I'^tude, des avis et le temps 
 ddveloppent." But no great actor ever intermits his 
 study; for his art, like aU arts, is infinite in its 
 posssibilities 6f development. 
 
 But Mrs Kemble supplies a complete refutation of 
 her own propositions by what she tells us in the same 
 
278 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 essay are the qualities that go to the making up of a great 
 actor. His art, she says, 
 
 "requires in its professors the imagination of the poet, the ear 
 of the musician, the eye of the painter and sculptor, and, over and 
 above all these, a faculty peculiar to itself, inasmuch as the actor 
 fulfils and embodies his conception ; his own voice is his cunningly 
 modulated instrument ; his own face the canvas whereon he por- 
 trays the various expressions of his passion ; his own frame the 
 mould in which he casts the images of beauty and majesty that fill 
 his brain ; and whereas the painter and sculptor may select of all 
 possible attitudes, occupations, and expressions the most favourable 
 to the beautiful effect they desire to produce, and fix, and bid it 
 so remain for ever, the actor must live and move through a tem- 
 porary existence of poetry and passion, and preserve throughout 
 its duration that ideal grace and dignity, of which the canvas xiud 
 the marble give but a silent and motionless image." 
 
 And yet this art "demands no study worthy of the 
 name " ! What does Mrs Eemble mean ? Do such 
 qualities as those she so weU describes come, as Dogberry 
 says reading and writing come — " by nature " ? To be- 
 come familiar with all that is best in the arts of sculpture 
 and paiating, and with what constitutes beauty of line 
 and motion, demands study of no mean intensity and 
 range. But that wiU carry actor and actress but a little 
 way. It is through the expression of their face, the 
 movements of their form, the tones of their voice, that 
 they have to express the poet's ideals. But it is the 
 mind, the inner soul, that have to speak through these. 
 Can great results, then, be expected, unless the mind has 
 been cultivated, and the moral nature elevated by great 
 and ennobhng thoughts, by wide and pure sympathies 
 fed by a knowledge of the human heart, and of the 
 thoughts, the feelings, the deUghts, the passions, the 
 sorrows that make up the tangled yarn of human life; 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 279 
 
 by habits, moreoyer, of observation and of living, which, 
 raise and ennoble the soul, and make the transition into 
 the ideal Hfe they have to portray, easy and congenial to 
 their whole nature ? Are these things acquired without 
 study, and what study more noble than that by which 
 they are acquired? 
 
 But, says Mrs Kemble, the actor's art " creates nothing, 
 perpetuates nothing.'' Books, if lucky in their fortunes, 
 live long ; so, too, do some pictures, and many statues. 
 But if the genius of painter, sculptor, or poet, is to be 
 measured by the fact of the survival of their work, then 
 we must strike off the roU of fame all those men of genius 
 whose works have perished, or may perish in a period far 
 short of perpetuity. The Hfe of the best art -work is 
 necessarily short. But however brief, if it be indeed 
 true art, it cannot be produced without genius. A great 
 impersonation by Garrick, by John Kemble, by Mrs 
 Barry, or Mrs Siddons, was the outcome of as genuine 
 artistic creative power as the very best contemporary 
 painting and sculpture ; and "these performers did as 
 much to instruct and raise the minds of those who saw 
 them, as Sir Joshua Eeynolds or Flaxman. It is the 
 player's misfortune that the product of his finest gifts and 
 studies dies with himself, but he is surely not the less on 
 that account an artist, if, to use Mrs Kemble's own words, 
 he reaches that pitch of excellence which enables him 
 " to live and move through a temporary existence of 
 poetry and passion, and preserve throughout its duration 
 that ideal grace and dignity, of which the canvas and the 
 marble give but a silent and motionless image." 
 
 But again, says Mrs Kemble, the actor's art " creates 
 nothing." Does the landscape-painter's art create 1 In a 
 sense it does not. He has the forms, the outlines and 
 
280 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 colours of nature to depict — he does not create them. 
 But the painter of genius, a Turner, for example, out of 
 the elements open to the eyes of aU, produces pictures so 
 stamped with that something ia his o-vvn mind which 
 marks him as superior to all other painters of landscape, 
 that it is no abuse of language to call his works " cre- 
 ations." So with the great sculptor, with the great 
 architect. They work upon materials common to all. 
 When they handle and combine them in the way no one 
 else has done, and impress them with their own individu- 
 ality, something new is added to the world, and we say 
 they have " created " it. The actor's process is the same. 
 The difference is that his results are produced in his own 
 person, and therefore are evanescent. But the outcome 
 is for the moment as well entitled to be called " creation " 
 as the product of the painter's brush or the sculptor's 
 chisel. It is begotten of the brain and soul by a new 
 combination of existing elements as much in the one case 
 as in the other. 
 
 But, it wiU. be said, the actor differs from them in this, 
 that he has not originally conceived the character he im- 
 personates, or composed the words he has to speak. Quite 
 true. But it is no less true that by his genius he often 
 puts a soul and significance into both, of which the author 
 never dreamed. M. Coquelin, of the Com^die Franjaise, 
 in a brochure called ' L'Art et le ComMien,' published in 
 1880, advocates the actor's claims on this ground with 
 great force. He cites the expressions of numerous French 
 dramatists in illustration of his argument. Thus of MdUe. 
 George in his ' Marie Tudor ' Victor Hugo wrote, " She 
 creates into the very creation of the poet something 
 which astonishes and enraptures the author himself." So 
 Voltaire, speaking of MdUe. Clairon, in his 'Electra,' 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 281 
 
 " It wasn't I that made that, but she ; she it is who 
 created the part." ^ Dumas, Alfred de Musset, Laya, 
 Vacquerie, Augier, Octave EeuiUet, Georges Sand, all are 
 drawn upon by M. Coquelin for simUar tributes to the 
 creative power of the fine actors to whose hands their 
 plays were fortunate enough to be intrusted. Lamartine 
 also, speaking of Frederick Lemaitre in the character of 
 Toussaint VOuverture, has expressed what is constantly 
 felt in other cases, " That a great actor veiled under the 
 brilliancy of his genius the imperfections of the dramatist's 
 work.'' M. Coquelin could have supported his view by 
 countless opinions of the same kind, of which he does not 
 seem to be aware. Thus Madame de Stael, speaking of 
 Talma, says, " A great actor becomes the second author of 
 his parts by his accents and physiognomy." Garrick says 
 of Pr^viUe, " His genius never appears to greater advantage 
 than when the author leaves him to shift for himself ; it 
 is thus PrevQle supplies the poets deficiencies, and will 
 throw a truth and hrilliancy into his characteir which the 
 author never imagined." What an illustration of this was 
 Arthur Murphy's remark, when he first saw Mrs Siddons 
 as Euphrasia, in his own play of 'The Grecian Daugh- 
 ter ' ! " What is this ? I never wrote that scene ; it has 
 been added." How much Garrick could infuse of his 
 own life into the poor colourless stuff of contemporary 
 plajrwrights is summed up in Goldsmith's reference to 
 them as men "who owed their best fame to his skiU." 
 And where Shakespeare was in question, must there not 
 have been in Garrick some power cognate to that of the 
 poet's, when Shakespeare's editor George Steevens could 
 
 ■• The story is variously and to our thinking better told, which 
 makes Voltaire exclaim, as the scene closed : " What ! did I do 
 that 1" " Est-ce bien moi, qui ai fait cela ? " 
 
282 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 say this of Mm ? " Wlieii I have taken my pen in my 
 hand to try to illustrate a passage, I have thrown it down 
 again with discontent, when I remembered how. able you 
 were to clear that diflB.culty with a single look, or par- 
 ticular modulation of voice, which a long and laboured 
 paraphrase was insufficient to explain." Let those who 
 are fortunate enough to have seen reaUy fine acting recall 
 what the Shylock, the Macbeth, the Oihello, the Juliet, 
 the Imogen, the Constance of Bretagne, the Hermione, the 
 Rosalind, or the Beainoe, in the idea they had formed 
 of them by ni«re reading, were when contrasted with the 
 image left on their minds, after life and form and colour 
 had been given to these beings of the poet's brain, by the 
 actor's genius, and they wiU refuse to go along with Mrs 
 Kemble in denjdng the merit of " creation " to his art. 
 
 Mrs Kemble proceeds upon the mistaken idea, that it 
 is by quick perception and a kind of intuition, rather than 
 by processes of analysis and reflection, that emiaence ia 
 acting is reached. The finest emanations of genius, no 
 doubt, come in acting, as in literature and in other arts, 
 in a way for which neither paiater, poet, nor actor can 
 account. We have heard from the Hps of distinguished 
 performers of other countries as well as our own a con- 
 firmation of Garrick's dictum, " that the greatest strokes 
 of genius have been unknown to the actor himself, till 
 circumstances, the warmth of the scene has sprung the 
 mine, as it were, as much to his own surprise as to that 
 of his audience." But this is in no way inconsistent with 
 his having submitted the character he was personating to 
 the strictest and most subtle analysis, so as to realise the 
 springs of action likely to govern such a character, and 
 the antecedent circumstances by which that character 
 shall have been developed or modified. Without some 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 283 
 
 such process he cannot bring himself to live into the char- 
 acter, and unless he succeeds in doing this, he ■will never 
 act it well. Mrs Kemble reasons from a very narrow 
 basis ia citing the case of Mrs Siddons, whose perform- 
 ances, she says, " were in the strict sense of the word ex- 
 cellent, while the two treatises she has left upon the 
 characters of Qiteen Constance and Lady Macbeth — two 
 of her finest parts — are feeble and superficial." The 
 answer to this is obvious. With Mrs Siddons's fine per- 
 son and voice and great experience of the stage, her Oonr 
 stance and Lady Maeleth might well be very impressive 
 performances, and yet be far wide of Shakespeare's con- 
 ception of both personages, as indeed many good contem- 
 porary critics thought they were. The fact ^that iiie 
 treatises are feeble and superficial goes far to justify this 
 conclusion. But at the same time it must be borne in 
 miud that it is not every one who is able to throw his 
 ideas into form upon paper. Great powers of critical 
 analysis may well exist wholly independent of the skill 
 to find apt words to express their processes or conclusions. 
 This may or may not have been Mrs Siddons's case. But 
 to go no further back than Mr Macready, many passages 
 might be quoted from his ' Autobiography ' to show that 
 he possessed very remarkable powers of critical analysis, 
 which those who knew him are well aware he constantly 
 brought to bear with effect upon his art. 
 
 It was in a far different and juster spirit that a friend 
 of Mrs Kemble, the late Mrs Jameson, conceived of the 
 actress's vocation. In her essay on Miss Adelaide Kem- 
 ble, published in. her graceful volume of ' Memoirs and 
 Essays,' she thus draws a picture of a true artist, which 
 We commend to the consideration of the educated women 
 who, Mr Irving informs us, are looking to the stage as a 
 
284 THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 profession. The educated men who have the same end in 
 view will not be the worse for taking it to heart : — 
 
 " An artist, properly so called, is a woman who is not ashamed to 
 gain a livelihood by the public exercise of her talent — rather feels a 
 just pride in possessing and asserting the means of independence — 
 but who does not consider her talent merely as so much merchandise 
 to be carried to the best market, but as a gift from on high, for the 
 use or abuse of which she will be held responsible before the God 
 who bestowed it. Being an artist, she takes her place as such in so- 
 ciety, stands on her own groimd, content to be known and honoured 
 for what she is ; and conscious that to her position as a gifted artist 
 there belongs a dignity equal to, though it be different from, rank or 
 birth. Not shunning the circles of refined and aristocratic life, nor 
 those of middle life, nor of any life, since life in all its forms is 
 within the reach of her sympathies; and that it is one of the privileges 
 of her artist life to belong to none, and to be the delight of all ; she 
 wears the conventional trammels of society just as she wears her 
 costv/mea de thidtre : it is a dress in which she is to play a part. 
 The beautiful, the noble, the heroic, the affecting sentiments she is 
 to utter before the public are not turned into a vile parody by her 
 private deportment and personal qualities, — rather borrow from 
 both an incalculable moral effect ; while her womanly character, the 
 perpetual association of her form, her features, her voice, with the 
 loveliest and loftiest creations of human genius, enshrine her in the 
 ideal, and play like a glory round her head. . . . She moves through 
 the vulgar and prosaic accompaniments of her ' behind the scenes ' 
 existence, without allowing it to trench upon the poetry of her con- 
 ceptions ; and throws herself upon the sympathy of an excited and 
 admiring public, without being the slave of its caprices. She has 
 a feeling that on the distinguished woman of her own classi is laid 
 the deep responsibility of elevating or degrading the whole profes- 
 sion ; of rendering more accessible to the gifted and high-minded 
 a, really elegant and exalted vocation, or leaving it yet more and 
 more a stumbUng-blook in the way of the conscientious and pure- 
 hearted." 
 
 It is well known that in writing these eloquent — and 
 no less true than eloquent — words, Mrs Jameson had 
 before her Madame Viardot Garcia as well as Adelaide 
 
THE ENGLISH STAGE. 285 
 
 KemMe. As we have shown ahove, the great actors and 
 actresses of the past — Betterton and his wife, Mrs Barry, 
 Anne Bracegirdle, Mrs Pritchard, and others — were all 
 more or less animated by the same spirit. "We speak not 
 of more recent names. Would that on looking at the 
 condition of the stage at this moment we could feel that 
 the majority of those who tread it were distinguished by 
 either the personal character or the artistic aims here in- 
 dicated ! UntU these do prevail, however, it will not rise 
 to a level worthy of the best culture and the healthiest 
 taste of our modem time. Let '•' the educated men and 
 women," of whom Mr Irving speaks so hopefully, look to 
 this. If they can educate themselves upon the lines of 
 the great masters of their art, if they have the true his- 
 trionic gift, without which they had far better keep off 
 the stage altogether, if they will make their lives good 
 and pure and high-minded, they may accomplish much. 
 Dramatists of true poetic power will again write for the 
 stage, and the theatre may again become, what it ought 
 to be, not only the best recreation, but the most potent 
 moral teacher of the age. 
 
IS THE ACTOE'S CALLING A 
 WOETHY ONE? 
 
 (FaoM THE 'St James's Gazette,' Deoembbb 1885.) 
 
 HIS is the subject of one of the essays in 
 the first volume of Mr Augustine Birrell's 
 ' Obiter Dicta.' Mr Birrell has evidently 
 but a limited knowledge of dramatic history, 
 and a more limited knowledge of the inner life of the 
 actors and actresses, of whom alone note is to be taken in 
 considering the question which he there puts before his 
 readers. But for this, he would never have answered his 
 own question in the way he has done. "Has the world," 
 he says, " been right or wrong in regarding with disfavour 
 and lack of esteem the great profession of the stage 1 " 
 The following passages form the most important part of 
 the argument on which he bases his conclusions : — 
 
 " A serious objection to an actor's calling is that from its nature 
 it admits of no other test of failure or success than the contemporary 
 
IS THE ACTOR'S CALLING WORTHY? 287 
 
 opinion of the town. This in itself must go far to rob life of dignity. ' 
 A Milton may remain majestically indifferent to the ' barbarous 
 noise ' of ' owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs,' but the actor 
 can steel himself to no such fortitude. He can lodge no appeal to 
 posterity. The owls must hoot, the cuckoos cry, the apes yell, and 
 the dogs bark on his side, or he is undone.^ 
 
 " But the mere fact that a particular pursuit does not hold out 
 any peculiar attractions for soaring spirits will not justify us in 
 calling that pursuit "bad names. I therefore proceed to say that the 
 very act of acting — i.e., the art of mimicry, or the representation of 
 feigned emotions called up by sham situations — is, in itself, an 
 occupation an educated man should be slow to adopt as the pro- 
 fession of a life. I believe — for we should give the world as well as 
 the devil its due — that it is to a feeling, a settled persuasion of this 
 sort, lying deeper than the surface brutalities and snobbishnesses 
 visible to all, that we must attribute the contempt, seemingly so 
 cruel and so ungrateful, the world has visited upon actors. 
 
