MACREADY AND THE ENGLISH STAGE
[Speech of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton at a public dinner given to William C. Macready, London, March 1, 1851, on the occasion of the tragedian's withdrawal from the stage. Lord Lytton, in proposing the toast of the evening, delivered the following speech.]
Gentlemen:—When I glance through this vast hall, and feel how weak and indistinct is my voice, I feel that I must frankly throw myself upon your indulgence, and entreat your most patient and courteous attention while I approach that subject which unites to-day an assembly so remarkable for the numbers and distinction of those who compose it. We are met to do honor to an eminent man, who retires into private life after those services to the public which are most felt at the moment we are about to lose them. There are many among you far better qualified than I am to speak critically of the merits of Mr. Macready as an actor, but placed as I am in this chair, I feel that I should justly disappoint you if I did not seek to give some utterance to those sentiments of admiration of which you have made me the representative.
Gentlemen, this morning I read in one of the literary journals, some qualifying remarks as to the degree of Mr. Macready's genius; and now, as I recognize here many who are devoted to literature and art, I will ask them if I am not right in this doctrine—that the true measure of the genius of an artist is the degree of excellence to which he brings the art that he cultivates. Judge of Mr. Macready by this test, and how great is that genius that will delight us no more; for it is because it has so achieved what I will call the symmetry of art that its height and its breadth have been often forgotten. We know that it is the uneven and irregular surface that strikes us as the largest, and the dimensions of a genius, like those of a building, are lost in the justness of its proportions; and therefore it is that in recalling the surpassing excellence of our guest as an artistical performer, one is really at a loss to say in what line of character he has excelled the most. The Titanic grandeur of Lear, the human debasement of Werner, the frank vivacity of Henry V, the gloomy and timorous guilt of King John, or that—his last—personation of Macbeth, in which it seemed to me that he conveyed a more correct notion of what Shakespeare designed than I can recollect to have read in the most profound of the German critics; for I take it, what Shakespeare meant to represent in Macbeth was the kind of character which is most liable to be influenced by a belief in supernatural agencies—a man who is acutely sensitive to all impressions, who has a restless imagination more powerful than his will, who sees daggers in the air and ghosts in the banquet-hall, who has moral weakness and physical courage, and who—as our guest represented him—alternates perpetually between terror and daring—a trembler when oppressed by his conscience, and a warrior when defied by his foe. But in this and in all that numberless crowd of characters which is too fresh in your memories for me to enumerate, we don't so much say "How well this was spoken," or "How finely that was acted," but we feel within ourselves how true was the personation of the whole.
Gentlemen, there is a word that is often applied to artists and to authors, and I think we always apply it improperly when we speak of a superior intellect—I mean the word "versatile." Now, I think the proper word is "comprehensive." The man of genius does not vary and change, which is the meaning of the word versatile, but he has a mind sufficiently expanded to comprehend variety and change. If I can succeed in describing the circle, I can draw as many lines as I please from the centre straight to the circumference, but it must be upon the condition—for that is the mathematical law—that all these lines shall be equal, one to the other, or it is not a circle that I describe. Now, I do not say our guest is versatile; I say that he is comprehensive; and the proof that he has mastered the most perfect form of the comprehensive faculty is this—that all the lines he has created within the range of his art are equal the one to the other. And this, gentlemen, explains to us that originality which even his detractors have conceded to him.
Every great actor has his manner as every great writer has his style. But the originality of our guest does not consist in his manner alone, but in his singular depth of thought. He has not only accomplished the obvious and essential graces of the actor—the look, the gesture, the intonation, the stage play—but he has placed his study far deeper. He has sought to penetrate into the subtlest intentions of the poet, and made poetry itself the golden key to the secrets of the human heart. He was original because he never sought to be original but to be truthful; because, in a word, he was as conscientious in his art as he is in his actions. Gentlemen, there is one merit of our guest as an actor upon which, if I were silent, I should be indeed ungrateful. Many a great performer may attain to a high reputation if he restrains his talents to acting Shakespeare and the great writers of the past; but it is perfectly clear that in so doing he does not advance one inch the literature of his time. It has been the merit of our guest to recognize the truth that the actor has it in his power to assist in creating the writer. He has identified himself with the living drama of his period, and by so doing, he has half created it. Who does not recollect the rough and manly vigor of Tell, the simple grandeur of Virginius or the exquisite sweetness and dignity and pathos with which he invested the self-sacrifice of Ion; and who does not feel that but for him, these great plays might never have obtained their hold upon the stage, or ranked among those masterpieces which this age will leave to posterity? And what charm and what grace, not their own, he has given to the lesser works of an inferior writer, it is not for me to say.
