Literary and Social Essays

by George William Curtis

In this she is as purely dramatic as in other plays she is classical. But neither in the one nor the other is there a look, or a gesture, or a word, which is not harmonious with the spirit of the style and the character of the person represented.

This is pure passion as the other is implacable fate. There is something so tearfully human in it that you are touched as by a picture of the Magdalen. Every representation of Rachel is preserved in your memory with the first sights of the great statues and the famous pictures.

In the French translation of Schiller's "Mary Stuart", a character which may be supposed especially to interest Americans and English, Rachel is not less excellent. The sad grace, the tender resignation, the poetic enthusiasm, the petulant caprice, the wilful, lovely womanliness of the lovely queen, are made tragically real by her representation. Perhaps it is not the Mary of Mignet nor of history. But Mary Queen of Scots is one of the characters which the imagination has chosen to take from history and decorate with immortal grace. It cares less for what the woman Mary was, than to have a figure standing upon the fact of history, but radiant with the beauty of poetry. It has invested her with a loveliness that is perhaps unreal, with a tenderness and sweetness that were possibly foreign to her character, and with a general fascination and good intention which a contemporary might not have discovered.

It has made her the ideal of unfortunate womanhood. For it seemed that a fate so tragic deserved a fame so fair. Perhaps the weakness which Mary had, and which Lady Jane Grey had not, have been the very reasons why the unfortunate, unhappy Queen Mary is dearer to our human sympathies than the unfortunate Lady Jane. Perhaps because it was a woman who pursued her, the instinct of men has sought to restore, by the canonization of Mary, the womanly ideal injured by Elizabeth.

But, whatever be the reason, there is no question that we judge Mary Queen of Scots more by the imagination than by historical rigor; and it is Mary, as the mind insists upon having her, that Rachel represents. She conspires with the imagination to complete the ideal of Mary. It is a story told in sad music to which we listen; it is a mournful panorama, unfolding itself scene by scene, upon which we gaze. Lost in soft melancholy, the figures of the drama move before us as in a tragic dream. But after seeing Rachel's Mary we can see no other. If we meet her in history or romance, it is always that figure, those pensive eyes, forecasting a fearful doom, that voice whose music is cast in a hopeless minor. It is thus that dramatic genius creates, and poetry disputes with history.

Jules Janin says that Rachel is best in those parts of this play where the anger of the Queen is more prominent than the grief of the woman.

This is true to a certain extent. It was not difficult to see that the fierceness was more natural than the tenderness to the woman Rachel, and that, therefore, those parts had a reality which the tenderness had not. But the performance was symmetrical, and, so far as the mere acting was concerned, the woman was as well rendered as the Queen. The want of the spectacle was this, and it is, we fully grant, the defect of all her similar personations: you felt that it was only intellect feigning heart, though with perfect success. The tenderness and caprice of the woman, and the pride and dignity of the Queen, are all there. She would not be the consummate artist she is if she could not give them. But even through your tears you see that it is art. It is, indeed, concealed by its own perfection, but it is not lost in the loveliness of the character it suggests, as might be the case with a greatly inferior artist. You are half sure, as you own the excellence, that much of the tender effect arises from your feeling that Rachel, as she represents a woman so different from herself, regards her rôle with sad longing and vague regret. When we say that she is the ideal Mary, we mean strictly the artistic ideal.

The late Charlotte Brontë, in her novel of Villette, has described Rachel with a splendor of rhetoric that is very unusual with the author of Jane Eyre. But in the style of the description it is very easy to see the influence of the thing described. It has a picturesque stateliness, a grave grace and musical pomp, which all belong to the genius of Rachel. Even the soft gloom of her eyes is in it; a gloom and a fire which no one could more subtly feel than Miss Brontë. Her description is the best that we have seen of what is, in its nature, after all indescribable.

As the fame of an actor or singer is necessarily traditional, and rapidly perishes, it is not easy to compare one with another when they are not contemporaries, for you find yourself only comparing vague impressions and reports. Of Roscius and Betterton we must accept the names and allow the fame. We can see Reynolds's pictures, we can hear Handel's music, we can read Goldsmith's and Johnson's books; but of Garrick what can we have but a name, and somebody's account of what he thought of Garrick? The touch of Shakespeare we can feel as well as did our ancestors, and our great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren will feel it as fully as we. But the voice of Malibran lingers in only a few happy memories, and we know Mrs. Siddons better by Sir Joshua's portrait than by her own glories.

It is, therefore, impossible to decide what relative rank among actresses Rachel occupies. Mrs. Jameson, in her Common-Place Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies, says some sharp things of her, and Mrs. Jameson is a critic of too delicate a mind not to be heeded. The general view she takes of Rachel is, that she is not a great artist in the true sense of the word. She is a finished actress, but not an artist fine enough to conceal her art. The last scene of "Adrienne Lecouvreur" seems to Mrs. Jameson a mistake and a failure—so beyond the limits of art, a mere imitation of a repulsive physical fact; and finally she pronounces that Rachel has talent but not genius; while it is the "entire absence of the high poetic element which distinguishes Rachel as an actress, and places her at such an immeasurable distance from Mrs. Siddons, that it shocks me to hear their names together".