MAYWOOD’S ZANGA
| The Times.] | [October 3, 1817. |
Drury-Lane Theatre.
Mr. Maywood appeared here in Zanga last night. It is not certainly from any wish to discourage, but we cannot speak so favourably of his performance of this character as of his Shylock. Considerable diffidence still appears in this actor’s manner, and retards his progress to reputation and excellence. He does not give sufficient scope and vehemence to the impassioned parts of the character, nor sufficient decision and significance to its wily and malignant duplicity. Zanga’s blood is on fire; it boils in his veins; it should dilate, and agitate his whole frame with the fiercest rage and revenge: and again, the suppression of his constitutional ardour, of the ungovernable passions that torment and goad on his mind, ought to be marked with a correspondent degree of artful circumspection and studied hypocrisy. In both extremes (for the character is in extremes throughout) we thought Mr. Maywood failed. His rage and hatred, where it had opportunity to vent itself in a torrent of exclamations, was not strong or sustained enough, and appeared in the very tempest and whirlwind of the passion, to recoil affrighted ‘from the sound itself had made.’ In the concealment of his purposes, and in the villainous insinuations with which he fills Alonzo’s mind, ‘distilling them like a leprous poison in his ear,’ he was ‘too tame,’ too servile and mechanical, and resembled more the busy, mercenary, credulous tale-bearer, than the dark, secret assassin of the peace, life, and honour, of his unsuspecting patron. The passage in which Mr. Maywood failed most, and in which the greatest symptoms of disapprobation manifested themselves, was that in which the greatest effect is generally produced, and where consequently the expectations are raised the highest: we mean, in the terrific and overpowering exclamation to Alonzo, ‘’Twas I that did it!’ In the long and nasal emphasis which Mr. Maywood laid on the monosyllable ‘I’ he shocked the ears and tired the patience of the auditors; less, we apprehend, from any thing wrong in his conception of the part, than from the remains of a provincial accent hanging on his pronunciation, and in passages of great vehemence and ardour, preventing him from having the full command of his utterance. In the less violent expression of passion, he was more successful; and gave one or two of the short soliloquies which occur of a more thoughtful and reasoning cast, with considerable depth of tone and feeling. We are not without hopes, when Mr. Kean returns, and imparts some of his confidence and admirable decision to his young rival or pupil, of seeing some very good acting between them: we say so without meaning a double-entendre.
This play of The Revenge is certainly a very indifferent piece of work; and in the hero of the story, Alonzo, Mr. Rae bolted some very ranting speeches, blank verse and all, clean out of his mouth like shot from the mouth of a cannon, with a tone and emphasis that might have startled ears less accustomed to the ‘forced gait’ and high clattering hoofs of his voice than ours. By stamping so hard, too, he raises not only a shout in the upper-gallery, but a cloud of dust from the green baize on the stage-floor.