But, gentlemen, all this, in which he has sought to rally round him the dramatic writers of his time, brings me at once from the merits of the actor to those of the manager. I recall, gentlemen, that brief but glorious time when the drama of England appeared suddenly to revive and to promise a future that should be worthy of its past; when by a union of all kindred arts, and the exercise of a taste that was at once gorgeous and severe, we saw the genius of Shakespeare properly embodied upon our stage, though I maintain that the ornament was never superior to the work. Just remember the manner in which the supernatural agency of the weird sisters was made apparent to our eye, in which the magic Isle of Prospero rose before us in its mysterious and haunted beauty, and in which the knightly character of the hero of Agincourt received its true interpretation from the pomp of the feudal age, and you will own you could not strip the scene of these effects without stripping Shakespeare himself of half the richness and depth of his conceptions. But that was the least merit of that glorious management. Mr. Macready not only enriched the scene, but he purified the audience; and for the first time since the reign of Charles II, a father might have taken his daughters to a public theatre with as much safety from all that could shock decorum as if he had taken them to the house of a friend. And for this reason the late lamented Bishop of Norwich made it a point to form the personal acquaintance of Mr. Macready, that he might thank him, as a prelate of the Church, for the good he had done to society.
Gentlemen, I cannot recall that period without a sharp pang of indignant regret, for if that management had lasted some ten or twelve years, I know that we would have established a permanent school for actors—a fresh and enduring field for dramatic poetry and wit—while we should have educated an audience up to feel that dramatic performances in their highest point of excellence had become an intellectual want that could no more be dispensed with than the newspaper or review. And all this to be checked or put back for ages to come! Why? Because the public did not appreciate the experiment! Mr. Macready has told us that the public supported him nobly, and that his houses overflowed. Why then? Because of the enormous rent and exactions, for a theatre which even in the most prosperous seasons, make the exact difference between profit and loss. Gentlemen, it is not now the occasion to speak of remedies for that state of things. Remedies there are, but they are for legislation to effect. They involve considerations with regard to those patents which are secured to certain houses for the purpose of maintaining in this metropolis the legitimate drama, and which I fear, have proved the main obstacle to its success.
But these recollections belong to the past. The actor—the manager—are no more. Whom have we with us to-day? Something grander than actor, or manager: to-day we have with us the man. Gentlemen, to speak of those virtues which adorn a home, and are only known in secret, has always appeared to me to be out of place upon public occasions; but there are some virtues which cannot be called private, which accompany a man everywhere, which are the essential part of his public character, and of these it becomes us to speak, for it is to these that we are met to do homage. I mean integrity, devotion to pure ends, a high ambition, manly independence, and honor that never knew a stain. Why should we disguise from ourselves that there are great prejudices to the profession of an actor? Who does not know that our noble guest has lived down every one such prejudice, not falling into the old weakness of the actor, and for which Garrick could not escape the sarcasm of Johnson, of hankering after the society and patronage of the great? The great may have sought in him the accomplished gentleman, but he has never stooped his bold front as an Englishman to court any patronage meaner than the public, or to sue for the smile with which fashion humiliates the genius it condescends to flatter. And therefore it is that he has so lifted up that profession to which he belongs into its proper rank amid the liberal arts; and therefore it is, that in glancing over the list of our stewards we find every element of that aristocracy upon which he has never fawned uniting to render him its tribute of respect. The ministers of foreign nations—men among the noblest of the peers of England—veterans of those professions of which honor is the lifespring—the chiefs of literature and science and art—ministers of the Church, sensible of the benefits he has bestowed upon society in banishing from the stage what had drawn upon it the censure of the pulpit—all are here and all unite to enforce the truth, the great truth, which he leaves to those who come after him—that let a man but honor his calling, and the calling will soon be the honor of the man.
Gentlemen, I cannot better sum up all I would say than by the words which the Roman orator applied to the actor of his day; and I ask you if I may not say of our guest as Cicero said of Roscius—"He is a man who unites yet more of virtues than of talents, yet more of truth than of art, and who, having dignified the scene by the various portraitures of human life, dignifies yet more this assembly by the example of his own."
Gentlemen, the toast I am about to propose to you is connected with many sad associations but not to-day. Later and longer will be cherished whatever may be sad of these mingled feelings that accompany this farewell—later, when night after night we shall miss from the play-bill the old familiar name, and feel that one source of elevated delight is lost to us forever. To-day let us rejoice that he whom we prize and admire is no worn-out veteran retiring to a rest he can no longer enjoy—that he leaves us in the prime of his powers, with many years to come, in the course of nature, of that dignified leisure for which every public man must have sighed in the midst of his triumphs, and though we cannot say of him that his "way of life is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf," yet we can say that he has prematurely obtained "that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends;" and postponing for this night all selfish regret, not thinking of the darkness that is to follow, but of the brightness of the sun that is to set, I call upon you to drink with full glasses and full hearts, "Health, happiness and long life to William Macready."