III
Here was a complete turning of the tables, a triumphant assertion of woman’s right to do all that becomes a man. When the comedy had been originally produced at the Globe Theater in London (probably in 1600 but possibly a year or two earlier) no actresses had ever been seen on the English stage; and therefore Rosalind and Celia and Audrey had to be entrusted to three shaven lads whom the older actors had taken as apprentices. When the comedy was performed at Palmer’s Theater in New York in 1893, almost three centuries later, Orlando and Adam, Touchstone and Jaques were undertaken by actresses of a maturer age and of a richer experience than the Elizabethan boys could ever have acquired.
As one of those who had the pleasure of beholding this unprecedented performance I am glad to bear testimony that I really enjoyed my afternoon and that ‘As You Like It’ lost little of its charm when men were banished from its cast. Jaques was undertaken by Janauschek, aging and enfeebled, yet still vigorous of mind and still in command of all her artistic resources. The Orlando was Maude Banks, a brave figure in her attempt at masculine attire. The Touchstone was Kate Davis; and Charles, the Duke’s wrestler, was Marion Abbott.
There is a delightful unreality about ‘As You Like It,’ an element of “make-believe,” an aroma of Once upon a Time, a flavor of “old familiar far-off things”; and it was this quality which was plainly prominent in the performance by the Professional Woman’s League. Consider for a moment the fascinating complexity of Rosalind’s conduct when she was impersonated by a shaven lad. The Elizabethan spectators beheld a boy playing the part of a girl, who disguises herself as a boy and who then asks her lover to pretend that she is a girl. Set down in black and white this intricacy may appear a little puzzling; but seen on the stage it causes no confusion nowadays and it is transparently piquant. Yet there was far more verisimilitude in the performance in the Tudor playhouse than there can be in our modern theaters, because it was easy enough for the youth who was playing Rosalind to look like a lad, after he had once donned doublet and hose, because he was a lad and not a lass; whereas the woman who now impersonates Rosalind finds it difficult (if not impossible) to make her male disguise impenetrable.
The fact is, however, that our latter-day leading lady is not inclined to take seriously Rosalind’s attempt to pass herself off as a man. She is likely to be a little too well satisfied with her feminine charms to be insistently anxious to conceal them; she does not want the audience ever to forget that she is a woman to be wooed, even if she is willing to pretend that she is a youth. ‘As You Like It’ is my favorite among all Shakspere’s plays and in the course of more than half-a-century of playgoing I must have seen almost a score of Rosalinds; but I cannot now recall a single one who made an honest effort to deceive Orlando, as Shakspere meant him to be deceived, if the story is to be accepted. As a result of this persistent femininity of Rosalind when she is masquerading as Ganymede, most of the Orlandos whom I can call up one after another let themselves flirt with Ganymede as if they had penetrated Rosalind’s disguise. It was a striking merit of John Drew’s Orlando that he always treated Ganymede as the lad Rosalind was pretending to be, making it clear to the audience that no doubt as to Ganymede’s sex had ever crossed his mind.
IV
I am inclined to guess that if the author of ‘As You Like It’ had accepted an invitation from the Professional Woman’s League, he would have sat out the performance at Palmer’s Theater, gazing at it with tolerant eye and courteously complimenting the Lady President or the Lady Vice-President who had been deputed to escort him to his box. But I make no doubt that his glance would have been less favorable had he been a spectator of a performance of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ given in May, 1877, at Booth’s Theater for the benefit of George Rignold, who appeared as Romeo supported by seven different Juliets, the part changing impersonators with every reappearance of the character. Grace d’Urfy danced in the masquerade, Adelaide Neilson leaned down from the balcony, Ada Dyas was married in the cell of Friar Lawrence, Maude Granger shrank from bloodshed, Marie Wainwright parted from Romeo, Fanny Davenport drank the potion, and Minnie Cummings awakened in the tomb.
It cannot be denied that Romeo was the greatest lover in all literature; but he was not a Don Juan deserting one mistress after another, and still less was he a Bluebeard married to half-a-dozen wives. The diversity of actresses, one replacing another as the sad tale rolled forward to its foredoomed end, may have served to attract a larger audience than Rignold could allure by his unaided ability; but it was destructive of the integrity of the tragedy. The unavoidable result of this freakish experiment was to take the mind of the audience off from the play itself and to focus it on a succession of histrionic stunts,—the single scenes in which the Juliets, one after another, exhibited themselves in rivalry with one another. The continuity of the tragedy of young love in the springtime of life was basely broken, its poetry was sadly defiled, and its dignity was indisputably desecrated. The actresses who lent themselves to this catchpenny show were ill-advised; they were false to their art; and they took no profit from their sacrifice of their standing in the profession. While the performance was discreditable to all who were concerned in it, the major part of the disgrace must be assumed by the actor who lowered himself to make money by it.
The obvious objections which must be urged against the splitting up of a single part among half-a-dozen performers do not lie against the appearance of a single actor in two or more characters. In fact, the doubling of parts, as it is called, is one of the oldest of theatrical expedients; and it was the custom in the ceremonial performances of the Greek drama at Athens, when there were only three actors, who might have to impersonate in turn seven or eight characters. It sprang up again in Tudor times, when a strolling company like that to which Hamlet addressed his advice numbered only a scant half-dozen members, and in which there might be only one boy to bear the burden of two or three or even four female characters.