 " I am no great admirer of beards, be they never so luxurious or 
 glossy, yet I own I cannot regard off the stage the closely shaven 
 face of an actor without a feeling of pity not akin to love. Here (so 
 I cannot help saying to myself) is a man who has adopted a profes- 
 sion whose very first demand upon him is that he should destroy his 
 own identity. It is not what you are or what by study you may 
 become, but how few obstacles you present to the getting of yourself 
 up as somebody else, that settles the question of your fitness for the 
 stage. Smoothness of face, mobility of feature, compass of voice — 
 these things, but the toys of other trades, are the tools of this one. 
 
 "Three-fourths of the acted drama is, and always must be, 
 comedy, farce, and burlesque. ... To make people laugh is not 
 necessarily a crime ; but to adopt as your trade the making people 
 laugh by delivering for a hundred nights together another man's 
 jokes, in a costume the author of the jokes would blush to be seen 
 
 ■' On what but contemporary opinion do the reputations of well- 
 nigh all but writers, painters, and sculptors rest ? Are the callings 
 of other men, therefore, unworthy ? 
 
 ^ Why only these ? Why exclude the nobler animals — the men 
 and women, some of them of the highest genius, who have done 
 homage to the gifts of great actors ? These are the people of whom 
 Shakespeare says, that their praise " outweighs a whole theatre of 
 others." 
 
288 IS THE ACTOR'S GALLING 
 
 in, seems to me a somewhat unworthy proceeding on the part of a 
 man of character and talent. 
 
 " Our dramatic literature is our greatest literature. It is the 
 best thing we have done. Dante may overtop Milton, but Shake- 
 speare surpasses both. He is our finest achievement ; his plays our 
 noblest possession, the things in the world most worth thinking 
 about. To live daily in his company, to study his works with 
 minute and loving care — in no spirit of pedantry searching for double 
 endings, but in order to discover their secret, and to make the 
 spoken word tell upon the hearts of man and woman — this might 
 have been expected to produce great intellectual if not moral results. 
 But what are the facts — the ugly hateful facts ? Despite this great 
 advantage — this close familiarity with the noblest and best in our 
 literature — the taste of actors, their critical judgment, always has 
 been and still is, if not beneath contempt, at all events far below 
 the average intelligence of their day. By taste, I do not mean taste 
 in flounces and in furbelows, tunics and stockings ; but in the 
 weightier matters of the truly sublime and the essentially ridic- 
 ulous. Salvini's Macbeth is undoubtedly a fine performance ; and 
 yet that great actor, as the result of his study, Aas placed it on 
 record that he thinks the sleep-walking scene ought to be assigned 
 to Macbeth instead of to his wife. 
 
 "What have the devotees of the drama taught us! Nothing! 
 It is we who have taught them. We go first, and they come lum- 
 bering after. It was not from the stage the voice arose bidding us 
 recognise the supremacy of Shakespeare's genius. Actors first 
 ignored him, then hideously mutilated him ; and though now 
 occasionally compelled, out of deference to the taste of the day, to 
 forego their green-room traditions, to forswear their Tate and Brady 
 emendations, in their heart of hearts they love him not ; and it is 
 vrith a light step and a smiling face that our great living tragedian 
 flings aside Hamlet's tunic or Shyhck's gaberdine to revel in the 
 melodramatic glories of 'The Bells' and 'The Corsican Brothers.' 
 Our gratitude is due in this great matter to men of letters, not to 
 actors. If it be asked, ' What have actors to do with literature and 
 criticism ? ' I answer, ' Nothing ; ' and add, ' That is my case.' 
 
 " But the notorious bad taste of actors is not entirely due to 
 their living outside Literature, with its words for ever upon their 
 lips, but none of its truths engraven on their hearts. It may 
 partly be accounted for by the fact that for the purposes of an 
 ambitious actor bad plays are the best." 
 
A WORTHY ONE? 289 
 
 "In reading actors' lives, nothing strikes you more than their 
 delight in making a hit in some part nobody ever thought anything 
 of before. Garriok was proud past all endurance of his Beverley in 
 the ' Gamester ' ; and one can easily see vphy. Until people saw 
 Garriok's Beverley, they didn't think there was anything in the 
 ' Gamester ' ; nor was there, except what Garrick put there. This 
 is called creating a part, and he is the greatest actor who creates 
 most parts. But genius in the author of the play is a terrible 
 obstacle in the way of an actor who aspires to identify himself 
 once and for all with the leading part in it. Mr Irving may act 
 Houmlet well or ill — and, for my part, I think he acts it exceed- 
 ingly well — but behind Mr Irving's ffwmZet, as behind everybody 
 else's Hwmlet, there looms a greater Hamlet than them all — Shake- 
 speare's Hamlet,, the real HwmZet, But Mr Irving's Maihiaa is 
 quite another kettle of fish, all of Mr Irving's own catching. 
 Who ever, on leaving the Lyceum, after seeing 'The Bells,' was 
 heard to exclaim, "It is all mighty fine, but that is not my idea of 
 Mathias " ! ' Do not we all feel that without Mr Irving there 
 could be no Mathias? 
 
 " As for actresses, it surely would be the height of ungenerosity 
 to blame a woman for following the only regular profession com- 
 manding fame and fortune the kind consideration of man has left 
 open to her. For two centuries women have been free to follow 
 this profession, onerous and exacting though it be, and by doing so 
 have won the rapturous applause of generations of men, who are 
 all ready enough to believe that, where their pleasure is involved, 
 no risks of life or honour are too great for a woman to run. It is 
 only when the latter, tired of the shams of life, would pursue the 
 realities, that we become alive to the fact — hitherto, I suppose, 
 studiously concealed from us — how frail and feeble a creature 
 she is. 
 
 " Lastly, it must hot be forgotten that we are discussing a ques- 
 tion of casuistry, one which is " stuff o' the conscience," and where, 
 consequently, words are aU-important. Is an actor's calling an 
 
 ' Indeed ! What warrant is there for such an assumption ? 
 Many entertained an idea of Mathias very different from that of 
 Mr Irving, even while they admired the skill with which he worked 
 out his conception. How difierent is the Mathias of M. Coquelin, 
 and how much closer to nature and probability, though not so 
 striking in effect ! 
 
 T 
 
290 IS THE ACTOR'S CALLING 
 
 eminently worthy one ?— that is the question. It may be lawful, 
 useful, delightful ; hut is it worthy ? 
 
 " An actor's life is an artist's life. Ko artist, however eminent, 
 has more than one life, or does anything worth doing in that life 
 unless he is prepared to spend it royally in the service of his art, 
 caring for nought else. Is an actor's art worth the price ? I answer 
 No." 
 
 On reading these passages, which were quoted with 
 approval in the ' St James's Gazette,' it seemed desirahle 
 not to allow them to pass without calling attention to the 
 other side of the question, which was done in the follow- 
 ing letter to the editor : — 
 
 Is THE Aotok's Calling a Woethy One'! 
 
 Sm, — You have given so much prominence to what 
 the author of ' Obiter Dicta ' has said upon this subject, 
 that it is pretty sure to provoke controversy among both 
 the professors and the lovers of the actor's art. So much 
 exaggerated nonsense has of late years been talked about 
 the dignity of that art, and so much exaggerated import- 
 ance given to some of its professors, both male and female, 
 that I can quite understand why this author should run 
 into the opposite extreme of depreciation and disparage- 
 ment. At the same time, I think he begs the whole 
 question when he starts with the assumption that acting is 
 "the art of mimicry, or the representation of feigned 
 emotions called up by sham situations," and nothing else. 
 This is just what Dr Johnson used in his churlish moods 
 to say of it; and that prig of prigs, Horace "Walpole, 
 followed suit in the same strain. The Doctor's idea of an 
 actor was, "A fellow, sir, who claps a hump on his back, 
 a lump on his leg, and calls himseK Eichard the Third ; " 
 and Horace Walpole " never could conceive the marvel- 
 
A WORTHY ONEf 291 
 
 lous merit of repeating tlie words of others in one's own 
 language with propriety, however well delivered." 
 
 The subject is a very large one, and would take up far 
 more space to discuss thoroughly than you could possibly 
 spare. But I would simply ask the writer you so highly 
 praise to consider whether what he says of acting might 
 not equally be said of a great deal of the best poetry, and 
 certainly of all the best dramatic poetry. What is the 
 work of imagination, as exemplified in these, but the 
 "bodying forth the forms of things unseen," and the 
 evoking of emotions suitable to feigned or (in the sense 
 of their not being actual incidents in the poet's own 
 Ufe) " sham situations " ? The poet puts the results into 
 words. The dramatist so arranges his words and his 
 situations as to furnish scope to the competent actor to 
 give to them the same vitality which the creatures of his 
 brain had for himself in his hour of inspiration, so that 
 we shall see them with our eyes and hear them with our 
 ears as he saw them in his mind's eye and heard them 
 with his mind's ear. Mere mimicry or declamation will 
 not do this. 
 
 ISo one knew this so well as Shakespeare, the actor as 
 well as the greatest of dramatic writers. Accordingly he 
 leaves more for the actor to develop and suggest than any 
 other wiiter. Therefore it is, as I have always understood, 
 that while he is the most difficult of authors to interpret 
 worthily, he is the author, of all others, with whom a 
 great actor or actress delights most to grapple, because the 
 element into which he transports them is in the highest 
 degree congenial and affords the finest scope to those who 
 possess a kindred spirit of imagination.^ Such artists 
 
 ^ Mr Birrell probably accepts as sound criticism Charles Lamb's 
 paradoxical proposition, that the plays of Shakespeare " are less 
 
292 IS THE ACTORS CALLING 
 
 have a genius and an inner life of their own, for which 
 they delight to find expression ia the ideal, yet most real, 
 men and women whom Shakespeare has summoned iato 
 being. "We call men artists, and thint their vocation not 
 unworthy, who devote their lives to transferring to canvas 
 their impressions of scenery, or of the ways men and 
 women might look and comport themselves under given 
 conditions, whether of actual life or of scenes imagined by 
 Shakespeare or other poets. Why, then, shall we with- 
 hold the same credit from the men or women who devote 
 their Uves to expressing by voice, look, and gesture the 
 life and emotions of human beings under similar con- 
 
 oaloulated for performanoe on a stage than those of almost any 
 other dramatist whatever." How comes it, if this be so, that many 
 of his plays, from his own day downwards, have been more attrac- 
 tive on the stage than those of any other dramatist ? The truth is, 
 that no writer knew better than he what is and what is not effective 
 on the stage. Given an actor or actress worthy to grapple with 
 his characters, and this quality of his genius will be conspicuously 
 seen. Of course any of his greatest characters is sure to be spoiled 
 by bad acting, but with good acting their charm is just as certainly 
 developed and brought home even to the ripest students of his 
 works. We see this in Lamb himself. What a far more lifelike 
 personage was Malvolio to him after he had seen Bensley act it ? 
 And as to Viola, who will say that his conception of that character 
 had not been enriched by Mrs Jordan, when he could write of her 
 thus ? " There is no giving an account how she delivered the dis- 
 guised story of her love for Orsino. It was no set speech, that she 
 had foreseen, so as to weave it into a 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 or 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 fol- 
 lowed 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." 
 
A WORTHY ONE? 293 
 
 ditions ; who are able to impress on the souls of audiences 
 the images and the emotions which they have conjured up 
 within their own breasts in the silent hours of meditation ; 
 and who open the eyes of thousands to the wealth of mean- 
 ing and significance, which a close and reverential study 
 of their author has brought home to their own minds? 
 Speaking from my own feeling, I most fully echo what 
 Mdme., de Stael said of Talma, " A great actor becomes 
 the second author of his parts by his accents and his 
 physiognomy ; " and I would add, by his " shaping spirit 
 of imagination " also. Common gratitude compels me to 
 acknowledge how much I have owed in former days to 
 genius on the stage for enabling me more truly to appre- 
 ciate the genius of Shakespeare, and to understand and to 
 live, as though I had seen and known them, with the 
 men and women of his great ideal world. And instance 
 after instance is at this moment present to my mind of 
 plays by writers of no small eminence, which liave owed 
 their success and hold upon the stage solely to ' that 
 quality in actor or actress, which, as Garrick said of 
 Pr^ville, " threw a truth and brilliancy into their charac- 
 ters which the author never imagined." 
 
 The intuitions of genius no more make a great actor 
 than they do 'a great poet. " My ever dear friend, Gar- 
 rick," says Burke in his 'Letter on a Eegicide Peace,' 
 "was the first of all actors, because he was the most 
 acute observer of nature I ever saw." And what was 
 Garrick's advice to young Powell? — "Study hard, my 
 friend, for seven years, and you may play the rest of 
 your life. Never let your Shakespeare be out of your 
 hands; keep him about you as a charm; the more you 
 read him, the more you wiU like him, and the better you 
 will act him.'' I know not what authority the author of 
 
294 IS THE AQTOSS GALLING 
 
 'Obiter Dicta' has for saying that Mr IrviDg "flings 
 aside with a light step and a smiling face Hamlefs tunic 
 or ShylocKs gaberdine to revel in the melodramatic glories 
 of ' The Bells ' and ' The Corsican Brothers.' " This may 
 be true ; but what, if true, does it prove ? No more than 
 a matter of individual taste ; not, perhaps, much to be 
 wondered at in an actor who, from choice or necessity, 
 has fallen into the habit, fatal to all true art, of acting 
 night after night for hundreds of nights — what no man 
 with the sensibilities of histrionic genius could do and 
 live — such characters as Hamlet and Othello. 
 
 Knowing neither actor nor actress of the present time, I 
 cannot pretend to say whether or not they are " below the 
 average inteUigence of the day." If this be so, then theirs 
 is indeed a " parlous case." For if we are to judge of 
 the average iatelligence by the crowds which cram our 
 theatres to see fine scenery and dresses, and believe they 
 are in this doing honour to Shakespeare, we can scarcely 
 conceive of the intelligence which prevails on the stage 
 being of a lower level But I must deny the general 
 proposition that "for ambitious actors" — if by that is 
 meant good actors — "bad plays are the best." The man 
 whose sole ambition is popularity and cash may rejoice in 
 such tilings. No man or woman of genius ever did or 
 ever wUl. The finer the play the better for them. It 
 gives them work that stimulates aU that is best in them, 
 and it brings its best recompense in the delight of sending 
 home to the hearts of their audience what the author has 
 conceived. I wonder on what authority the Obiter Dicens 
 rests his statement that " Garrick was proud beyond all 
 endurance of his Beverley in 'The Gamester'; and one 
 can easily see why. Until people saw Garrick's Beverley, 
 they didn't think there was anything in ' The Gamester' ; 
 
A WORTHY ONEf 295 
 
 nor was there, except what Garrick put there." Now, as 
 ' The Gamester ' was first produced on the stage by Gar- 
 rick, with a prologue written and spoken by himself, with 
 some of its best passages written into the play by him, 
 and with himself as Beverley, one does not see how people 
 could have come to any conclusion about the play before 
 they saw Garrick in it. Any way, it was a great success, 
 and held the stage down to our own times. But certainly 
 Garrick did not rank it at any time among his principal 
 parts. 
 
