BULLY BOTTOM.
Bully Bottom is, in truth, "translated" by Mr. Phelps. Translated from matter-of-fact into poetic humour—translated from the commonplace tradition of the playhouse to a thing subtly grotesque—rarely, and heroically whimsical. A bully Bottom of the old, allowed sort, makes up his face—even as the rustic wag of a horse-collar—to goggle and grin; and is as like to the sweet bully of Phelps—bears the same relation in art to the Bottom of Sadler's Wells—as the sign-post portrait on the village green to a head, vital by a few marvellous dots and touches of Richard Doyle. In these days we know of no such translation! Translate a starveling Welsh curate into a Bishop of London, and Phelps's translation of Bottom the weaver shall still remain a work of finer art, and—certainly to all humanising intents of man-solacing humour—of far richer value. We have had, plentiful as French eggs, translations of facile, delicate French into clumsy, hobbling British; and now, as some amends, we have Bottom translated by Phelps from dull tradition into purest airiest Shakspere. Mr. Phelps has not painted, dabbed, we should say, the sweet bully with the old player's old hare's-foot; but has taken the finest pencil, and, with a clean, sharp, fantastic touch, has rendered Bottom a living weaver—a weaver whose brain is marvellously woven, knitted up, with self-opinion.
Now this, we take to be the true, breathing notion of Shakspere, and this notion has entered the belief of the actor, and become a living thing. Bottom is of conceit all-compact. Conceit flows in his veins—is ever swelling, more or less, in his heart; covers him from scalp to toes, like his skin. And it is this beautiful, this most profitable quality—this human coin, self-opinion, which, however cracked, and thin, and base, may be put off as the real thing by the unfailing heroism of the utterer—it is this conceit that saves Bottom from a world of wonderment when he finds himself the leman dear, clipp'd by the Queen of Faery. Bottom takes the love—the doting of Titania—as he would take the commanded honey-bag of the red-lipped humble-bee—as something sweet and pleasant, but nought to rave about. He is fortified by his conceit against any surprise of the most bountiful fortune: self-opinion turns fairy treasures into rightful wages. And are there not such Bottoms—not writ upon the paper Athens of the poet; not swaggering in a wood watered of ink-drops—but such sweet bullies in brick and mortar London—Bottoms of Fortune, that for sport's sake plays Puck? The ingenuous Bottom of the play has this distinction from the Bottoms of the real, human world—he, for the time, wears his ass's head with a difference; that is, he shows the honest length of his ears, and does not, and cannot abate the show of a single hair. His head is outwardly all ass: there is with him no reservation soever.
Mr. Phelps has the fullest and the deepest sense of the asinine qualities of Bottom from the beginning. For Bottom wants not the ass's head to mark him ass: the ass is in Bottom's blood and brain; Puck merely fixes the outward, vulgar type significant of the inward creature. When Bottom in the first scene desires to be Wall, and Moonshine, and Lion, his conceit brays aloud, but brays with undeveloped ears. But herein is the genius of our actor. The traditional bully Bottom is a dull, stupid, mouthing ass, with no force save in his dullness. Bottom, as played by Mr. Phelps, is an ass with a vehemence, a will, a vigour in his conceit, but still an ass. An ass that fantastically kicks his heels to the right and left, but still ass. An ass that has the most prolonged variations of his utterance—nevertheless, it is braying, and nothing better. And there is great variety in braying. We never heard two asses bray alike. Listen—it may be the season of blossoming hawthorns—and asses salute asses. In very different tones, with very different cadence, will every ass make known the yearning, the aspiration that is within him. We speak not frivolously, ignorantly, on this theme; for in our time we have heard very many asses. And so return we to the Bottom of merry Islington—to the Golden Ass of Sadler's Wells.
That ass has opened the playhouse season of 1853-4 very musically—would we could think hopefully, and with prophetic promise. At present, however, Bottom is the master-spirit: and, in these days of dramatic pardonnez-mois, it is a little comforting—not that we are given to the sanguine mood in things theatrical—to know that folks are found ready to make jocund pilgrimage to Sadler's Wells, where a man with a real vital love for his art has now for many seasons made his theatre a school; and more, has never wanted attentive, reverent, grateful scholars. In this, Mr. Phelps has been a national school-master; and—far away from the sustaining, fructifying beams of the Court—for hitherto our Elizabeth has not visited our Burridge—has popularly taught the lessons left to England by Shakspere—legacies everlasting as her cliffs.
As yet, Her Majesty has not journied to the Wells. But who knows, how soon that "great fairy" may travel thither, to do grace to bully Bottom! If so, let Mr. Phelps—if he can—still heighten his manner on his awakening from that dream. Let him—if he can—more subtly mingle wonderment with struggling reason, reason wrestling with wonder to get the better of the mystery!
"I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it truly was!—Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what! Methought I was, and methought I had.—The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was."
We do not think it in the wit or power of Mr. Phelps—under any newer inspiration, to give a deeper, finer meaning to this than he has done. But, if Her Majesty command the play, as a loyal subject, he will doubtless make the essay. In these words, Bottom—as rendered by the actor—is taken away from the ludicrous; he is elevated by the mystery that possesses him, and he affects our more serious sympathies, whilst he forbids our laughter. One of the very, very few precious things of the stage—of this starved time—is an Ass's head, as worn by the manager of merrie Islington.
We hope, at least, the Queen will command that head to be brought—with due solemnity—to Windsor Castle. Let Bottom be made to roar again before Her Majesty, the Prince, the heir-apparent, and all the smaller childhood royalties. Let Bottom be confronted with the picked of the Cabinet—the elect of Privy Councillors. And—as we have Orders of Eagles and Elephants, why not the ingenuous out-speaking significance, the Order of the Ass? As a timid beginning, we have the Thistle—wherefore not the Ass himself?
In which case, the Order established, the Bottom of Sadler's Wells ought rightfully to be the Chancellor thereof.