“That is true,” said Irving, “and very fine some of them are.”
But to return to Chicago criticism,—I repeat that among the best and most appreciative and most scholarly of the criticisms upon Irving and his art, in England and America, are the writings of the Chicago journalists,—McPhelin, of the “Tribune,” Barron, of the “Inter-Ocean,” McConnell, of the “Times,” and Pierce, of the “Daily News.” The two first mentioned are quite young men, not either of them more than twenty-five. I am tempted to quote, in justification of this opinion, and as an example of Chicago work, the following extracts from one of several equally well-written criticisms in the “Tribune”:—
It is true that in every department of art the power of the imagination has declined with the advance of knowledge. The Greek actors went into convulsions through excess of passion. A Roman actor in the midst of frenzied recitation struck a slave dead. If we have not so much imagination as the ancients (a fact which we need not regret), we have finer sensibilities, more penetrating insight, and a truer consciousness of life’s mystery and meaning. The art of to-day, if less exuberant than that of yesterday, is more serene, and, above all, its methods are more truthful.
They are the great actors who have kept pace with the most advanced thought, who have typified in their art the spirit of their age, who have inaugurated eras. Conservatism is stagnation. In its infancy the art of acting was monstrous exaggeration. This was natural, for it was fostered in the childhood of the world, and children love exaggeration. When, at last, the stilts and masks were thrown away, exaggeration of speech was preserved. Actors recited their lines in loud, monotonous sing-song. The ranters of our stage to-day are the lineal descendants of these men. Le Kain in France, and Garrick in England, made great strides towards natural methods in dramatic representation. The reflective genius of Kemble, at the beginning of this century, did much to complete the revolution in taste begun by Garrick. Kean was noted for the splendor and the volume of his power rather than for innovations in methods of expression. The actors who followed him prided themselves on their adherence to tradition,—tradition for which the rest of the world cared nothing. These artists were content to stand still while the culture of the century passed by them. At last there emerged out of obscurity, out of the jostling multitude of mediocrity, a man who drank in the spirit of his age,—a man who broke down the rotten barriers of tradition; a man who caught the intensity, the poetry, the artistic realism of his time; a man who inaugurated a new epoch in the art of acting. Final success was achieved only after a long and bitter struggle against conservative prejudices.
This man was Henry Irving.
In a broad and comprehensive way his position on the English stage has been defined above. After witnessing his impersonations of Louis XI. and Shylock, some conclusions may be drawn as to his genius and his methods.
There is nothing phenomenal or meteoric about this new actor. Henry Irving is not what Diderot would have us believe a great actor should be, namely, a man without sensibility. Diderot said that sensibility was organic weakness; that it crippled the intelligence, rendering acting alternately warm and cold; and that the great actor should have penetration, without any sensibility whatever. But Talma called sensibility the faculty of exaltation which shakes an actor’s very soul and which enables him to enter into the most tragic situations and the most terrible of passions as if they were his own. In the discussion of these conflicting theories Henry Irving has always taken Talma’s view. He comes nearer realizing Diderot’s ideal of greatness than any other actor of whom we have record.
His imagination is picturesque almost to the verge of sublimity. His fancy is lively and apparently inexhaustible. When he unrolls before us the varied-colored robe of life we look in vain to find one color missing. It is a fancy that is not only vivid, but that is most poetic. How touching is that return of Shylock to his lonely home, walking wearily over the deserted bridge,—the bridge that echoed only a moment before to the shouts and laughter of the merry maskers! The old man walks to the house from which his daughter has fled, knocks twice at the door, and looks up patiently and expectantly towards the casement. Then the curtain falls. The people who do not applaud such a tender touch as this should stop going to the theatre.
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