 "We are asked triumphantly, " What have the devotees 
 of the drama taught us "i Nothing. It is we who have 
 taught them." Who, I would ask, are the "we "? Are 
 they the Shakespeare commentators or the average Shake- 
 spearian critic? Alas, alas, if it be only to these that 
 actors may look for instruction ! A greater than your 
 obiter critic (no less than Coleridge) looked to the " Hving 
 comment and interpretation" of the stage as the only 
 medium by which Shakespeare "might be sent into the, 
 heads and hearts — ^into the very souls of mankind." But 
 we are further told, " It was not from the stage the voice 
 arose bidding us recognise the supremacy of Shakespeare's 
 genius." Indeed! Was that supremacy not recognised 
 when, only from seeing them on the stage, his plays could 
 be known 1 Is not this obvious from Jonson's magnificent 
 lines prefaced to the fijst folio? And might it not be 
 demonstrated with ease from the history of our stage? 
 " Actors," we are told, " first ignored him, then hideously 
 mutilated him." Save for a short period after the Ees- 
 toration, scandalous quite as much in oiir social history as 
 in the annals of the stage, actors never ignored Shake- 
 speare. If they mutUated him, they did so to meet- the 
 villainous taste of the public, and because they thought 
 
296 IS THE ACTOR'S CALLING WORTHY? 
 
 that to keep Shakespeare hefore men's eyes, even in a 
 mangled form, was better than that he should not he seen 
 at all 
 
 How inconsistent is your critic ! He tells us that " our 
 dramatic literature is our greatest literature " — Shake- 
 speare's plays " the things in the world most worth think- 
 ing about ; " and yet he pronounces the hfe of those who 
 have to interpret these works upon the stage to be not a 
 worthy one. How are they to be worthily interpreted 
 except by men and women who have the soul and the 
 self-respect of real artists 1 And yet such a vocation is 
 not a worthy one ! 
 
 Is it not as true of their art as of aU arts, that it is 
 worthy or not worthy, according to the spirit and the 
 natural gifts with which it is prosecuted 1 Tou may as 
 soon teU the bom sculptor not to mould, the bom painter 
 not to paint, the born poet not to write, as enjoin the man 
 or woman who is born with the genius to develop charac- 
 •ter and passion on the stage not to go there. And if 
 when there they do their work with the skill and the 
 conscience of true artists, I can see no reason why they 
 are to be told that their calling is not a worthy one, and 
 that they are not to be held in honour, as Eoscius was 
 held in honour by the best men in Eome, if his friend 
 Cicero is to be believed, and as many an ornament of 
 the stage, both abroad and at home, in modem times 
 has been. 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 (ElTLABGED FEOM ' BlACKWOOD's MAGAZINE,' FeBHUAET 1888.) 
 
 OW one starts at the conjunction of the 
 names of Bacon and Shakespeare ! And 
 how strange it seems that no other than a 
 casual conjunction of their names should 
 seem to exist, or should yet have heen discovered ! " 
 So wrote Sir Henry Taylor (27th August 1870) to Mr 
 James Spedding, adding an expression of his surprise 
 that two of the world's greatest men should have lived 
 at the same time and in the same city without to all 
 appearance having known each other, or "leaving some 
 mark and token of the knowledge." In his reply, four 
 days afterwards, Mr Spedding says : " I see nothing sur- 
 prising in the fact — for I take it to he a fact — that Bacon 
 knew nothing ahout Shakespeare, and that he knew 
 nothing of Bacon except his political writings and his 
 popular reputation as a rising lawyer, of which there is 
 no reason to suppose that he was ignorant. Why should 
 Bacon have known more of Shakespeare than you do of 
 
298 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 Mark Lemon, or Planeli^ or Morton ? . . . I have no 
 reason to think that Bacon had ever seen or read anything 
 of Shakespeare's composition. ' Venus and Adonis ' and 
 the ' Eape of Lucrece ' are the most likely ; hut one can 
 easily imagine his reading them, and not caring to read 
 anything else by the same hand." ^ 
 
 The study of a lifetime, devoted with enthusiasm to 
 a scrutiny of the writings and character ef Bacon, and 
 guided by the light of a fine critical faculty and a pro- 
 found acquaintance with not only Shakespeare but with 
 every great English writer of the era of -Elizabeth and 
 James, gives to these words of Mr Spedding a weight 
 beyond that of any writer of mark who has dealt with 
 this question before or since. No one can say of him, 
 that he did not know the literary characteristics of both 
 Bacon and Shakespeare with aU conceivable thoroughness. 
 Neither can it be questioned, that he of aU men is en- 
 titled to speak with authority not only of what Bacon 
 could do or could not do as an author, but also of what 
 was possible for him to have done, consistently with the 
 occupations and necessities of his life. This being so, 
 when he states his conviction that in all probabiHty 
 Bacon never read, nor even cared to read, the poems 
 and dramas ascribed to Shakespeare, the mass of intelli- 
 gent and cultivated students of our great poet wUl be 
 disposed to adopt his opinion as conclusive. Who so 
 Ukely as he to know what were Bacon's gifts, what his 
 Uterary tastes, or to find in his austere and unemotional 
 temperament no affinity to, or even sympathy with, the 
 genius to which we owe the poems and the dramas which, 
 as time has proved, were the noblest outcome of the lit- 
 erary activity of his age 1 
 ' Sir Henry Taylor's Correspondence, pp. 306, 307. London, 1888. 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACONf 299 
 
 Nevertlieless a creed directly at variance with that of 
 Mr Spedding has sprung up in these last years. Its 
 adherents, if not numerous, are at all events energetic, 
 and so adventurous m assertion that they have created 
 uneasiness ia the minds of many who, loving Shake- 
 speare, have yet never made themselves familiar with 
 the ascertained facts of his life. To bring these facts 
 and the general argument as to his right to the author- 
 ship — acknowledged in his lifetime, and ever since — 
 shortly hefore readers of this class, seemed not undesir- 
 able, enabling them, as it will do, to justify the faith 
 that is in them as to the Shakespearian authorship of l^e 
 poems, the sonnets, and the plays. For very many, such 
 an essay is of course superfluous ; and the Baconian heresy, 
 they may think, might weU be allowed to wear itself out, 
 Hke other heresies, from inherent weakness. But there 
 is a large class who, having no foundation for their belief 
 but inherited tradition, will not be sorry to learn on how 
 sure a basis that belief may be rested. For them the 
 following pages are written. 
 
 Bacon, in his second and last will, dated 19th Dec- 
 ember 1625, made an appeal to the charitable judgment 
 of after-times in these words — " For my name and memory 
 I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign na- 
 tions, and the next ages." He might weU do so. The 
 doubtful incidents of a shifty and in some particulars by 
 no means exemplary life he might fairly suppose woiild 
 be but little known to foreign nations and to men of 
 future centuries. Time, to use his own words in a letter 
 to Sir Humphrey May in 1625, would "have turned 
 envy to pity;" and what was blameworthy in his life 
 
300 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON f 
 
 would, in any case, be judged lightly by posterity, in 
 their gratitude for the treasures of profound observation 
 and thought with which his name would be identified. 
 " It is reason," as he writes in his essay " Of NobiUty," 
 that " the memory of men's virtues remain to their pos- 
 terity, and their faults die with themselves."^ Bacon 
 died a few months after making his will, on the 9th of 
 April 1626. 
 
 No author probably ever set greater store upon the 
 produce of his brain, or was at more pains to see that it 
 was neither mangled nor misrepresented by careless print- 
 ing or editing. Neither is there the slightest reason to 
 believe that he did not take good care, — nay, on the con- 
 trary, that he was not at especial pains to ensure, — that 
 the world should be informed of everything he had written, 
 which he deemed worthy to be preserved. Observe what 
 care he took of his writings in the sentences of his wiU 
 next to those above quoted. " As to that durable part of 
 my memory, which consisteth in my works and writings, I 
 desire my executors, and especially Sir John Constable 
 and my Very good friend Mr BosviUe, to take care that of 
 aU my writings, both of English and of Latin, there may be 
 books fair bound, and placed in the King's library, and in 
 the library of the University of Cambridge, and in the 
 library of Trinity College, where myself was bred, and in 
 the library of the University of Oxonford, and in the 
 library of my Lord of Canterbury, and in the library of 
 Eaton." 2 
 
 ^ How do the Baooniatis reconcile this view with the very oppo- 
 site statement put by Shakespeare into the mouth of Marc 
 Antony ? — 
 
 " The evil that men do lives after them; 
 The good is oft interred with their bones." 
 
 ^ Spedding'p Life and Letters of Bacon, vol. vii. p. 539. 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON f 301 
 
 Two years before Bacon made his final wiU, the first or 
 1623 foUo of Shakespeare's plays was published, with the 
 following title-page : " Mr William Shakespeare's Come- 
 dies, Histories, and Tragedies: Published according to 
 the True Originall Copies. London: Printed Iry Isaac 
 Jaggard and Ed. Blount. 1623." It was a portly volume 
 of nearly a thousand pages, and must have taken many 
 months, probably the best part of a year, to set up in 
 types and get printed off. The printiog of similar folios 
 in those days was marked by anything but exemplary 
 accuracy. But this volume abounds to such excess in 
 typographical flaws of every kiud, that the only conclusion 
 in regard to it which can be drawn is, that the printing 
 was not superintended by any one competent to discharge 
 the duty of the printing-house " reader " of the present 
 day, but was suffered to appear with " all the imperfections 
 on its head," which distinguish " proof-sheets " as they 
 issue from the hands of careless or illiterate compositors. 
 Most clearly the proof-sheets of this volume had never 
 been read by any man of literary skill, stiU less by any 
 man capable of rectifying a blundered text. In this re- 
 spect the book offers a marked contrast to the text of 
 Bacon's Works, printed in his own time, which were 
 revised and re-revised tUl they were brought up to a 
 finished perfection.^ 
 
 Down to the year 1856 the world was content to accept 
 as truth the statement of the foUo of 1623, that it con- 
 taiued the plays of Mr William Shakespeare " according 
 
 ^ In partial proof of this, it is only necessary to refer to the 
 Notes appended by Mr Aldis Wright to his admirable edition of the 
 Essays, published by Macmillan & Co. in 1862. So sensitive about 
 accuracy and finish was Bacon, that he transcribed, altering as he 
 wrote, his ' Novum Organum ' twelve, and his ' Advancement of 
 Learning ' seven times. 
 
302 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 to the true original copies." To the two preceding cen- 
 turies and a half the marvel of Shakespeare's genius had 
 been more or less vividly apparent. His contemporaries 
 had acknowledged it ; and as the years went on, and under 
 reverent study that marvel became more deeply felt, men 
 were content to find the solution of it in the fact, that the 
 birth of these masterpieces of dramatic writing was due 
 — only in a higher degree — to the same heaven-sent in- 
 spiration to which great sculptors, painters, warriors, and 
 statesmen owe their pre-eminence. How often has it been 
 seen that men of genius, without the long and painful 
 culture of school teaching, have, amid the bustle of active 
 life, by promiscuous reading, by intercourse with their 
 feUow-men, by quick and almost imconscious intuition, 
 acquired with marvellous ease great stores of knowledge, 
 which they have brought to bear upon and to illustrate 
 the conceptions of their imagination and fancy ! Knowing 
 this, men would not set a limit to "the gifts that God 
 gives," or see anything more strange in the prodigality of 
 power in observation, in feeling, in humour, in thought, 
 and in expression, as shown by the son of the Stratford- 
 on-Avon wool-stapler, than in the kindred manifestations 
 of genius in men as lowly bom, and as little favoured in 
 point of education as he, of which biographical records 
 furnish countless instances.^ 
 
 ' For example,^6iotto, a shepherd boy ; Leonardo da Vinoi, the 
 illegitimate son of a common notary ; Marlowe, the son of a shoe- 
 maker ; Ben Joneon, posthumous son of a clergyman, but brought 
 up by a bricklayer stepfather ; Massinger, the eon of a nobleman's 
 servant ; Burns, the son of a small farmer ; Keats, an apothecary's 
 apprentice, and the son of a livery-stable-keeper ; Turner, a barber's 
 son. The list may be extended indefinitely of men who, with all 
 external odds against them, have triumphed far beyond those who 
 had all these odds in their favour. 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 303 
 
 But in 1856, or thereabouts, a new light dawned upon 
 certain people, to whom the ways of genius were a stum- 
 hUng-block. The plays, they conceived, could not have 
 been written by a man of lowly origin, of scanty education, 
 a struggling actor, who had the prosaic virtue of looking 
 carefully after his pounds, shillings, and pence, and who, 
 moreover, was content to retire, in the fulness of his fame, 
 with a moderate competence, to the small country town 
 where he was bom, and to leave his plays to shift for 
 themselves with posterity, in seemingly perfect indiffer- 
 ence whether they were printed or not printed, remem- 
 bered or buried in oblivion. This virtue of modesty and 
 carelessness of fame is so unlike the characteristic of " the 
 mob of gentlemen who write with ease," at aU times, and 
 especially in these our days — it is so hard to be under- 
 stood by people possessed by smaU literary ambitions, that 
 it was natural it should be regarded by them as utterly 
 incomprehensible. So they set themselves to look else- 
 where for the true author. Shakespeare lived amid a 
 crowd of great dramatic writers — ^Peele, Marlowe, Greene, 
 Jonson, Dekker, Lyly, Marston, Chapman, Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, Middleton, and others. But we know 
 their works ; and to ascribe ' Othello,' ' Macbeth/ 
 ' Eomeo and Juliet,' ' Julius Caesar,' ' King Lear,' or 
 the other great plays, to any of them, would have been 
 ridiculous. Outside this circle, therefore, the search had 
 to be made; but outside it there was no choice. Only 
 Francis Bacon towered pre-eminently above his literary 
 contemporaries. He, and he only, therefore, could have 
 written the immortal dramas 1 And so the world was 
 called upon to forego its old belief in the marvel that 
 one man had written Shakespeare's plays, and to adopt 
 a. creed which implied a marvel far greater still, adding 
 
304 SHAKESPEARE OR BAGONf 
 
 these plays as it did to tlie other massive and volumi- 
 nous acknowledged works of Francis, Lord Verulam — 
 in themselves enough, and more than enough, to have 
 absorbed the leisure and exhausted the energies of the 
 most vigorous intellect. The great jurist, statesman, 
 philosopher, and natural historian of his age was, ac- 
 cording to this new doctrine, also the greatest dramatist 
 of any age ! 
 
 Who has the merit of being first in the field with this 
 astounding discovery is not very clear. America claims to 
 have been first in the person of Mr J. C. Hart, who, in his 
 book ' The Eomance of Yachting,' published at New York 
 in 1848, is said to have thrown a doubt on Shakespeare's 
 authorship. England, however, was not far behind ; for 
 in September 1856, a Mr William Henry Smith pro- 
 pounded similar doubts in a letter to LorcJ Ellesmere, 
 sometime president of the then Shakespeare Society, 
 which, as the copy before us bears, was modestly printed 
 for private circulation. Mr Smith had really little else to 
 say for his theory beyond his own personal impression that 
 Shakespeare, by birth, education, and pursuits, was not 
 the kind of man to write the plays; while Bacon had 
 " all the necessary qualifications — a mind well stored by 
 study and enlarged by travel, with a comprehensive know- 
 ledge of nature, men, and books." But if Bacon wrote the 
 plays, why did he not say so ? Mr Smith's answer to this 
 very obvious question was the wholly gratuitous assump- 
 tion, that to have been known to write plays, or to have 
 business relations with actors, would have been ruinous 
 to Bacon's prospects at the Bar and in Parliament ; and 
 that, being driven into the vocation of dramatist by the 
 necessity of eking out his income, he got Shakespeare to. 
 lend his name as a blind to the real authorship ! To be a 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 305 
 
 great dramatic wiiter, and yet to go through life in contact 
 with scores of men of shrewd sagacity and active intel- 
 ligence, without being suspected of the gifts that go to 
 make one, would to ordinary minds seem to be as impossi- 
 ble as to be bom with the genius of a Phidias or a Titian, 
 and not to show it. But such a thing as the irrepressible 
 impulse of dramatic genius to find expression in its only 
 possible medium is not even suggested by Mr Smith as 
 among Bacon's motives. He claims for him, indeed, 
 "great dramatic talent," on the strength of the very 
 flimsy masques and pageants in which Bacon is known 
 to have had a share, and of some vague record, that " he 
 could assume the most different characters, and speak the 
 language proper to each with a facility which was perfectly 
 natural" — a gift which might have produced a Charles 
 Mathews, senior, and is in itself by no means uncommon, 
 but which would go but a very little way towards the 
 invention of a single scene of even the weakest of the 
 Shakespearian plays. 
 
