This sympathy with the profession, and vivid interest in some phase or period of the drama, is an almost universal fact in the experience of intelligent and sensitive persons. Thackeray’s picture of Pendennis enamoured of an actress in boyhood, is typical of a common episode of youth; if not in this form, it takes the shape of enthusiasm for a certain actor or class of plays, or a mania defined as the condition of being ‘stage-struck;’ while to the philosophical as well as sympathetic of these early votaries the literature of the drama is a perennial storehouse of psychological data, and the most vital connecting link between written lore and actual life—the source of the highest poetry and the most universal human truth.
In literary biography, the accounts of the manner in which the plays of Goldsmith, Sheridan, Byron, Mrs. Hemans, Joanna Baillie, Procter, Talfourd, Hunt, Lamb, and other poets, were brought on the stage,—the reciprocal good offices of actors and authors, mutually acknowledged,—the array of intellectual friends convened to grace the occasion, and the anecdotes and criticism thence resulting,—form some of the most agreeable episodes in literary biography. Farquhar, Holcraft, Mrs. Inchbald, Knowles, and others, combined the author and actor; and it was a genial and noble custom for distinguished writers to contribute prologues and epilogues;—the interchange of such kindly offices gave, as we have said, a wide and elevated social interest to the theatre, which had, in a great measure, passed away before the advent of Kean. Besides the comparative indifference of the public, he was obliged to contend against both the prejudices and the refinements of taste—the one opposing all innovation as to style, and the other repudiating the intensity and boldness of his conceptions.
The Spagnoletto style of Sandford, and the ‘cordage’ visible in old Macklin’s face, are traditional. The inimitable pathos of Miss O’Neil, the tragic beauty of Pasta, the heroic manner of Siddons, the irresistible humour of Matthews, and Liston’s comic genius, had each their distinctive character; they respectively individualized the art, and, if we range over the entire gallery of histrionic celebrities, we shall find their fame based upon as peculiar traits of excellence as that of renowned authors and painters; and their genius consisting in some quality emphatically their own—where imitation and art became subservient to, or illustrative of, an idiosyncrasy.
Impulsive genius seldom receives the credit of artistic study, and its most effective points are often ascribed to chance inspiration. This is an error of frequent occurrence in judging of actors; and it is one almost perversely indulged by the bigoted opponents of the romantic or natural school. The most effective touches, however, in Garrick, Kean, and other eminent performers, are easily traced to careful observation or a personal idiosyncrasy or association. In the very first instruction the latter received in his art, recourse was had to natural sympathy in order to perfect his imitative skill. The pathetic intonation with which, even as a boy, he exclaimed, ‘Alas, poor Yorick!’ in Hamlet, was derived from the manner in which he habitually spoke of an unfortunate relative who constantly excited his commiseration; he was instructed to transfer the tone awakened by real, to the expression of imaginary grief: his manner of falling on his face was derived from the figure on Abercrombie’s monument, and his fighting with a weaponless arm in Richard was borrowed from the death-scene of an officer in Spain. The play of Bertram, by Maturin, he is said to have rendered memorable by a single touching benison: all who once heard his ‘God bless the child!’ recall it with emotion; it was a favourite mode of uttering his paternal tenderness at home; hence its reality. Garrick made a study of an old crazy friend of his in order to enact Lear with truth to nature; and when Kean was playing in New York, he accompanied his physician to Bloomingdale asylum for the express purpose of obtaining hints for the same part, from the manner and expression of the insane patients. Indeed, those most intimate with Kean, in his best days, unite in the opinion that he was never surpassed for the intense and original study of his characters; he brooded over them in the quiet fields, observed life and nature, conversed with discerning men, and acutely examined books and his own consciousness, for the purpose of attaining an harmonious and artistic conception; he tried experiments in elocution before his wife, and was in the habit of rehearsing, for hours, without any auditor. So elaborate were his studies, that, having once decided on a course, he never modified it without great self-dissatisfaction; and on one occasion, when he yielded his judgment on a special point, to please Mrs. Garrick, the inharmonious effect was obvious to all.
‘What the bank is to the credit of the nation,’ said Steele, ‘the playhouse is to its politeness and good manners.’ And although this maxim is scarcely applicable now, the instinct and the sympathy by virtue of which the stage instructs and refines for ever obtain in humanity. Among recent illustrations, is the genial influence of dramatic pastimes upon the isolated and dark sojourn of ice-bound Arctic voyagers, as described by the intrepid and philosophic Kane and his predecessors. The gallery of human portraits, conserved even by the minor English drama, are among the most genuine illustrations of life and character; Sir Peter Teazle and Joseph Surface, Sir Pertinax and Tony Lumpkin, Sylvester Daggerwood and Mawworm, are emphatic types with which we could ill dispense. One of the remarkable intellectual phenomena of the age in which we live, however, is the gradual encroachment of literature upon dramatic art. The best modern characters which genius has created exist in masterpieces of fiction and poetry; in a measure they have superseded in popular favour dramatic ideals, except the highest and most endeared. Scott, Dickens, and their contemporaries or successors, have given the world a new gallery of living portraits such as of old were only to be found in the drama. Well said Wilson, in the Noctes: ‘I think the good novels that are published come in place of new dramas.’ The Italian opera has, by its affluent artistic attractions, overshadowed, and in a great measure superseded, the ‘legitimate drama.’ Even in Italy the opportunity is comparatively rare to enjoy fine acting apart from music and the ballet; yet there is no better lesson for the novice in that ‘soft bastard Latin’ that Byron loved, than to listen to one of Goldoni’s old-fashioned colloquial plays, as, clearly and with admirable emphasis, recited by such a company as that of which Internari was so long the ornament; by melodious emphasis alone commonplace maxims seemed to attain the sparkle of wit, and the mere tone of voice is fraught with infectious merriment. From Arlechino’s broad jokes to Ristori’s majestic pathos, the natural dramatic instinct and endowments of the Italians awaken every shade and subtlety of sympathetic feeling.
