HIS MAD-JESTY AT THE LYCEUM.
Except when Henry Irving impersonated the hapless victim of false imprisonment in the Bastille, whence he issued forth after twenty years of durance, never has he been so curiously and wonderfully made-up as now, when he represents Lear, monarch of all he surveys. Bless thee, Henry, how art thou transformed!
Sure such a King Lear was never seen on any stage, so perfect in appearance, so entirely the ideal of Shakspeare's ancient King. It must have been a vision of Irving in this character that the divinely-inspired poet and dramatist saw when he had a Lear in his eye. For a moment, too, he reminded me of Booth—the "General," not the "particular" American tragedian,—and when he appeared in thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, he suggested an embodiment of the "Moses" of Michael Angelo.
A strange weird play; much for an audience, and more for an actor, all on his own shoulders, to bear. A one-part play it is too, for of the sweet Cordelia,—and sweet did Ellen Terry look and so tenderly did she play!—little is seen or heard. With Goneril and Regan, the two proud and wicked sisters,—associated in the mind of the modernest British Public with Messrs. Herbert Campbell and Harry Nicholls, as is also Cordelia associated either with Cinderella or with Beauty in the story of Beauty and the Beast—we have two fine commanding figures; and well are these parts played by Miss Ada Dyas and Miss Maud Milton. The audience can have no sympathy with the two wicked Princesses, and except in Goneril's brief Lady-Macbethian scene with her husband, neither of the Misses Lear has much dramatic chance. Pity that Mrs. Lear—his Queen and their mother, wasn't alive! Let us hope she resembled her youngest daughter Cordelia, otherwise poor Lear must have had a hard life of it as a married man.
Why should not Mr. Irving give the first part of this play reconsideration? Why not just once a week try him as a different sort of Lear? For instance, suppose, to begin with, that he had had a bad time of it with his wife, that for many years as a widower he had been seeking for the opportunity of disposing of his daughters, handing over to them and to their husbands the lease and goodwill of "The Crown and Sceptre," while he would be, as King, "retired from business," and going out for a lark generally. Thus jovially would he commence the play, a rollicking, gay, old dog, ready for anything, up to anything, and, like old Anchises, when he jumped on to the back of Æneas, "a wonderful man for his years." In fact, Lear might begin like an old King Cole, "a merry old soul," a "jolly old cock!" And then—"Oh, what a difference in the morning!"—when all his plans for a gay career had been shipwrecked by Cordelia's capricious and unnatural affectation.
Then must commence his senility; then he would begin to break up. A struggle, to show that there was life in the old dog yet, could be seen when the old dog had been out hunting, in Act II., and had shot some strange animal, something between a stag and a dromedary, which no doubt was a native of Britain in those good old sporting days. However, more of this anon. Suffice it to say now, that our Henry Irving's Lear is a triumph in every respect, and that the audience only wanted a little more of Cordelia, which is the fault of the immortal and unequal Bard.
To those unacquainted with this play, Mr. Terriss's sudden appearance in somewhat anti-Lord-Chamberlain attire, as he bounded on, with a wand, and struck an attitude, was suggestive of the Good Fairy in the pantomime; and his subsequent proceedings, when he didn't change anybody into Harlequin, Clown, and so forth, puzzled the unlearned spectators considerably. But Mr. Terriss came out all right, and acquitted himself (being his own judge and jury) to the satisfaction of the public. His speech about Dover Cliff, generally supposed to convey some allusion to the Channel Tunnel, was excellently delivered, and certainly after Lear, "on the spear side," Mr. Terriss must take the Goodeley Cake.
Next to him in order of merit comes Mr. Frank Cooper, as the wicked Edmund, on whom the good Edmund, "Edmundus Mundi," smiled benignantly from a private box. There was on the first night a great reception given to Howe—the veteran actor, not the wreck, and very far from it—who took the small part of an old Evicted Tenant of the Earl of Glo'ster, a character very carefully played by Mr. Alfred Bishop, Floreat Henricus! "Our Henry" has his work cut out for him in this "Titanic work," as in his before-curtain and after-play speech he termed it. This particular "Titanic work" is (or certainly was that night) in favour with "the gods," who "very much applauded what he'd done." But the gods of old were not quite so favourable to "Titanic work" generally, and punished eternally Titanic workmen. To-night gods and groundlings applaud to the echo, and then everyone goes home as best he can in about as beautiful a specimen of a November fog as ever delighted a Jack-o'-Lantern or disgusted
Private Box.
An Operatic Note.—Wednesday.—Lord Mayor's Day and Sheriff Sir Augustus Druriolanus's Show. L' Amico Fritz, or "The old Min is friendly," as Dick Swiveller would have put it. Not by any means as bright as Cavalleria. Mlle. Del Torre, del-lightful as Suzel. M. Dufriche, very good as Rabbino; Cremonini, weak as Fritz; and Mlle. Martha-Cupid-Bauermeister, good as usual in the part of the "harmless necessary Cat"-erina. Opera generally "going strong."
Reported Decision.—Uganda is to be occupied till March next. Then, order of the day, "March in, March out!"