 Strangely enough, Mr Smith, unable apparently to fore- 
 see to what his argument led, appealed to the first folio 
 in proof of his assumption. " Bacon," he writes, " was 
 disgraced in 1621, and immediately set himself to collect 
 and revise his literary works.'' " Immediately " is rather 
 a strong assertion, but he no doubt very soon busied him- 
 self in literary and scientific work. He finished his ' Life 
 of Henry VII.,' and set to work upon the completion and 
 translation into Latin of his ' Advancement of Learning,' 
 which appeared in October 1623 as 'De Augmentis Sci- 
 entiarum.' ^ In the same year he published his ' History 
 
 ^ "Modem language will, at one time or another," he wrote to 
 Mr Tobie Matthews in June 1623, " play the bankrupt with books ; 
 and since I have lost much time with this age, I shall be glad, as 
 
 U 
 
306 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON f 
 
 of the "Winds ' and his ' Treatise on Death and Life.' At 
 this time, as his correspondence proves, he was husy with 
 anything but poetry or play hoots.^ In March 1622 he 
 offered to draw up a digest of the law, a project which he 
 had long cherished, and showed the greatest anxiety to 
 get hack into active political life. He was, moreover, in 
 wretched health, but at the same time intent on maMng 
 progress with his ' Instauratio Magna,' with aU the eager- 
 ness of a man who feared that his life would be cut short 
 before he could accomplish the chief object of his ambi- 
 tion. AU his occupations during 1622-23, during which 
 the first Shakespeare folio was at press, are thus fuUy 
 accounted for. 
 
 « But," continues Mr Smith, " in 1623 a folio of thirty- 
 six plays (including some, and excluding others, which 
 had always been reputed Shakespeare's) was published." 
 And then he asks, in the triumphant emphasis of italics, 
 " Who but the author himself could have exercised this 
 power of discrimination V As if the researches of Shake- 
 spearian students had not demonstrated to a certainty, 
 that one of the chief defects of the folio was the absence 
 of this very "power of discrimination," which, if duly 
 exercised, would, besides, giving us a sound text, have 
 shown which of these plays were all Shakespeare's, and 
 which had only been worked up into their present form, 
 upon the slight or clumsy fabric of some inferior hand. 
 
 God vrfll give me leave, to recover it with posterity." Surely this 
 is about the very last thought that would be uppermost in a mind 
 that had conceived such plays as Shakespeare's, and was then pass- 
 ing, or had just passed, the first folio through the press. 
 
 ^ As to how Bacon was occupied in 1622, see his letter to the 
 Bishop of Winchester, Spedding's ' Life and Works of Bacon,' vol. 
 vii. p. 371 et seq., and his letter to Father Redemptor Baranzano 
 (ibid., p. 375 et seq.) 
 
SHAKESPEARE OB BACON? 307 
 
 It is characteristic of the iaexact and illogical kind of 
 mind which had persuaded itself of the soundness of a 
 theory based on such trivial data, that Mr Smith accepted 
 without verification the " remarkable words," as he calls 
 them, to be found in Bacon's wUL " My name and mem- 
 ory I leave to foreign nations ; and to my own country- 
 men, after some time he passed over," — language which, it 
 may be presumed, in the light of the use which has since 
 been made of it, was held by Mr Smith to point to some 
 revelation of great work done by Bacon, which should be 
 divulged to the world, " after some time had passed over." 
 Unluckily for this theory, the words in italics do not 
 exist in the will.^ Nevertheless, followers in Mr Smith's 
 wake have found them so convenient for their theory, 
 that they repeat the misquotation, and ignore the actual 
 words of Bacon's last wiU, to which reference has already 
 been made. 
 
 Mr Smith seems never to have perceived that, if Bacon 
 were indeed the author of the plays, and revised the first 
 folio, or, as we should say, saw it through the press, he 
 was guilty of inconceivable carelessness in letting it go 
 forth with thousands of mortal blunders in the text, " the 
 least a death" to prosody, poetry, and sound printing.^ 
 The man, in short, who rewrote and retouched over and 
 over even so relatively small a book as his Essays, was 
 content to leave innumerable blunders in passages of the 
 finest poetry and the choicest humour in all literature ! 
 What wonder if Shakespearian scholars, indeed the world 
 
 1 Bacon made two wills, one in 1621 after his impeachment, and 
 one in 1625 ; but in neither do the words quoted in italics appear. 
 The words of the will of 1621 are, " I bequeath my name to the 
 next ages and to foreign nations." 
 
 ^ The typographical errors alone have been computed to aniount 
 to nearly 20,000, 
 
308 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON f 
 
 generally, met the preposterous assumption with the words 
 of Horace — 
 
 " Quodcunque oatendis mihi sic, inoreduluB odi" ! 
 
 Neither were they disposed to alter their opinion, when 
 America, in the same year (1856), sent forth an apostle 
 to preach the same new doctrine, ia the person of a Miss 
 DeUa Bacon, to whom years of study of Shakespeare's 
 works had revealed in them " a continuous inner current 
 of the philosophy of Sir "Walter Ealeigh, and the imperish- 
 able thoughts of Lord Bacon." This was Miss Bacon's 
 first opinion. It seems to have been modified when she 
 came to grapple more closely with the subject in a por- 
 tentous volume of 582 pages octavo — ' The Philosophy of 
 the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, 1857' — in which,, 
 dropping Sir Walter Ealeigh out of the discussion, she 
 ascribed the whole honour and glory of the thirty-seven 
 plays to her namesake. Poor Miss Bacon died a victim 
 to her own beUef. She had pondered over it until her 
 brain gave way, and she went to her grave possessed by 
 her monomania. Of course she had followers. What 
 crazy enthusiast has not ? for there is a charm to a certain 
 order of minds in running counter to the established creeds 
 of ordinary mortals. Her mantle was not suffered to fall 
 neglected. She was quickly succeeded by a more vigorous, 
 but even more long-winded preacher of the same doctrine, 
 in Judge Nathaniel Holmes of Kentucky, who spent 696 
 octavo pages in demonstrating that Shakespeare was utterly 
 incapable of writing either poetry or plays, being nothing 
 but an illiterate stroUer, who could scarcely write his own 
 name, who had no ambition but to make money, and was 
 not very scrupulous as to how he made it ; whUe Bacon 
 was endowed with every quality, natural and acquired, 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 309 
 
 wMch was requisite for tie composition of the famous 
 plays. Like Mr Smith, Judge Hohnes deals largely in 
 assumptions — such, for example, as that " it is historically 
 known that Lord Bacon wrote plays and poems." How 
 " historically known " he does not say, as neither by his 
 contemporaries nor hy the collectors of Elizabethan and 
 Jacobean poetry is he credited with that faculty. He left 
 behind him, it is true, a frost-bitten metrical version of 
 seven of the Psalms, written within a year or two of his 
 death, which scarcely rises to the Stemhold and Hopkins 
 level, published, when he was quite broken in health, in 
 1624; and the Baconian theorists have claimed for him, 
 with their usual rashness, the poem by George Peele, 
 called "The Eetired Courtier." A paraphrased transla- 
 tion from the Greek has also been assigned to him, on 
 doubtful authority.'' 
 
 Very different from the doctrine of Mr Holmes was 
 the view taken by Mr James Spedding, who, by his fine 
 literary taste and deep study of Shakespeare, as well as 
 by the intimate knowledge of Bacon's mind and modes of 
 thought and expression, gained in editing his works, was 
 entitled, as already said, to speak upon the subject with 
 authority. Judge Holmes had courted his judgment, and 
 this was his answer : — 
 
 " To ask me to believe that Bacon was the author of these plays, 
 is like asking me to believe that Lord Brougham was the author, 
 not only of Dickens's works, but of Thackeray's and Tennyson's 
 besides. That the author of 'Pickwick' was Charles Dickens I 
 know upon no better authority than that upon which I know that 
 the author of ' Hamlet ' was a man called William Shakespeare. 
 
 ' In the Appendix (p. 343) wUl be found specimens of these 
 Psalms, and also the only poems which have been assumed, but 
 never proved, to have been written by Bacon. 
 
310 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON"? 
 
 And in what respect is the one more difficult to believe than the 
 other ? ... If you had fixed upon anybody else rather than Bacon 
 as the true author— anybody of whom I know nothing— I should 
 have been scarcely less incredulous. But if there was any reason 
 for supposing that the real author was somebody else, I think I am 
 in a condition to say that, whoever it was, it was not Francis Bacon. 
 The difficulties which such a supposition would involve would be 
 innumerable and altogether insurmountable." ^ 
 
 Such a judgment, from such a man, is death to all the 
 arguments drawn by Mr Holmes and others from fanci- 
 ful parallelisms or analogies between passages in Bacon's 
 writings and passages in the Shakespeare dramas. No 
 man in England or elsewhere was more thoroughly con- 
 versant than Mr Spedding with the works of both Bacon 
 and Shakespeare, or more capable of bringing a sound 
 critical judgment to bear upon the distinctive literary 
 qualities of each. But even if this were not so, it is 
 notorious that arguments of this sort, frequently resorted 
 to as they are to support charges of plagiarism, are utterly 
 deceptive. Great ideas are the common property of great 
 minds, especially if, being contemporaries, the men who 
 clothe them in words are living in the same general atmo- 
 sphere of thought, and daily using the same vocabulary. 
 How, indeed, should it be otherwise? The same inci- 
 dents, the same phenomena, the same conditions of social 
 development, the same human characteristics, are daily 
 and hourly furnishing to them the same stimulus to their 
 imagination, the same materials for thought. Literary 
 history does undoubtedly present some remarkable in- 
 stances of authors expressing the same feeling or the same 
 thought in closely analogous language. But we venture 
 to say that every competent judge who wiU so " slander 
 
 ' 'Authorship of Shakespeare,' by N. Holmes, ed. 1886, voL ii., 
 App., pp. 613, 617. 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON f 311 
 
 his leisure " as to wade through the so-called parallelisms 
 cited by Miss Bacon, Mr Holmes, Mr Smith, Mrs Pott, 
 and other victims of the Baconian delusion, wiU come to 
 the conclusion that they are mostly far-fetched, and not 
 unfrequently overstrained to the point of absurdity. It 
 would be quite as reasonable to maintain on such evidence 
 that Bacon borrowed from Shakespeare, as that Shake- 
 speare and Bacon were one. Indeed an argument might 
 be successfully maintained that Bacon, who, we know, 
 drew largely from his commonplace-books, was a frequent 
 borrower of ideas jotted down there from the plays of 
 Shakespeare which he had seen acted. 
 
 It is obviously essential for the Baconians to set out 
 with the assumption that Shakespeare was an illiterate 
 boor. They say as much as that he was so from the 
 first and remained so to the last, and say it in language 
 extravagant and coaise in proportion to the utter reck- 
 lessness of assumption from which it springs. He was 
 a butcher's boy, they teU us; he could only have been 
 some two years at school ; he was a sordid money-lender ; 
 and so completely had his nature become, " like the dyer's 
 hand, subdued to what it [had once] worked in," that when 
 he returned, at near fifty, to Stratford, he resumed with 
 delight the trade of butcher, wool-stapler, and usurer. 
 The ascertained facts of Shakespeare's life are few. StiU 
 some facts there are which cannot be disputed, and which 
 give the lie to this scandalous assumption. 
 
 Shakespeare came of a good stock on both father and 
 mother's side. They held a good position in Stratford, 
 and if at a later period they became poor, they were 
 undoubtedly in easy circumstances during the boyhood 
 of Shakespeare. There was in Stratford an excellent 
 grammar-school to which they were certain to have sent 
 
312 SHAKESPEARE OR BAGONf 
 
 their son, wlien he reached the age, about six, at which 
 boys were usually entered there. What the course of 
 study pursued at this and similar schools was is well 
 known, and was pointed out in an admirable series of 
 papers by the late Professor Spencer Baynes, on "What 
 Shakespeare learnt at School " in ' Fraser's Magazine ' in 
 1879-80.^ It was very much the same as that of the 
 Edinburgh High School in the days of our youth, and 
 brought a boy up, by the time he reached the age of 
 twelve, to the reading of such writers as Ovid, Cicero, 
 and Virgil in Latin, and the New Testament and some of 
 the orators and tragedians in Greek. To send their chil- 
 dren to the school was within the means of all but the 
 poorest, which John Shakespeare and Mary Aiden un- 
 questionably were not ; and all that is known of them 
 justifies the conclusion that it is inconceivable they should 
 have allowed their son to want any advantage common 
 to boys of his class. Every presumption is in favour of 
 the view that they would not be behind their neighbours 
 in a matter of this sort. John Shakespeare, a leading 
 burgess, who had held high office in the local government 
 of Stratford, would never have exposed himself to the 
 reproach of his fellow-townsmen for neglecting the educa- 
 tion of his children. Desperate, indeed, are the straits 
 to which the Baconian theorists are driven, when, without 
 a particle of evidence, they deny to Shakespeare the ad- 
 vantages which were within the reach of the sons of the 
 humblest householder in Stratford. 
 
 The next clearly ascertained fact which bears upon 
 this part of the question is the publication of the " Venus 
 
 ' The subject was again treated by Mr Baynes in his masterly 
 paper on Shakespeare in the last edition of the 'Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica.' 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 313 
 
 and Adonis," wheii Shakespeare was in his twenty-ninth, 
 year. Only in the preTious year does he come clearly 
 into notice as a rising dramatist and poet, there being, as 
 admitted by his best biographer, Mr HaUiweU-Phillips,^ 
 nothing known of his history between his twenty-third 
 and twenty-eighth year, — an interval that Mr Halliwell- 
 PhiUips very reasonably considers " must have been the 
 chief period of Shakespeare's literary education," which, 
 when he left Stratford, could not, he thinks, have been 
 otherwise than imperfect. 
 
 Imperfect truly it might be, as indeed, in a certain 
 sense, of what education can it be said that it is not 
 imperfect ? But who can doubt that between the age of 
 fourteen, when Shakespeare's schooling probably came to 
 an end, and the time he went to London, he was imbibing 
 stores of observation and knowledge at every pore, not 
 from books only, but from the men and women round 
 him, from the sights and sounds of a country Hfe, and 
 from the imptOses that come to a thoughtful and poetic 
 mind in the solitude of its quiet hours 'i Then it was, no 
 doubt, that he grew familiar with the woods, the brooks, 
 the streams, the flowers, the legends, the quaint local 
 phrases, the songs, the oddities of character, the sense of 
 
 ' Let us here acknowledge the debt that all students of Shake- 
 speare owe to Mr J. 0. Halliwell'Phillips for the invaluable infor- 
 mation which he has brought together in the two volumes of his 
 ■ Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare,' of which the sixth edition, 
 published by Messrs Longmans in 1886, contains every ascertained 
 fact concerning Shakespeare, his family, fortune, and pursuits. 
 The book is a model of painstaking inquiry, and contains no conclu- 
 sions that are not based upon judicial proof. We are not aware 
 whether Mr HaUiwell-Phillips has published his views upon the 
 Shakespeare-Bacon controversy ; but that he regards the proposi- 
 tion that Bacon wrote the plays, and the arguments on which it 
 is founded, as "lunacy," we have direct means of knowing. 
 
