“Will you give your reasons, sir?” said Dr. Marston, in that old-fashioned courtly way which was one of his many charms.
“Certainly,” said Mr. Watts-Dunton, “if it will be of any interest. You recollect Coleridge’s remarks upon expectation and surprise in drama. I think it a striking play because I cannot recall any play in which the entire source of interest is that of pure expectation unadulterated by surprise. From the opening dialogue, before ever the burgomaster appears, the audience knows that a murder has been committed, and that the murderer must be the burgomaster, and yet the audience is kept in breathless suspense through pure expectation as to whether or not the crime will be brought home to him, and if brought home to him, how.”
“Well,” said the voice of one of the admirers of the play, “that is the best criticism of ‘The Bells’ I have yet heard.” After this the conversation turned upon Jefferson’s acting of Rip Van Winkle, and many admirable remarks fell from a dozen lips. When there was a pause in these criticisms, Dr. Marston turned to Mr. Watts-Dunton and said, “Have you seen Jefferson in ‘Rip van Winkle,’ sir?”
“Yes, indeed,” was the reply, “many times; and I hope to see it many more times. It is wonderful. I think it lucky that I have been able to see the great exemplar of what may be called the Garrick type of actor, and the great exemplar of what may be called the Edmund Kean type of actor.”
On being asked what he meant by this classification, Mr. Watts-Dunton launched out into one of those wide-sweeping but symmetrical monologues of criticism in which beginning, middle, and end, were as perfectly marked as though the improvization had been a well-considered essay—the subject being the style of acting typified by Garrick and the style of acting typified by Robson. As this same idea runs through Mr. Watts-Dunton’s criticism of Got in ‘Le Roi s’Amuse’ (which I shall quote later), there is no need to dwell upon it here.
“As an instance,” he said, “of Jefferson’s supreme power in this line of acting, one might refer to Act II. of the play, where Rip mounts the Catskill Mountains in the company of the goblins. Rip talks with the goblins one after the other, and there seems to be a dramatic dialogue going on. It is not till the curtain falls that the audience realizes that every word spoken during that act came from the lips of Rip, so entirely have Jefferson’s facial expression and intonation dramatized each goblin.”
Between Mr. Watts-Dunton and our great Shakespearean actress, Ellen Terry, there has been an affectionate friendship running over nearly a quarter of a century. This is not at all surprising to one who knows Miss Terry’s high artistic taste and appreciation of poetry. Among the poems expressing that friendship, none is more pleasing than the sonnet that appeared in the ‘Magazine of Art’ to which Mr. Bernard Partridge contributed his superb drawing of Miss Terry in the part of Queen Katherine. It is entitled, ‘Queen Katherine: on seeing Miss Ellen Terry as Katherine in King Henry VIII’:—
Seeking a tongue for tongueless shadow-land,
Has Katherine’s soul come back with power to quell
A sister-soul incarnate, and compel
Its bodily voice to speak by Grief’s command?
Or is it Katherine’s self returns to stand
As erst she stood defying Wolsey’s spell—
Returns with those vile wrongs she fain would tell
Which memory bore to Eden’s amaranth strand?Or is it thou, dear friend—this Queen, whose face
The salt of many tears hath scarred and stung?—
Can it be thou, whose genius, ever young,
Lighting the body with the spirit’s grace,
Is loved by England—loved by all the race
Round all the world enlinked by Shakespeare’s tongue!
With one exception I do not find any dramatic criticisms by Mr. Watts-Dunton in the ‘Athenæum.’ Indeed, I should not expect to find him trenching upon the domain of the greatest dramatic critic of our time, Mr. Joseph Knight. No one speaks with greater admiration of Mr. Knight than his friend of thirty years’ standing, Mr. Watts-Dunton himself; and when an essay on ‘King John’ was required for the series of Shakespeare essays to accompany Mr. Edwin Abbey’s famous illustrations in ‘Harper’s Magazine,’ it was Mr. Knight whom Mr. Watts-Dunton invited to discuss this important play. The exception I allude to is the criticism of Victor Hugo’s ‘Le Roi s’Amuse,’ which appeared in the ‘Athenæum’ of December 2, 1882.
The way in which it came about that Mr. Watts-Dunton undertook for the ‘Athenæum’ so important a piece of dramatic criticism is interesting. In 1882 M. Vacquerie, the editor of ‘Le Rappel,’ a relative of Hugo’s, and a great friend of Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Watts-Dunton, together with other important members of the Hugo cenacle, determined to get up a representation of ‘Le Roi s’Amuse’ on the jubilee of its first representation, since when it had never been acted. Vacquerie sent two fauteuils, one for Mr. Swinburne and one for Mr. Watts-Dunton; and the two poets were present at that memorable representation. Long before the appointed day there was on the Continent, from Paris to St. Petersburg, an unprecedented demand for seats; for it was felt that this was the most interesting dramatic event that had occurred for fifty years.