THE DISTRESSED MOTHER
The Examiner.
September 22, 1816.
A Mr. Macready appeared at Covent-Garden Theatre on Monday and Friday, in the character of Orestes, in the Distressed Mother, a bad play for the display of his powers, in which, however, he succeeded in making a decidedly favourable impression upon the audience. His voice is powerful in the highest degree, and at the same time possesses great harmony and modulation. His face is not equally calculated for the stage. He declaims better than any body we have lately heard. He is accused of being violent, and of wanting pathos. Neither of these objections is true. His manner of delivering the first speeches in this play was admirable, and the want of increasing interest afterwards was the fault of the author, rather than the actor. The fine suppressed tone in which he assented to Pyrrhus’s command to convey the message to Hermione was a test of his variety of power, and brought down repeated acclamations from the house. We do not lay much stress on his mad-scene, though that was very good in its kind, for mad-scenes do not occur very often, and when they do, had in general better be omitted. We have not the slightest hesitation in saying, that Mr. Macready is by far the best tragic actor that has come out in our remembrance, with the exception of Mr. Kean. We however heartily wish him well out of this character of Orestes. It is a kind of forlorn hope in tragedy. There is nothing to be made of it on the English stage, beyond experiment. It is a trial, not a triumph. These French plays puzzle an English audience exceedingly. They cannot attend to the actor, for the difficulty they have in understanding the author. We think it wrong in any actor of great merit (which we hold Mr. Macready to be) to come out in an ambiguous character, to salve his reputation. An actor is like a man who throws himself from the top of a steeple by a rope. He should chuse the highest steeple he can find, that if he does not succeed in coming safe to the ground, he may break his neck at once, and so put himself and the spectators out of farther pain.
Ambrose Phillips’s Distressed Mother is a very good translation from Racine’s Andromache. It is an alternation of topics, of pros and cons, on the casuistry of domestic and state affairs, and produced a great effect of ennui on the audience. When you hear one of the speeches in these rhetorical tragedies, you know as well what will be the answer to it, as when you see the tide coming up the river—you know that it will return again. The other actors filled their parts with successful mediocrity.
We highly disapprove of the dresses worn on this occasion, and supposed to be the exact Greek costume. We do not know that the Greek heroes were dressed like women, or wore their long hair strait down their backs. Or even supposing that they did, this is not generally known or understood by the audience; and though the preservation of the ancient costume is a good thing, it is of more importance not to shock our present prejudices. The managers of Covent-Garden are not the Society of Antiquaries. The attention to costume is only necessary to preserve probability: in the present instance, it could only violate it, because there is nothing to lead the public opinion to expect such an exhibition. We know how the Turks are dressed, from seeing them in the streets; we know the costume of the Greek statues, from seeing casts in the shop-windows: we know that savages go naked, from reading voyages and travels: but we do not know that the Grecian Chiefs at the Siege of Troy were dressed as Mr. Charles Kemble, Mr. Abbott, and Mr. Macready were the other evening in the Distressed Mother. It is a discovery of the Managers; and they should have kept their secret to themselves.—The epithet in Homer, applied to the Grecian warriors, κάρη κομόωντες, is not any proof. It signifies not long-haired, but literally bushy-headed, which would come nearer to the common Brutus head, than this long dangling slip of hair. The oldest and most authentic models we have are the Elgin Marbles, and it is certain the Theseus is a crop. One would think this standard might satisfy the Committee of Managers in point of classical antiquity. But no such thing. They are much deeper in Greek costume and the history of the fabulous ages than those old-fashioned fellows, the Sculptors who lived in the time of Pericles. But we have said quite enough on this point.
Drury-Lane.
The chief novelties at this Theatre for the present week, have been a Mr. Bengough, from the Theatre Royal, Bath, and a Mrs. Knight, of the York Theatre, who have appeared in the characters of Baron Wildenheim and Agatha Friburg, in Lovers’ Vows. Both have been successful. Mr. Bengough is an actor who shews considerable judgment and feeling, and who would produce more effect than he does, if he took less pains to produce it. The appearance of study takes from that of nature, and yet the expression of natural pathos is what he seems to excel in. He treads the stage well, and is, we think, an acquisition to the company.
We wonder the long-winded, heavy-handed writer in the Courier, who has been belabouring Bertram so woefully, does not fall foul of Lovers’ Vows, as the quintessence of metaphysical licentiousness and the ultra-Jacobinism of ultra-Jacobinical poetry. We think that everlasting writer might build thirty columns of lumbering criticisms, ‘pointing to the skies,’ on any single passage of this effusion of German sentiment and genius. We hope the worthy author will take this hint, and after he has exhausted upon this work the inexhaustible stores of his unspeakable discoveries and researches into the theory of mill-stones, we would recommend him to turn his pen to an almost forgotten play, called Remorse, at the bottom of which, if he will look narrowly, he will find ‘a vaporous drop profound’ of the same pernicious leaven; and by setting it fermenting, with the help of transcendental reasoning, and the mechanical operations of the spirit, may raise mists and clouds that will ascend above the moon, and turn the Courier office into a laundry!—Oh, we had forgot: Mrs. Mardyn played her old character of Amelia Wildenheim more charmingly than ever. She acts even with more grace and spirit than when she first came out in it, and looks as handsome as she used to do.