314 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON f 
 
 maidenly and matronly charm, the visions of higher and 
 hetter things, that enrich the dreams of young imagination, 
 and which were afterwards to fill his pages with a bound- 
 less wealth of suggestion and of illustration. Then, too, 
 he would be learning to apply this knowledge to what he 
 had gathered from his favourite books. This would be 
 the time, in short, when he was " making himself," as it 
 was said of Sir Walter Scott that he did, in the days 
 before the "Wizard of the Iforth revealed his magic to the 
 world ia the poems and the novels which after middle 
 age he poured out in marveUous profusion. 
 
 Such, we know, was the view taken by Professor 
 Baynes, whose experience had satisfied him how true it 
 is, that it is not at school but by his own self-imposed 
 studies afterwards that a man is educated, and who so far 
 difi'ers from Mr HaUiwell-Phillips as to maintain, that 
 before Shakespeare left Stratford he had probably written 
 the " Yenus and Adonis," quoting in support of his view 
 the language of the dedication to the Earl of Southampton, 
 in which Shakespeare speaks of it as " the first heir of his 
 invention." It might be so, for Shakespeare was twenty- 
 one when he was forced to leave Stratford ; and, weighted 
 although the " Venus and Adonis " is with thought as well 
 as passion, the genius which produced the dramas might 
 even at that early age have conceived and written it. 
 But however this may be, the poem shows a knowledge 
 of what Ovid had written upon the same theme, in 
 a poem of which there existed at that time no English 
 translation, which could not have been accidental, any 
 more than the language in which that knowledge was ex- 
 pressed could have been within the command of an un- 
 educated man. Moreover, that Shakespeare knew Latin, 
 when or however acquired matters little, is conclusively 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON f 315 
 
 proved by his placing as motto upon the title-page the 
 foUowiQg Hnes from Ovid's Elegies, the very selection 
 of which showed that, at this early date, he set the 
 calling of a poet above all ordinary subjects of ambi- 
 tion : — 
 
 " Vilia miretur vulgus ; mihi flavus Apollo 
 Focula Castalia plena ministret aqua." 
 
 May it not also be fairly argued, from the very selec- 
 tion of the subject, as well as from the manner in which 
 it is treated, that the youthful poet's mind had already 
 caught the classical tone, which he coidd only have done 
 through a considerable familiaiity with some at least of 
 the Latin writers ? When we remember what Keats was 
 able to do in his "Ode to a Grecian Urn" and his 
 "Hyperion," despite his "small Latin and less Greek," 
 it is no wonder if Shakespeare turned his limited know- 
 ledge of these languages to the excellent account he did, 
 and satisfied the scholarly men of his time that he was 
 well entitled to choose for "the first heir of his invention" 
 the motto, which it would have been impertinence in a 
 writer to select who had not a fair knowledge of the lan- 
 guage in which it was written. 
 
 That they were satisfied of this, is tolerably evident, 
 for the success of the poem was immediate. Edition 
 followed edition, and by 1602 five had been printed. 
 In 1594 the "Lucrece," also dedicated to Lord South- 
 ampton, appeared, and ran into several editions. This 
 poem, like the " Venus and Adonis," bears iatemal proofs 
 of familiarity with what had been written by Ovid on 
 the same theme. Unless, therefore, it can be shown that 
 Shakespeare, who claimed the authorship on the title- 
 pages, did not write either poem, the charge of want of 
 education must fall to the ground. But how can this be 
 
316 SHAKESPEARE OR BACONf 
 
 shown in the face of the fact that his was by this time a 
 familiar name among literary men in London, some of 
 whom would have been glad enough to expose so glaring 
 an imposture, while by several of them his merits were 
 recognised in such epithets as " honey -tongued Shake- 
 speare" (John Weever, 1595), "mellifluous and honey- 
 tongued Shakespeare" (Francis Heres, 1598); and while 
 " his sugared sonnets,'' then unpublished, but which had 
 probably for many years been " circulating among his 
 private friends," were acknowledged by Meres as adding 
 fresh lustre to a name that had already been coupled with 
 many popular plays — ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' ' The 
 Merchant of Venice,' 'King John,' and 'Eomeo and 
 Juliet,' among the number P 
 
 Now it is to be borne in mind that Meres, from whose 
 "PaUadis Tamia" we quote, was familiar not only with 
 what was being done in contemporary literature, but also 
 with many of the authors of the day. Not otherwise 
 could he have gained his intimate knowledge of several 
 works, which had not been published when he wrote, as 
 weU as of some which were never published at alL Many 
 of the living poets of repute, it is obvious, were personally 
 
 ' " As the soul of Euphorbua was thought to live in Pythagoras, 
 so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey- 
 tongued Shakespeare, Witness his ' Venus and Adonis ' ; his 
 ' Lucrece ' ; his sugared sonnets among his private friends, &c. As 
 PlautuB and Seneca are accounted the test for comedy and tragedy 
 among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English is the most 
 excellent in both kinds for the stage. ... As ^pius Stolo 
 said that the Muses would speak with Plautus's tongue if they 
 would speak Latin, so I say that the Muses would speak with 
 Shakespeare's fine filed phrase, if they would speak English." — 
 (Meres's 'PaUadis Tamia.') 
 
 Meres's "fine filed phrase^' reminds us of Ben Jonson, when he 
 speaks of Shakespeare's " well turned and true filed lines." 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BAGONf 317 
 
 known to him, and about those who were not so known 
 he was just the man to seek out every piece of informa- 
 tion within his reach. Again and again he recurs to the 
 name of Shakespeare in a strain, which proves how deep 
 was the interest he took hoth in the poet and his works. 
 Possibly he was a personal friend, hut at least he had no 
 doubt, from what he knew and- heard, that "William 
 Shakespeare the actor was the author of the plays as well 
 as of the poems with which his name was connected. 
 
 That Shakespeare's success as a furbisher-up of plays, 
 which wanted the magic of his hand to turn their dross 
 to gold, had, even before 1593, excited the jealousy of at 
 least one rival dramatist, is shown by the language of 
 Eobert Greene in his " Groat's "Worth of "Wit, bought 
 with a Million of Eepentance." Greene died in 1592, 
 leaving this tract behind him in manuscript. In it the 
 brilliant and at one time popular dramatist, sinking in 
 abject poverty into the grave, had poured out the bitter- 
 ness of his heart at seeing the players making a rich 
 harvest by acting pieces, while the authors of them, like 
 himself, were in poverty. His grudge against Shake- 
 speare was apparently intensified by the fact that the 
 young man from Stratford not only acted in plays, but 
 wrote them, or, at least, had worked them up for the 
 stage. 
 
 "There is an upstart Crow," he -writes, "beautified -with our 
 feathers" (alluding apparently to plays originally written by 
 Greene and Marlowe, of which Shakespeare had somehow or other 
 made use), " that with his Tyger'a heart wrapt in a player's hide " 
 (a parody of " Oh, Tyger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide " — 
 Shakespeare's ' Henry VI.,' Part iii., Act i. so. 4) " supposes he is as 
 well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you ; and, 
 being an absolute Johwnmea Paototvm, is in his owne conceit the 
 onely Shakescene in a countrie." 
 
318 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 A few months after Greene's death, in the same year^ 
 1592, the tract was published by his friend Henry 
 Chettle. It had given great offence to the " play-makers " 
 attacked in it ; and as Greene could not be attacked in 
 return, Chettle, as sponsor for his tract, found himself 
 in the awkward position of having to bear the respon- 
 sibility for Greene's invective. Marlowe, to aU appear- 
 ance, and Shakespeare certainly, considered themselves 
 especially wronged ; and to the latter Chettle felt bound 
 to make an apology, in an " Address to the Gentlemen 
 Eeaders," published in December 1592, along with his 
 "Kind-Hart's Dreame." 
 
 "With neither of them that take offence," he writes, "was I 
 acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I never be" (a very 
 natural resolution, considering what a Bohemian Marlowe was). 
 " The other, whome at that time I did not not so much spare as 
 since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the heate of living 
 writers, and might have used my owne discretion (especially in such 
 a case), the Author being dead, that I did not I am as sorry as if 
 the originall fault had been my fault, because myselfe have seene 
 his demeanour no lesse civiU than he excellent in the quality he 
 professes. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness 
 of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his faoetious grace in 
 writing, that approves his art." 
 
 It is therefore clear beyond aU question, that so early 
 as 1592 Shakespeare had made a name for himself both 
 as actor and as author, " excellent in the quality he pro- 
 fessed " — viz., acting, and noted for " facetious grace," 
 or as we should now write, " graceful facility," in writing. 
 The latter gift must have made him a most valuable 
 member of the theatrical company to which he belonged, 
 and its possession was what, it is only reasonable to sup- 
 pose, procured for him his rapid advancement in the 
 theatre. To polish up indifferent dialogue, to write ia 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 319 
 
 effective speeches for his brother-actors, to recast inartistic 
 plots, was work that must have been constantly wanted 
 in the theatre ; and it is obviously work which was fre- 
 quently done by Shakespeare in those early days. It 
 was, moreover, a kind of work that must often have been 
 wanted in a hurry. It would never have been intrusted 
 to him unless his qualifications for it had been obvious. 
 Would any man have dared to undertake such work who 
 had to trust to another man to do it for him 1 Aad if he 
 did undertake it, must not his brother-actors have quickly 
 found out whether the work was his own or not ? For 
 much of it must have had to be done under their own 
 eye, possibly within the theatre itself, conceived upon the 
 impulse of that quickness of invention, and executed with 
 that fluent facility, which a mass of concurrent testimony 
 shows that his brother poets and actors ascribed to Shake- 
 speare as a distinguishing characteristic.^ Who can justly 
 doubt that Webster, in the preface to his "Victoria 
 Corombona" (1612), was only speaking of what was as 
 apparent to all these as it was to Webster himself, when 
 
 ^ " A play by Shakespeare reads as if it were written in a play- 
 house. The great critics assure you that a theatrical audience 
 must be kept awake, but Shakespeare knew this of his own 
 knowledge. When you read him, you feel a sensation of motion, 
 a conviction that there is something 'up,' a notion that not only 
 is something being talked about, but also that something is being 
 done. We do not imagine that Shakespeare owed this quality to 
 his being a player, but rather that he became a player because he 
 possessed this quality of mind ; for after all, and notwithstanding 
 everything that has been said against the theatrical profession, it 
 certainly does require from those who pursue it a certain quickness 
 and liveliness of mind." — (Bagehot's " Shakespeare — The Man." 
 'Literary Studies,' 1853.) Here we have a sound literary critic 
 struck with a quality in Shakespeare's work which only the work 
 of a man in actual and constant contact with the stage could 
 have. 
 
320 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 he alluded to " the right happy and copious industry of 
 Mr Shakespeare " ? 
 
 And yet the Baconians ask us to believe that not any 
 of the plays of which he was the recognised author could 
 have heen written by him ! Has it ever occurred to them 
 to reflect how inevitably a man reveals the character and 
 tendencies of his mind in his easy talk with the friends 
 who know him. well, and whom he trusts ? Sir "Walter 
 Scott, anxious though he was to keep secret even from his 
 intimates the fact that he wrote the Waverley Novels, 
 could not, as we know, help betraying it to such of them 
 as were capable of drawing a conclusion from the copious 
 anecdotes and distinctive humour with which his familiar 
 conversation overflowed. Can it be supposed, then, if 
 Shakespeare were the uncultured boor the Baconians 
 assume him to have been, that he would not have been 
 found out by his talk? Even in Goldsmith's case, 
 Garrick's well-known hne — 
 
 " He wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll," — 
 
 had in it more of playful sarcasm than of truth ; for are 
 there not upon record many sayings of his which were 
 quite up to the level of the current talk of the Literary 
 Club ? But whatever his talk. Goldsmith at any rate was 
 known by his friends to " write like an angel " ; and if 
 Shakespeare could not write what he professed that he 
 wrote, it is as certain as any deduction from probabilities 
 can be, that he could not have made his way as he did 
 among the poets and dramatists of the day. Have the 
 Baconians ever tried to picture to themselves what was 
 the position of Shakespeare the actor and accepted dramatic 
 writer in a theatre of those days 1 By necessity he was in 
 daily coinmunion with some of the sharpest and finest ia- 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 321 
 
 tellects of the time. In the theatre itself were men like 
 Burhage, Armin, Taylor, Lowine, Kempe, all well qualified 
 to take the measure of his capacity; while his profession 
 as an actor, as well as his pretensions as a writer of poetry 
 and drama, must have brought him into close contact, 
 hoth at the theatre and ia their convivial gatherings, with 
 men like Marlowe, Dekker, Chapman, Middleton, Hey- 
 wood, Drayton, and Ben Jonson. We might as soon be- 
 lieve that a man who pretended that he had written 
 ' Vanity Fair ' or ' Esmond,' but had not written them, 
 could have escaped detection in the society of Thackeray's 
 friends, Charles Buller, Tennyson, Venables, or James 
 Spedding, as that Shakespeare, without having written 
 them, could have passed himself off as the author of even 
 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' or 'Love's Labour's 
 Lost ' — we purposely name two of his earliest and weakest 
 plays, — or that any of the brilliant circle of Elizabethan 
 poets would have given credit for ten miuutes to such a 
 man as the Baconians picture Shakespeare to have been 
 for the capacity to construct one scene, or to compose ten 
 consecutive lines of the blank verse — the matchless blank 
 verse — which is to be found in those plays. 
 
 Then, as the years flowed on, and the young poet of 
 the " Venus and Adonis " and the " Lucrece," who had 
 begun dramatic authorship by patching up old and in- 
 artistic plays weU known to the public, put ia his claim 
 to the nobler dramas which made him, in Ben Jonson's 
 words, "the wonder of our stage," is it to be supposed 
 that such rival writers as we have named could have failed 
 to see that it was the actor Shakespeare, their chum and 
 intimate companion, with all his marvellously comprehen- 
 sive grasp of character, his play of ebiillient humour, his 
 unbounded exuberance of fancy and fertility of exquisite 
 
322 SEAKESPEABE OR BACON? 
 
 expression, and none but he, whose genius, and whose 
 genius alone, hreathed throughout the series of dramas 
 which, after 1592, were given to the stage with a prodi- 
 gality almost startliag 1 
 
 By 1598, as we learn from Meres's 'Tamia,' already 
 cited, Shakespeare had established his claim to predomi- 
 nating excellence in both tragedy and comedy. " For 
 comedy, witness," says IVf eres, " his ' Gentlemen of Verona,' 
 his (Comedy of) ' Errors,' his ' Love's Labour Lost,' his 
 ' Love's Labour Wonne,' (Much Ado), his ' Midsummer's 
 Mght Dream,' and his ' Merchant of Venice ' ; for tragedy, 
 his 'Eichard IL,' 'Eichard IIL,' 'Henry IV.,' 'King 
 John,' ' Titus AndronicuSj'.^and his 'Eomeo and Juliet.'" 
 Within the ensuing twelve years he had added to that 
 noble list the other great plays which wiU at once leap 
 to every reader's memory. If he had lived, for fame, he 
 might well think that by this time he had lived enough 
 for it. But what his friend Horio said of him was pro- 
 bably true, " that he loved better to be a poet than to be 
 called one." More probably, too, he had warnings within 
 himself that the great fountain of thought, imagination, 
 and feeling, which had hitherto flowed so copiously, was 
 no longer to be rehed on. The wine of his poetic lite had 
 been drunk, and he was not the man to wrong the public 
 or his own reputation by drawing upon the lees. Tem^ms 
 abire tibi est was the warning that was Uke enough to have 
 come to a man so wise, as it does evermore come sooner 
 or later to aU thoughtful men. He had made for himself 
 what a man in whom the elements were so temperately 
 mingled was sure to regard as a sufficient fortune ; and 
 to go back to his boyhood's home and breathe again the 
 free air of the old famUiar haunts, and share in the simple 
 duties of a well-to-do citizen among the ageing friends of 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACONf 323 
 
 his eaxly youth, was to such a nature a welcome release 
 from the anxieties and the conflicts of the crowded and 
 struggling feverish life which had been his since he started 
 to seek his fortune in London. He had had enough of 
 the toil and turmoU there, and, like his own Prospero, 
 was glad 
 
 " Thence to retire him to his Milan, where 
 Every third thought should be his grave." 
 