Philosophically examined, the stage will be found a compensatory institution, and its actual relation to society intimate or conventional, according to the predominance of real or ideal satisfaction. Thus the free enterprise and speculative range in America make it merely recreative; the best Italian dramatist wrote when his country’s civic life was paralyzed. The sentiment, checked by caste and absolutism in Elizabeth’s day, burst forth in the old dramatists, and culminated, for all time, in Shakspeare; while the memoirs of Goëthe, Schiller, and Korner indicate how near and dear to the popular heart of their country was the art, in all its phases and forms, wherein baffled aspirations found scope. The histrionic artists of Germany, and the actresses of Paris, are or have been a vital element of the social economy, impracticable and almost inconceivable to English and Americans. Wilhelm Meister is the legitimate romance of its country and era. ‘L’ artiste aimée du public,’ says Madame Dudevant, ‘est comme un enfant a qui l’ univers est la famille;’ while the affinity of the dramatic instinct with literary culture and capability is not only evident in the friendships between authors and actors, but in the facility with which the former become amateur performers. Montaigne says, ‘I played the chief part in the Latin tragedies of Buchanan, Guerente, and Moret, that were acted in our college of Guienne.’ Dickens is a capital actor and dramatic reader of his own stories; and Washington Irving, when sojourning at Dresden, delectably enacted, in a genial family circle, Sir Charles Rackett.
One proof of the essential individuality of histrionic genius is, that in every celebrated part each renowned actor seems to have excelled in a different phrase. Garrick’s Hamlet was inimitable in the words, ‘I have that within that passeth show;’ while the most affecting touch of the elder Wallack was, ‘That undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveller returns.’ Kean’s first soliloquy in Richard the Third is perhaps the best preserved traditional recitation of the English stage; and the power of contrasted intonation in the expression of feeling, never forgotten by those who listened, was evinced in the memorable passage in Othello—
‘Perdition catch my soul, but I do love thee,
And when I love thee not, chaos is come again.’
His conceptions were remarkable for bold earnestness. His discordant voice, insignificant figure, and slightly-misshaped feet, seemed to pass miraculously away before the glowing energy of his spirit; to the imaginative spectator he visibly expanded, and filled the stage, and towered over the inferior actors of larger physical dimensions; his action, expression of countenance, intelligent emphasis, and vigour of utterance, lifted, kindled, and glorified, as it were, his merely human attributes, and bore him, and those who gazed and listened, triumphantly onward in a whirl of passion, a concentration of will, or a chaos of emotion.
As far as contemporary memoirs elucidate the subject, it is evident that gross violations of elocutionary taste were habitual both prior to and succeeding the time of Betterton. This actor, with remarkable physical disadvantages, appears to have had the most decided genius—especially for tragedy. We have no accounts of the effects of tragic personation exceeding those recorded of Betterton; so truly did he feel the emotion represented, that it is said his colour, breathing, accent, and looks betrayed an incessant and absolute sympathy with the part; as Hamlet he turned deadly pale at the sight of the ghost; and Cibber emphatically declares that his tone, accentuation, and the whole management of his voice were faultlessly adapted to each passage he recited. Garrick seems first to have established a taste for the refinements of the art; his style, compared to what had been in vogue, was singularly chaste; he embodied the great idea of unity; and when he first appeared, his manner, expression of countenance, inflection of voice, and whole air, instantly revealed the character, of which he did not lose sight for a moment. The Kemble school has been traced to Quin; but its individuality was trenched upon vitally by Kean, although it has been, in many essential features, renewed by the elder Vandenhoff and Macready. It is contended by its ardent votaries that Kean sacrificed the dignity of his art—so ably sustained by John Kemble and his renowned sister—to mere effect; that he substituted impulse for science, and excited sympathy by powerful but illegitimate appeals to emotion. This, however, is a narrow statement, and like the old dispute about Racine and Shakspeare, the classic and romantic, the natural and the artistic, resolves itself into the fact that the principle of a division of labour is applicable to art as well as social economy. In Cato and Coriolanus and Wolsey, the traits of Kemble were perfectly assimilated; in the more complex part of Richard, and the still more impetuous one of Othello, the energy, quickness, intense expression, and infectious action of Kean were not only electrical in their immediate effect, but appropriate in the highest degree in the view of reflection and taste. Thus, too, Cooke as Sir Pertinax McSycophant, Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, Cooper as Virginius, Kean as Shylock, Macready as Werner, and Booth as Iago, made indelible, because highly characteristic, impressions. The actor, like the author and artist, has his forte—a sphere peculiarly fitted to elicit his powers and give scope and inspiration to his genius; and it is here that we should estimate him, and not according to a comparative and irrelevant standard.