When Lewis Waller produced Romeo and Juliet, Harry was cast for “Mercutio”, a part which called for all the gaiety, all the youth, all the gallantry which he knew so well how to portray. I find that one critic said of his performance that “it had that touch of mystery which Mr. Esmond has given before, a touch of aloofness, indefinably appealing and tragic”, which seems to me to sum up the performance admirably. I find, too, another critic who says “he cannot interpret that youthfulness which springs from the joy of living”—“the joy of living”, which was an integral part of the man all his life!
Speaking of “Mercutio” brings me to another Shakespearean part which Harry played—that of “Touchstone”. And here again he committed the crime of playing “Touchstone” as he felt he should be played, not as custom, convention, and tradition dictated. The first intimation that he was outraging the feelings of these three old gods came at rehearsal, when on the exit “bag and baggage, scrip and scrippage” the producer told him “Here you exit, dancing. You know what I mean: ‘the light fantastic toe’.” Harry did know, and he did not see why the exit demanded that particular method. He asked “Why?” “Why?” repeated the producer, Mr. H. H. Vernon; “why? Well, because it is always made like that.” Again Harry asked “Yes, but why? what’s the reason?” “Reason,” repeated Mr. Vernon, “I don’t know any reason; it’s always done like that.” “Give me a reason,” Harry begged, “and if it’s a good one, I’ll think it over”; but no reason was forthcoming, except the reiteration that “it had always been done so, etc.” Now, to Harry, “Touchstone” was a “jester”, not a “clown”, and he believed that when Shakespeare so designated him it was used in the sense of “one who clowns or jests”; he saw no reason to make “Touchstone” anything but a “clown” in name, for he held that his words prove him to be the cleverest man in the play, and that he is the forerunner of “Jack Point”, “Grimaldi”, and even poor dear pathetic Dan Leno and Charlie Chaplin—the great comedians who make you laugh with the tears never very far from your eyes, because they are so tragically funny; the comedians whose comedy is ever very nearly tragedy, and who, when they cease to convulse their audiences, look out at the world with eyes that have in them no mirth, but a great sadness, which springs from knowledge that they “are paid to be funny”; that feeling which makes W. S. Gilbert’s “Point” sing:
Photograph by Gabell & Co., London, W. To face p. [222]
Harry as Touchstone
“As You Like It”
“Though your wife ran away
With a soldier that day,
And took with her your trifle of money—
Bless your heart, they don’t mind,
They’re exceedingly kind;
They don’t blame you so long as you’re funny.”