 To London he obviously went after this upon occasion, 
 — partly on business, as we know ; partly, it may be 
 presumed, to enjoy the stimulating society of his old 
 actor and literary friends. There he would renew the 
 wit-combats with Ben Jonson, of which Thomas Fuller 
 must have heard from living witnesses of them, — for he 
 could not have been present at them in person, — when 
 he wrote : — 
 
 " Which two I behold like a great Spanish Galleon and an Eng- 
 lish Man-of-War ; Master Jonson (like the former) was built far 
 higher in learning ; solid, but slow in his performances. Shake- 
 speare, with the English Man-of-War, lesser in bulk but lighter in 
 sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage 
 of aU winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." 
 
 Milton, also, though too young to have known Shake- 
 speare, could scarcely fail to have spoken with many who 
 had seen and talked with him. Not else would he have 
 written of him as "my Shakespeare," or as "sweetest 
 Shakespeare, fancy's child." And now this weU-authen- 
 ticated repute of our poet in the circle where he was 
 best known is to be set aside, and we are asked to be- 
 lieve, with Miss Delia Bacon and her followers, that 
 Ben Jonson, despite the frequent collision of their wits, 
 was unable to discover, what is so palpable to them, that 
 
324 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 Shakespeare was a liar who throws Mendez Pinto into 
 the shade, and a literary impostor such as the world has 
 never dreamt of ! 
 
 So far was Jonson from having a douht as to the 
 works ascribed to Shakespeare heing truly his, that in 
 his 'Timber; or. Discoveries upon Men and Matters,' 
 written long after Shakespeare was in his grave, he de- 
 scribed him in terms that confirm Fuller's estimate in a 
 remarkable degree : — 
 
 " He was (indeed) honest, and of an open and free nature ; had 
 an excellent phantasie ; brave notions and gentle expressions ; 
 ■wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was neces- 
 sary he should be stop'd : Sufflamiiumchis erat, as Augustus said of 
 Haterius. His wit was in his power — would the rule of it had 
 been so too. . . . But he redeem'd his [literary] vices with his 
 virtues. There was ever more in him to be praysed than to be 
 pardoned." 
 
 Who does not see, from this, the Shakespeare, not of 
 the dramas merely but of social intercourse also — with his 
 flashes, not of merriment only, but also of pathos and of 
 subtle thought, his flow of anecdote and whim playing 
 like summer lightning amid the general talk of the room, 
 and sometimes provoking the ponderous and irritable 
 Jonson by throwing his sententious and learned talk into 
 'the shade 1 Brilliant talk would seem to have come to 
 Shakespeare as easily as brUliant writing, and he would 
 thus eclipse Jonson in society as he eclipsed him even 
 when dealing with classical themes upon the stage. But 
 the genial player and poet, to whom all concurred in giv- 
 ing the epithet of " gentle," was too good a fellow to deal 
 in the wit that wounds, to presume on his personal popu- 
 larity, or to view the efforts of a rival author with jeal- 
 ousy. Jonson had good cause to think well of him, for 
 
, SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 325 
 
 he had not in his early days hesitated to attack Shake- 
 speare in very abusive terms ; ^ and yet it was to Shake- 
 speare's active intervention that he owed the production 
 on the stage, hy the Lord Chamherlain's company, of 
 which Shakespeare was a memher, of the fine play of 
 'Every Man in his Humour,' which Jonson, then in 
 needy circumstances, had failed to get them to accept. 
 This, and many > other acts of good-fellowship, as well as 
 the numberless hours which the talk and fine spirits of 
 his friend had made memorable, were doubtless in Jon- 
 son's mind, when, in a previous passage of the ' Memor- 
 andum' just quoted, he said of him, remembering how 
 kind, how generous, how free from self-assertion he had 
 been, — "I loved the man, and doe honour his memory 
 on this side idolatrie as much as any." And this is the 
 man we are now to be told was the poor coarse-grained 
 Uliterate creature to which the Baconians would reduce 
 him ! 
 
 In support of their theory they rest upon the circum- 
 stance that, after Shakespeare settled about 1612 in 
 Stratford, no more plays appeared with his name. If 
 there had been anything extraordinary in that circum- 
 stance, surely Ben Jonson and his other author friends 
 would have been struck by it. We know that down to 
 the last he was in intimate contact with Jonson and 
 Michael Drayton, who, according to a fairly authenticated 
 tradition, visited him at Stratford about a month before 
 his death. But neither Jonson nor Drayton, nor, what 
 is more material, his player partners and intimates, hint 
 anywhere the slightest surprise that he ceased, while stUl 
 in the vigour of his years, to furnish the stage with fresh 
 sources of attraction. Why he so ceased no one can tell, 
 ^ See Appendix, p. 348. 
 
326 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 any more than we can tell with certainty why he did. not 
 himself see his works through the press. He may very 
 well have intended to do this, so soon as they could be 
 printed without injury to the interests of the theatres to 
 which he had sold them, and to which it was important 
 that they should not he made available to rival theatres, 
 as by publication they would have been. 
 
 It must always be remembered, too, that Shakespeare 
 died of a sudden and brief iUness, which probably cut 
 short many other projects besides that of having his 
 dramas printed in an authentic form. This view is 
 countenanced by the language of Heminges and CondeU 
 in their dedication of the first folio to the Earls of Pem- 
 broke and Montgomery, in which they speak of Shake- 
 speare with regret as "not having the fate common 
 with some, to be executor to his owne writings." To 
 them it seems clear enough that he would have brought 
 them out himself, had he lived. " We,'' they say, " have 
 but collected them, and done an office to the dead to 
 procure his orphanes guardians, without amhition either 
 of selferprofit or fame, onely to Tteep the memory of so 
 worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare, 
 by humble offer of his playes to your most noble patron- 
 age." The words of their preface to the volume are even 
 more significant : — 
 
 " It had bene a thing, we confeeae, worthy to have bene wished, 
 that the author himselfe had lived to have set forth and overseen 
 his own writings ; but since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he 
 by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his 
 friends the office of their care and pains to have collected and pub- 
 lish'd them ; and so to have publish'd them, as where (before) you 
 were abua'd with diverse stolne and surreptitious copies, maim'd 
 and deform'd by the frauds and stealthea of injurious impoators 
 that expos'd them ; even those are now offer'd to your view our'd 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 327 
 
 and perfect of their limbes, and all the rest absolute in their num- 
 bers as he conoeiv'd them ; who, as hfi was a happie imitator of 
 NaMvre, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went 
 together ; and what he thought he uttered with that easimesse, that we 
 have scarce received from him a ilot in his papers." 
 
 Now who are the men who hear this testimony to the 
 fact that Shakespeare's "mind and hand went together," 
 and that composition was to him so easy, that his manu- 
 scripts — like Sir Walter Scott's, George Eliot's, or Thack- 
 eray's, aU great masters of style — ^were almost without a 
 blot 1 They were men who had been associated with him. 
 for years as brother actors, — men who must have often 
 heard discussed in his presence what plots were to be 
 selected for new plays, and how they were to be treated, 
 — men who must have again and again marked, with 
 delighted surprise, how he had transformed into some- 
 thing of which his fellows had never dreamed the tales 
 on which such plays as ' The Merchant of Venice,' ' Cym- 
 heline,' 'The Winter's Tale,' and 'As You Like It' were 
 founded, — men who had known him from time to time 
 write in scenes and speeches, sometimes of his own ac- 
 cord, but sometimes as Kkely at the suggestion of his 
 brother actors, or at a rehearsal in their very presence 
 cut and carve upon a passage to give it more point and 
 fibuisL They at least knew his autograph, and had seen 
 his "papers." If he could not even write his own name 
 respectably, as the Baconians contend, they must have 
 known the fact, and would not have ventured to speak 
 of his " papers," when so many people were aUve, who, 
 if the Baconians are right, could have shown up the 
 imposture. Eemember, too, that this very volume was 
 dedicated to two noblemen of high culture, the Earl of 
 Pembroke and the Earl of Montgomery, who knew Shake- 
 
328 SHAKESPEARE OR BAGONf 
 
 speare personally, and, in the language of the Dedication, 
 had treated both his plays " and their author living " with 
 much favour. "Were such men likely to have heen the 
 victims of a delusion 1 
 
 It in no way militates against the weight of this 
 argument, that much of the first foHo was a reprint 
 merely of some of the plays which had already been 
 printed in quarto. Heminges and Condell might not 
 have intended by what they wrote to suggest that the 
 book was entirely printed from his "papers." Their 
 language may fairly be read merely as a record of the 
 fact that the MSS. of his plays, as originally delivered 
 by him to his "fellows" at the theatre, were not dis- 
 figured by the erasures and interlineations with which 
 they were familiar in the MSS. of other dramatic writers. 
 
 Ben Jonson, it is true, thought this absence of blots 
 no virtue in his friend. The players, he says, often 
 mentioned it in Shakespeare's honour. "My answer 
 hath beene, would he had blotted a thousand. . . . 
 Many times he fell into those things could not escape 
 laughter; as when he said in the person of Caesar, one 
 speaking to him, — Omsar, thou dost me wrong ; he reply'd, 
 — CcBsar did never wrong hut with just cause; and such 
 like, which were ridiculous." There is a good deal to 
 be said for the sentences excepted to by Jonson (which, 
 by the way, are not in the first folio, nor indeed printed 
 anywhere, though they may very possibly have been in 
 Shakespeare's original MS.) ; but what Jonson writes is 
 of importance as showing that the cleanness and freedom 
 from correction of Shakespeare's MSS. were notorious in 
 the theatres to which he had belonged. 
 
 Jonson's deliberate thought as to how Shakespeare 
 worked, and that art as well as natural gifts went to 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON f 329 
 
 the composition of his works, is very clearly stated in 
 the splendid eulogy by him prefixed to the first folio : — 
 
 " The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, 
 Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please. 
 But antiquated and deserted lye, 
 As they were not of Nature's family. 
 Yet must I not give Nature all ; thy art, 
 My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part ; 
 For though the poet's matter Nature be, 
 Hia art doth give the fashion ! and that he. 
 Who casts to write a living line must sweat. 
 Such as thine are, and strike the second heat 
 Upon the Muses anvile ; turne the same 
 And himselfe with it, that he thinkes to frame. 
 Or for the laurell he may gaine a soorne. 
 For a good poet's made as well as borne. 
 And such weet thou ! " 
 
 Jonson was not the man to write thus without having 
 a basis of fact to go upon. What more natural than 
 that Shakespeare and he should have often talked over 
 passages in their plays, which one or the other thought 
 might be improved ? It may be, that among these pas- 
 sages were those very sentences in ' Julius Ctesar ' to 
 which we have seen that Jonson took exception; for in 
 the first foHo (' Julius Csesar,' Act iii. sc. 1) what we 
 read is — 
 
 " Know, Csesar doth not wrong ; nor without cause 
 Will he be satisfied ; " 
 
 — ^just such a correction as the Shakespeare described 
 by Heminges and CondeU would be likely to make upon 
 the spur of the moment, if his attention had been called 
 to the seeming paradox of the words which Jonson says 
 he wrote. 
 
 Jonson had probably in his mind's eye many incidents 
 
330 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON f 
 
 of a similar nature, which, satisfied him that all the seem- 
 ing artlessness of his friend — the " art without art, Tinpa> 
 alleled as yet," as the scholarly Leonard Digges called it 
 — was nothing more nor less than that highest triumph 
 of art, that perfection of simpUcity and finish, by which 
 art is never suggested. No unprejudiced mind can read 
 what Jonson has written of Shakespeare without having 
 the conviction forced upon him, that Jonson had seen 
 in the man himself living and unmistakable proofs, 
 that in him was the genius from which sprang both the 
 poetry and the plays which were identified with his name. 
 It is not of the plays alone, but of the man also as he knew 
 him, that Jonson was thinking, when he wrote the lines 
 opposite the Droeshout portrait in the first foHo ; — 
 
 " Oh, could he [Droeshout] but have drawne his wit 
 As well in brasse, as he hath hit 
 His face, the print would then surpasse 
 AH that was ever writ in brasse." 
 
 And also in the lines — " To the memory of my beloved 
 the author, Mr WUliam Shakespeare, and what he hath 
 left us," apostrophising him as — 
 
 " Soul of the age ! 
 The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our ^tage ! " 
 
 And again — 
 
 " If I thought my judgement were of yeeres," 
 
 — that is, that my opinion was to be prized by pos- 
 terity — 
 
 " I should commit thee surely with thy peers, 
 And tell how far thou didst our Lily outshine, 
 Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line. 
 And though thou hadsb small Latin and less Greeke," 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 331 
 
 (How does tlus comport with the Baconians' theory of 
 the illiterate butcher's boy?) 
 
 " From thence to honour thee I would not seeke 
 For names, but call forth thund'ring jEschilus, 
 Euripedes, and Sophocles to us, 
 PaccuviuB, Accius, him of Cordova dead. 
 To life again, to hear thy buskin tread 
 And shake a stage ; or, when thy sockea were on, 
 Leave thee alone, for the comparison 
 Of all that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome 
 Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. 
 Triumph, my Britaine ! thou hast one to showe, 
 To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. 
 He was not of an age, but for all time ! " 
 
 There spoke out the heart of brave old Ben, remember- 
 ing how meekly the man with whose friendship he had 
 been blest had borne his honours, and had never made 
 him feel that aU Jonson's " slow endeavouring art," 
 working even upon classic ground, could not bring him 
 abreast in popularity with the heaven - gifted man who 
 had " small Latin and less Greek." For so it was in 
 Ben Jonson's own time, as we learn from the lines of 
 Leonard Digges, who died in 1635 at the University of 
 Oxford, where he led a scholar's Ufa, when he says, — 
 
 " So have I seene, when Caesar would appeare. 
 And on the stage at half-sworde parley were 
 Brutus and Cassius, oh, how the audience 
 Were ravish'd ! With what wonder they went thence. 
 When some new day they would not brook a line 
 Of tedious (though well-labour' d) Catiline ; 
 Sejanus, too, was irksome ; they prized more 
 Honest lago or the jealous Moore ; 
 And though the Fox and subteU Alohimist, 
 Long intermitted, could not quite be missed ; 
 Though these have shamed aU th' ancients, and might raise 
 Their author's merit with a orowne of bays ; 
 
332 SHAKESPEARE OR BAGONf 
 
 Yet these sometimes, even at a friend's desire, 
 Acted, have scarce defray'd the seaooale fire 
 And doore-keepers ; when, let but Falstaffe come, 
 Hal, Poins, the rest, — you scarce shall have a roome. 
 All is BO pester'd ; let but Beatrice 
 And Benedick be scene, loe, in a trice 
 The cockpit, galleries, boxes, aU are full." 
 
 Few men like the man who eclipses them in a race, 
 where they think they are especially strong, — authors 
 least of alL But " gentle " Shakespeare subdued the 
 envy even of the rough and somewhat jealous Ben, who 
 in the days when Shakespeare was a stranger to him, had 
 attacked him with a rancour which only one so " gentle " 
 as Shakespeare would have forgotten. But had Ben for a 
 moment seen reason to surmise that the man who had so 
 thoroughly distanced him and aU his compeers in the 
 arena of both tragedy and comedy was sailing under false 
 colours, that he was " an upstart crow " wearing feathers 
 not his own, it would not have been left for the Smiths, 
 Bacons, Holmes, and DonneUys of the nineteenth century 
 to throw discredit upon the great name which from 1616 
 has been held in reverence by all cultivated men. 
 
 We have purposely refrained from entering upon any 
 of the arguments from the internal evidence of the works 
 of Shakespeare and Bacon, that Bacon did not and could 
 not have written the marvellous saries of plays of which 
 until 1856 the authorship was undisputed. This would 
 open a field far too wide for discussion. Life is short, 
 and a conflict of aesthetic judgments in such matters is, 
 by its very nature, interminable. "Without, however, ap- 
 proaching the question from the side of the plays, it may 
 be worth while to glance briefly at the evidence to be 
 found in the Sonnets, that they at least were not from 
 the same hand as penned the famous Essays. That the 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 333 
 
 best of what are usually printed as Shakespeare's sonnets 
 were acknowledged by people who knew him to be his 
 genuine work, admits of no doubt. It was a time when 
 sonnets were in high favour with lovers of poetry, and the 
 writers of them were numerous. We learn from other 
 examples that sonnets, whose authors were well known, 
 used to circulate freely in society, and that, as in Shake- 
 speare's case, having got a reputation, they were put into 
 print by adventurous publishers without the privity of 
 their authors.^ Shakespeare's efforts in this department 
 of poetry were, as we learn from Meres, well known to be 
 his by his " friends," among whom they had been circu- 
 lating for years before they were printed by G. Eld for 
 T[homas] T[horpe] in 1609 ; and none of the Baconians, 
 so far as we are aware, have ever ventured seriously to 
 dispute the fact. To these sonnets, therefore, we may 
 look with confidence as indicating the character of Shake- 
 speare's mind and the distinctive qualities of his literary 
 style, — the very same qualities, be it said in passing, as 
 are conspicuous in the plays. If this be so, then they 
 may be fairly contrasted with what we see of the same 
 qualities in Bacon's more familiar compositions, and so 
 help towards a judgment whether or not they sprang 
 from the same mind. 
 
 Look, then, at Bacon's conception of womanhood as we 
 find it in his essays. Is there in it a trace of romance, of 
 the chivalrous reverence, of the passionate aspiration which 
 
 ^ Thus W. Percy, in the " Address to the Reader " published in 
 1594 with his ' Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia,' writes — " Whereas I 
 was fully determined to have concealed my sonnets as things privy 
 to myself, yet, of courtesy, having lent them to some, they were 
 secretly committed to the press, and almost finished, before it came 
 to my knowledge." 
 
334 SHAKESPEARE OR BAGONf 
 
 inevitably find their way into the writings of every poet- 
 icaUy-minded man where woman is the theme, and of 
 which the Shakespeare sonnets are full? On the con- 
 trary, Bacon's view of woman is essentially commonplace. 
 To him she is, when at her best, merely the good loyal 
 housewife, the dutiful minister to the desires, the com- 
 forts, and the wants of the other sex. For beauty, no 
 doubt, he had some feeling, and spoke well of its " best 
 part " as that " which a picture cannot express ; " and in 
 the same essay (that " Of Beauty "), he shows himself not 
 insensible to the charm of grace in motion and demeanour. 
 But the beauty which was mainly present to his mind was 
 that Beaute du Diable which fascinates the senses but 
 leaves the heart and the imagination untouched, — ^the 
 beauty that, to use his own words, " is as summer fruits, 
 and cannot last." No hint shall we anywhere discover 
 of the feeling which finds voice in Shakespeare's 104th 
 Sonnet,— 
 
 " To^me, fair friend, you never can be old, 
 
 For as you were, when first your eye I eyed, 
 
 Such seems thy beauty still ! " 
 
 And yet Bacon was not thirty-five years old when his 
 essay " Of Beauty " was pubHshed, — a time of life when 
 the enthusiasm of love is perhaps strongest in a man 
 capable of the passion. Keeping this fact in view, surely, 
 if he were the poet we are now asked to believe him to 
 have been, one might expect to find in his essay " Of 
 Love," published at the same time, some of that glow, 
 some of that fine madness, which has always been found 
 to " possess the poet's brain " under the influence of this 
 theme. But what is it that we do find ? " The stage," 
 he says, "is more beholden to Love than the Life of 
 Man." But if this be true of the stage, why is it true ? 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 335 
 
 Assuredly, because it is the passion, that, for good or evU, 
 more than any other pervades life. 
 
 " It IB the very centre of the earth, 
 Drawing all things to it ; " ^ — 
 
 and therefore naturally holds a prominent place upon the 
 stage, whose duty it is " to hold the mirror up to nature." 
 As the essay proceeds, it becomes plain that Bacon had no 
 higher conception of love than as an evanescent material 
 passion. It is, he says, " a weak passion," out of which 
 " great spirits keep," — a thing that is to be shmmed, for 
 it finds its way into " a heart well fortified, if watch be not 
 kept. The devout and grateful humility of a noble love 
 is to him no more than " kneeling before a little idol," — 
 a making of one's self " subject, though not of the mouth 
 (as beasts are) yet of the eye, which was given for higher 
 purposes," — a something which men should " sever whoUy 
 from their serious affairs and actions of life." 
 
 Ifow contrast this with the strain of sentiment which 
 inspires countless passages of the Sonnets, in which hearts 
 without number have found, and even in these unroman- 
 tic days evermore find delight, as expressing the deepest, 
 the purest, and most cherished feelings of their lives. 
 Then ask if the man who wrote of love as Bacon wrote 
 could have addressed to his mistress such lines as — 
 
 " My spirit ifl thine, the better part of me ! " ^ 
 " So you are to my thoughts as food to life ; " ' 
 
 or the Sonnet (the 29th) beginning — 
 
 " When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes ; " 
 
 1 ' Troilus and Cressida,' Act iv. so. 2. 
 
 2 Sonnet 74. ^ Sonnet 75. 
 
336 SHAKESPEARE OR BAVONf 
 
 or that (the 7 1st) beginning — , 
 
 " No longer mourn for me when I am dead ; '' 
 
 with its lines of infinite pathos and heaut^^ — 
 
 " For I love you so, 
 That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, 
 If thinking of me then should make you woe." 
 
 Above all, could Bacon have penned that priceless creed 
 of all true lovers (the 116th Sonnet), beginning — 
 
 " Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
 Admit impediments, " 
 
 and ending — 
 
 " Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
 Within his bending sickle's compass come ; 
 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks. 
 But bears it out even to the edge of doom," &c. ? 
 
 From all we know either of Bacon's life or writings, 
 this and the multitude of similar passages which might 
 be quoted would have come within his censure, as but 
 " the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole, comely in nothing 
 but in love." But, indeed, how was it possible that a 
 man should write worthily of woman, or of that love 
 which is a love for evermore, who in his essay " Of Mar- 
 riage and Single Life " could find nothing higher to say of 
 wives than that they " are young men's mistresses, com- 
 panions for middle age, and old men's nurses " ? Idle to 
 say, we are not to judge of a man's prose by his poetry. 
 Had Bacon been indeed a poet, the feeling of exquisite 
 tenderness, of profound reverence for what is best in 
 woman, which pervades the Sonnets, must perforce have 
 found its way into his writings somewhere. Yet they will 
 be ransacked ia vain for any indication of it.^ 
 
 1 See note, " ABaconian on Shakespeare's Women," Appendix, p. 349. 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACONf 337 
 
 But it were idle to pursue the topic further ; still more 
 idle to bring these and other writings of Bacon to the test 
 of a comparison with the plays, and to contrast his grave, 
 square-cut, antithetical, ponderous, unemotional style, and 
 the absence in them of everything like dramatic imagina- 
 tion and humour, with the exuberance of poetical imagery 
 and illustration, the variety of rhythmical cadence, the 
 exquisitely modulated flow of aptly balanced diction, not 
 to speak of the creative dramatic power, and the buoyant 
 play of irrepressible humour and wit, which brighten even 
 the slightest of the Shakespearian plays. This would 
 demand an essay of itself, which no one competent to 
 write it wiU deem otherwise than superfluous, untU better 
 reason is shown than has yet been shown for setting up 
 Bacon's claim to the imagination which " bodies forth the 
 forms of things unseen," and which would alone have 
 enabled him to conceive and place living before us such 
 beings- as Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Jack Faldaff, 
 Imogen, Hermione, Rosalind, and all the other glorious 
 figures of that marvellous gaUery. 
 
 Our task is of a much humbler kind. "We have pur- 
 posely confined ourselves to a naked statement of facts 
 as to the man Shakespeare, based upon contemporary 
 testimony, and argued from upon the principles which 
 guide the judgment of practical men in all matters, where 
 they have only contemporary evidence from which to 
 draw their conclusions. On what better evidence than 
 we have cited in regard to Shakespeare, do we believe 
 that jEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides wrote the plays 
 coupled with their names, that Horace wrote his Odes,^ 
 or Tacitus his Germania? From the belief of three cen- 
 turies the world is not to be shaken by the fine-spun 
 theories of men who, judging by aU they write, know 
 
 Y 
 
338 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 nothing of the mysterious ways in which genius works, 
 and who conceive that fine poetry, and a sweep of thought, 
 of invention, and of knowledge of the human heart, vast 
 beyond their limited conceptions, can only issue frqm the 
 brain of a man trained in the learning of the schools and 
 moving iu high society. Something more than conjec- 
 ture, something more than unwarrantable assumption, 
 must be produced to entitle them even to a hearing, 
 however slight, at this time of day. 
 
 But now we are told that the true authorship of the 
 pseudo- Shakespearian works has been established by a 
 great American discoverer, Mr Ignatius Donnelly, a lawyer, 
 ex-member of Congress, and ex-senator of Minnesota, who 
 conceives that he has solved the problem iu a work bear- 
 ing the name of ' The Great Cryptogram : Francis Bacon's 
 Cipher in the so-caUed Shakespeare Plays.' As if the 
 man who had written the thirty-six plays of the first 
 folio would have left to the chance of a cryptogram being 
 deciphered three centuries after his death the discovery 
 of the fact that he had written them ! 
 
 We gather from his book that Mr Donnelly, lawyer 
 though he be, and by his profession bound to have some 
 regard to the laws of evidence, started upon his investiga- 
 tions with the fixed idea that Shakespeare's name was 
 simply a mask for Bacon. He does not commend himself 
 to much consideration when we find that he adopts as 
 gospel, and with a vehemence that wholly discredits his 
 judgment, all the preposterous nonsense of previous 
 Baconians about Shakespeare having had no education, 
 of his having been a tavern- haunter and habitua.1 poacher, 
 a mere money-grubbing usurer, who could not spell his 
 own name, and who was glad to get back to Stratford to 
 his old occupation of butcher and wool-stapler, having had 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BACON f 339 
 
 his purse previously well lined by Bacon for having lent 
 the use of his name to a scandalous fraud for some twenty 
 odd years. Neither does he prepossess us ia his favour, 
 — although of his sincerity we entertain no doubt, — when 
 he teUs us that he was put upon the trail of his vaunted 
 discovery by comiag across an elaborate cipher of Bacon's, 
 quoted in ' Every Boy's Book. " Then," he says, " fol- 
 lowed like a flash this thought, could Bacon have put 
 a cipher in his plays ? " On further inquiry, he found, 
 what is very well known, that Bacon had a fancy for 
 cryptographic systems which "elude and exclude the 
 decipherers." Upon this hint Mr Donnelly set to work 
 to find out a cipher in the first folio edition of the plays 
 that was to confirm his preconceived theory, and, of 
 course, he found it to his own satisfaction. If, however, 
 any judgment may be formed as to the results of his hunt 
 from the specimens he has published, a more thorough 
 illustration can scarcely be conceived of the process known 
 as elucidating the dbscwum by the obseurius. There wUl 
 no doubt be found persons, blessed or cursed, as it may 
 be, with such superabundance of time upon their hands, 
 and with a passion for such a literary wild-goose chase as 
 Mr Donnelly invites them to, that they will follow him 
 through arbitrary mazes of figures and calculations which 
 would drive any ordiuaiy brain mad, and which lead up 
 to conclusions no less fantastic. 
 
 On such a chase, however, we do not conceive that Mr 
 Donnelly has a right to ask any one to enter until he can 
 first establish from credible evidence the following pro- 
 positions : (1) That Bacon did in some clear and unmis- 
 takable way set up in his life a claim to the work which 
 has hitherto been assigned to Shakespeare ; (2) That he 
 was privy to the publication of the first folio ; (3) That he 
 
340 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 had Heminges and Condell under his thiunb, and got 
 them to write what they did write in the Dedication 
 and Preface, with the deliherate purpose of throwing the 
 world off the scent as to the real authorship ; (4) That he 
 suborned Ben Jonson to become a party to the fraud ; 
 (5) That there exists somewhere, and in some definite 
 form under Bacon's hand, a suggestion, no matter how 
 slight, to lead posterity to believe that in due time the 
 composition of the plays would be demonstrated to have 
 been falsely assigned to Shakespeare, and to be due 
 entirely to himself. 
 
 When a satisfactory answer is given on these points, 
 then, but not till then, Mr Donnelly may have some 
 excuse for intruding his so-called discovery upon the 
 public. But upon them his two portentous volumes are 
 absolutely silent. It is idle to tell us, as he and his pre- 
 decessors do, that Bacon had reason during his life to con- 
 ceal his connection with the stage. It is an assumption 
 without warrant either in fact or probability. If Bacon 
 gave his name to masques, why should he have hesitated 
 to give it to ' Macbeth ' or ' Julius Caesar ' ? Moreover, 
 no man who wrote the plays assigned to Shakespeare 
 could have kept up such an imposture for such a length- 
 ened period, and under the very peculiar circumstances in 
 which these were produced — one of them, 'The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor,' written at Queen Elizabeth's request 
 and produced within a fortnight. But grant that there 
 might be reason for concealment while Bacon was alive, 
 there could be none after his death. He might say of 
 himself then, in the words of his own (?) Macbeth — 
 
 " After life's fitful fever I sleep well, 
 Nothing can touch me further." 
 
 By that time he would be beyond reach of the anger of 
 
SHAKESPEARE OR BAGONf 341 
 
 either " Eliza or our James," who, ia common with their 
 subjects, shared the general belief ia the genius of Shake- 
 speare. How simple a matter, then, would it have been 
 to place upon record, along with the requisite proofs — for 
 clear proof would in any case have been wanted — that he, 
 and not Shakespeare, wrote the plays ! Write them if he 
 did, is it conceivable that he would not have been so 
 proud of their authorship that he would have taken care 
 to place the fact beyond a doubt, and to enjoin his 
 executors to have justice done to his claim? 
 
 This he unquestionably did not do, and yet we are 
 asked to give a hearing to an American lawyer, who, 
 nearly three centuries after Bacon's death, chooses first 
 to imagine that Bacon wrote the immortal plays, and 
 then to assure us that, instead of placing the fact upon 
 record, as any man of common-sense would be sure to 
 place it, he wrapt up his secret in a cryptogram, of which 
 he did not even leave the Jcey — a cryptogram distributed 
 in a most mystical and bewildering way through the bad 
 printing of the first folio, and which it was left for Mr 
 Donnelly's laborious and perverted ingenuity to discover ! 
 
 Mr Donnelly and his proselytes would have us forget 
 that Bacon knew what was evidence, and what was not, 
 far too well to trust to a cryptogram for the establishment 
 of so important a fact as that he was entitled to the fame 
 which he knew the plays in question had won for the 
 Stratford poet. However clear a cryptogram might be, 
 it could not, as he very well knew, possibly amount to 
 more than a mere assertion by an interested witness. On 
 the assumption of fraud on Shakespeare's part, it was a 
 fraud of which Bacon himself was the instigator. He 
 had helped, ex hypothesi, to set up Shakespeare's claim, 
 and he of all men must have known that, his own testi- 
 
342 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 mony being radically tainted, this claim could only be 
 displaced either by conclusive extraneous evidence, or by 
 the confession of Shakespeare himself. 
 
 Again we say, no man has a right, without a sure ground 
 of fact to go upon, to strain our credulity as Mr Donnelly 
 does, or to ask reasonable men to investigate the cum- 
 brous processes by which he works out his " Great Cryp- 
 togram" theory. Let Mr Donnelly get over the initial 
 difiSculties which we have suggested, and then Shake- 
 spearian students wUl give him a hearing. TiU then, 
 they, and all men who recognise that one of life's chief 
 responsibilities is the responsibility for a right use of our 
 time, wUl be content to abide in the faith of Shakespeare's 
 contemporaries, and of wellnigh three centuries of rational 
 men, that the kindly and modest man, whose mortal 
 remains rest in front of the altar in Stratford Church, 
 was no impostor, but the veritable author of the works 
 for which, as one of its wholly priceless possessions, the 
 civilised world owes to him endless gratitude. 
 
 Note. — The publication of Mr Donnelly's book, and 
 the complete exposure which ensued upon it of the ab- 
 surdities both of his literary criticism and his imaginary 
 cipher, has, it may be hoped, effectually cleared away for 
 good and all the futile controversy as to the authorship 
 of Shakespeare's plays. The book has been treated in 
 England with contemptuous neglect. In America it has 
 met with the same fate. In Germany, Count K. R 
 Vitzthum von Eckstadt has recently devoted a rather 
 bulky volume (Stuttgart, 1888) to advocating the Baconian 
 theory. But German Shakespearian scholars generally 
 seem to be of the mind of Karl Elze, that " the subject 
 does not deserve any fuU discussion, or even serious 
 refutation." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Note to p. 309. 
 
 SPECIMENS OF BACON'S POETRY. 
 
 The only verses which beyond all donbt are known to have 
 been written by Bacon are his versions of seven of the Psalms 
 of David. They were written about two years before his 
 death, and must therefore be taken as showing whatever mas- 
 tery he had attained by previous practice over our language 
 for poetical purposes. Admit the postulate of Miss Bacon 
 and her followers, that he wrote all for which an ignorant 
 world has given Shakespeare credit, and then judge if such a 
 verse as the following was likely to have flowed from the pen 
 of the author of the " Venus and Adonis," of the best of the 
 Sonnets, or of ' Cymbeline ' or ' Hamlet ' : — 
 
 " Who sows in tears shall reap in joy, 
 The Lord doth so ordain ; 
 So that his seed be pure and good, 
 His harvest shall he gain." 
 
 — Psalm cxxvi. 5. 
 
 Or this as the rendering from the 90th Psalm of the words, 
 "Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee : our secret sins in 
 the light of Thy countenance " : — 
 
 " Thon buriest not within Oblivion's tomb 
 Our trespasses, but enterest them aright ; 
 Even those that are conceived in darkness' womb 
 To Thee appear as done at broad daylight." 
 
 Now see how the dominant thought in each of these stanzas 
 
344 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 has been treated by Shakespeare, — the first in ' Richard III.,' 
 iv. 4, and the second in ' Hamlet,' iii. 3 : — 
 
 " The liquid drops of tears that you have shed 
 Shall come again, transformed to orient pearls. 
 Advantaging their loan with interest. 
 Oftentimes double gain of happiness." 
 
 " 'Tis not so above : 
 There is no shuffling, there the action lies 
 In his true nature : and we ourselves compelled. 
 Even in the teeth and forehead of your faith. 
 To give in evidence." i 
 
 Could the same man have written these passages and the hide- 
 bound stanzas of Bacon's " Psalms " ? Here and there a good 
 line occurs in some of these translations, just as Hobbes in his 
 version of the ' Iliad ' now and then struck out a line of genu- 
 ine poetry. But they are such as no man would have written 
 who possessed a genuine poetical gift, or the command of poet- 
 ical and musical language, which the practice of rhythmical 
 composition must have produced. They will be found in Mr 
 Spedding's edition of Bacon's works, vol. vii. pp. 273-286. 
 
 To Bacon has been attributed, by those who set him up as 
 the author of the plays, the following poem, which, they 
 assert, he wrote for Lord Burleigh: — 
 
 THE RETIRED COURTIER. 
 
 His golden looks hath Time to silver turned ; 
 
 Time too swift ! swiftness never ceasing ! 
 His youth 'gainst Time and Age hath ever spumed. 
 
 But spumed in vain : youth waineth by increasing ; 
 Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seeme ; 
 Duty, faith, love, are roots and ever greene. 
 
 His helmet now shall make a hive for bees. 
 And lover's sonnets turned to holy psalmes ; 
 
 A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees. 
 And feed on praiers which are Age's Almes ; 
 
 ' The contrast between Bacon and Shakespeare in these two passages 
 was first pointed out in the first of two admirable lectures on the 
 "Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy," by Charles H. Higgins, M.D., pub- 
 lished in Liverpool in 1886. 
 
APPENDIX. 345 
 
 But though from Court to College he depart, 
 His saint is sure of his unspotted heart. 
 
 And when he saddest sits in homely cell, 
 He'll teach his swaines this carol for a song : 
 
 Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well ! 
 Curst be the soul that thinks her any wrong ! 
 
 Goddess, allow this aged man his right 
 
 To be your headsman now, that was your knight. 
 
 Very strong evidence exists, that this poem was -written 
 by the dramatist George Peele, to be sung before Queen 
 Elizabeth at the annual tilting at the Tilt-yard in West- 
 minster, established by Sir Henry Lee. A full account of 
 the thirty-third anniversary of these exercises at arms, is 
 given in chapter liv. book iii. of Segal's ' Honor, Military and 
 Civill,' 1602, which will be found quoted in Dyce's edition of 
 Peele's Works, vol. ii. pp. 112 et seq., and also in BuUen's 
 edition of the same author, vol. ii. pp. 281 et seq. " On the 
 17th day of November," writes Segar, "Anno 1590, this hon- 
 ourable gentleman [Sir Henry Lee], together with the Earle 
 of Cumberland, having first performed their service in armes, 
 presented themselves unto her highnesse, at the foot of the 
 staires under her gallery-window ia the Tilt-yard at West- 
 minster, where at that time her Majestie did sit, accompany ed 
 with the Viscount Turyn, Ambassador of France, many ladies, 
 and the chiefest nobilitie. 
 
 "Her Majestie, beholding these armed knights comming 
 toward her, did suddenly heare a musicke so sweete and 
 secret, as every one thereat greatly marvelled. . . . The 
 musicke aforesayd was accompanyed with these verses, pro- 
 nounced and sung by Mr Hales her Majesties servant, a gentle- 
 man in that arte excellent, and for his voice both commend- 
 able and admirable." 
 
 Then follow the verses in question. After some further 
 ceremonial, Sir Henry Lee, "offered up his armour at her 
 Majesties crowned pillow; and, kneeling upon his knees, 
 presented the Earle of Cumberland, humbly beseeching she 
 would be pleased to accept him for her knight, to continue 
 the yearly exercises aforesaid." 
 
346 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 The poem was thus an occasional poem,, written as a grace- 
 ful appeal by Sir Henry Lee to his sovereign to let her 
 ancient knight doflf his tilting gear, which his age prevented 
 him from longer wearing with honour, — a purpose which it 
 served excellently well. As George Peele made this memor- 
 able ceremony the subject of his poem, "Polyhymnia," pub- 
 lished in 1590, what more probable than that he had been 
 pressed into service to compose the song with which the 
 Queen was to be propitiated ? Its purpose served, Peele pro- 
 bably gave himseK no further concern about it. Accordingly 
 the poem appeared without the author's name in Dowland's 
 ' First Book of Songs,' published in 1600. Of all men. Bacon 
 was the least likely to have been applied to for a poem of this 
 sort. Most certainly, the poem itself, by whomsoever written, 
 will not go far to establish a reputation as a poet for whoever 
 wrote it. It is more likely to be held in memory from being 
 quoted by Thackeray and applied to Colonel Newcome in one 
 of the last chapters of ' The Newcomes,' than from any intrin- 
 sic merit. 
 
 Mr Donnelly and others claim the following poem for 
 Bacon. Mr Spedding admits that it may possibly be his. 
 It is a laboured expansion rather than a paraphrase of a 
 Greek epigram, variously attributed to Poseidippus, to Plato 
 the comic poet, and to Crates the Cynic. It matters little 
 to whom the original Greek is due. Most certainly no one 
 will claim it for Shakespeare, false as it is in philosophy, 
 false in sentiment, — the protest of a sour and commonplace 
 mind against the Creator's dealings with His creatures. It 
 may be called 
 
 LIFE A CUESE. 
 
 The world's a bubWe, and the life of man 
 
 Less than a span ; 
 In his conception wretched, from the womb 
 
 So to the tomb, 
 Cursed from his cradle and brought up to years 
 
 With cares and fears : 
 Who, then, to frail mortality shall trust 
 But limns the water, or but writes in dust. 
 
APPENDIX. 347 
 
 Yet, whilst with sorrow here we lire opprest, 
 
 What life is best ? 
 Courts are but only superficial schools, 
 
 To dandle fools ; 
 The rural parts are turned into a den 
 
 Of saTage men ; 
 And Where's the city from foul vice so free, 
 But may be termed the worst of all the three ? 
 
 Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed. 
 
 Or pains his head. 
 Those that lire single take it for a curse. 
 
 Or do things worse. 
 Some would have children : those that have them moan, 
 
 Or wish them gone. 
 ^Vhat is it, then, to have or have no wife. 
 But single thraldom or a double strife 1 
 
 Our own affections still at home to please 
 
 Is a disease : 
 To cross the seas to any foreign soil. 
 
 Perils and toil. 
 Wars with their noise affright us ; when they cease. 
 
 We're worse in peace. 
 What then remains, but that we still should cry, 
 Not to be bom, or, being bom, to die ? 
 
 It is known from a pass^e in Bacon's ' Apology ' (Spedding, 
 ToL iii. p. 149), that he wrote a sonnet intended to have been 
 introduced into "The Entertainment of the Indian Prince" 
 performed before Queen Elizabeth in 1599, which Bacon says, 
 "directly tended aftd alluded to draw on Her Majesty's re- 
 concilement to the Earl of Essex." 
 
 It was not used, however ; but among Bacon's papers, in a 
 strange hand, a sonnet was found, which from its tenor would 
 have been suitable for that occasion. It runs thus : — 
 
 Seated between the Old World and the New, 
 A land there is no other land may touch. 
 Where reigns a Queen in peace and honour true ; 
 Stories or fables do describe no such. 
 Never did Atlas such a burden bear. 
 As she, in holding up the world opprest ; 
 Supplying with her virtue everywhere 
 Weakness of friends, errors of servants best. 
 
348 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? 
 
 No nation breeds a waxmer blood for war, 
 
 And yet she calms them by her majesty : 
 
 No age hath ever wits refined so far, 
 
 And yet she calms (? charms or shames) them by her policy ; 
 
 To her thy son must make his sacrifice 
 
 If he will have the morning of his eyes. 
 
 A respectable piece of work, and no more, for one who 
 regarded, as Bacon did, all poetry as " toys," and, to use his 
 own words, "professed not to he a poet." At the same time, 
 although " ill at these numbers," he was obviously ambitious 
 of showing that he " could, an' if he would," string rhymes 
 together as well as other men. But is there in these lines a 
 trace of the soul which inspired the sonnets of Shakespeare ? 
 (See on this subject Notelet by 0. M. Ingleby, in ' Notes and 
 Queries ' for January 1882.) 
 
 Note to p. 325. 
 
 BEN JONSON'S SCURRILOUS SONNET 
 ON SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 ON POET APE. 
 
 Poor poet Ape, that would be thought our chief, 
 
 Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit. 
 From brokage has become so bold a thief, 
 
 That we, the robbed, have rage and pity it. 
 At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean. 
 
 Buy the reversion of old plays ; now grown 
 To a little wealth and credit in the scene. 
 
 He takes up all — makes each man's wit his own, 
 And told of this he slights it. — Tut I Such crimes 
 
 The sluggish gaping auditor devours ; 
 He marks not whose 'twas first, and after-times 
 
 May judge it to be his as well as ours. 
 Fool I As if half eyes will not know a fleece 
 From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece ! 
 
APPENDIX. 349 
 
 Tliis is quite in the vein of Richard Greene's attack on 
 Shakespeare. But it has an incidental value as showing that 
 Jonson, when he wrote it, shared the universal belief of 
 Shakespeare's intimates and acquaintances, that he, and 
 nobody else, dressed up and put new life into old and 
 faulty plays, and made them popular in their altered form. 
 
 Note to p. 336. 
 A BACONIAN ON SHAKESPEARE'S WOMEN. 
 
 The Baconians obviously feel the pinch of the line of argu- 
 ment in the text, for they are driven to meet it by alleging 
 that Shakespeare's plays show that the writer of them had as 
 low an estimate of women as Bacon. Thus Mrs Potts, in a 
 note (p. 479) to her edition of Bacon's 'Promus' (London, 
 1883), says :— 
 
 " From the entries which refer to women we see that Bacon 
 formed very unfavourable views regarding them, — views 
 which unhappy passages in his own life probably tended to 
 confirm. The Shakespeare plays seem to exhibit the same unfa- 
 vourable sentiments of their author. There are 130 female per- 
 sonages in the plays, and the characters of these seem to be 
 easily divisible into six classes : — 
 
 "1. Furies or viragos, such as Tamora, Queen Margaret, 
 Goneril, Regan, and even Lady Macbeth in the dark side of 
 her character. 
 
 "2. Shrews and sharp-tongned women, as Katharine, 
 Constance, and many others, when they are represented as 
 
 angry. 
 
 " 3. Gossiping and untrustworthy women, as most of the 
 maids, hostesses, &c., and as Percy insinuates that he con- 
 siders his wife to be. 
 
 " 4. Fickle faithless, and artful — a disposition which 
 
350 SHAKESPEARE OR BACON f 
 
 seems assumed throughout the plays to be the normal con- 
 dition of womanhood (!). 
 
 "5. Thoroughly immoral, as Cleopatra, Phrynia, Timan- 
 dra, Bianca. 
 
 "6. Gentle, simple, and colourless, as Hero, Olivia, 
 Ophelia, Cordelia, &c. 
 
 "Noteworthy exceptions, which exhibit more exalted and 
 finer pictures of good and noble women, are the characters 
 of Isabella, Volumnia, and of Katharine of Aiagon ; but 
 these are not sufficient to do away with the impression that, 
 on the whole, the author of the plays had but a poor opinion of 
 women ; that love he regarded as youthful passion, marriage as a 
 doubtful happiness." 
 
 Every man or woman who has made a study of Shake- 
 speare can estimate for him or her self what weight is to be 
 attached to the judgment which could arrive at such con- 
 clusions. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRmTEB BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD ASH SONS. 
 
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