“I have never,” said a Philadelphian, “seen an audience in this city rise and cheer an actor as they cheered you when you took your call after the play scene in Hamlet. Such enthusiasm is unknown here. Miss Terry and yourself both might have had scene-calls of the most cordial character. You both refused them; it is a rule, I understand, with you to do so. The excitement of some audiences would have been dampened by these checks. Not so yours,—the calls at the close of the play were quite phenomenal for Philadelphia.”
A numerous company of critics and reporters came from New York, Boston, and other cities, to be present at Irving’s first appearance in Hamlet. Nowhere at any time during the tour were the influences of London so apparent as in the criticisms of Hamlet at Philadelphia; most of them entirely out of harmony with the warmly expressed satisfaction of one of the most intellectual and high-class audiences ever gathered together in the Chestnut Street Theatre.[22] For instance, the “Evening Bulletin” found in the duelling scene reminiscences of “æsthetic sketches from ‘Punch,’” and the “Press” said “It is unfortunate that Du Maurier has taken Miss Terry as the model of the æsthetic set. The curly blonde hair, delicate face, and soft, clinging robes reminded one so often of ‘Punch’s’ caricature, that it was difficult to take it seriously.” There is, in certain critical circles of Philadelphia, the same kind of affectation of a knowledge of English thought, and a following of London taste, as there is in London in regard to French art and French criticism. The audience at the Chestnut Street Theatre had no difficulty in taking Miss Terry’s Ophelia seriously. There was hardly a dry eye in the house during her mad scene. The “Bulletin” critic aired his knowledge of English affectation by associating her with “Burns-Jonesism”; but the “Times” found “Miss Terry’s Ophelia tender and beautiful, and pathetic beyond any Ophelia we have lately seen.” The “Record” described it as “sweet and unartificial as the innocent and demented maiden Shakespeare painted for us.” Said the “Inquirer,” in a criticism of singular literary force:—
In the play scene, in which he seemed to fill the whole stage, in which a real frenzy appeared to fall upon his mind, he justified by the greatness of his acting almost all that has been or could be said in praise of it. So grandly and impressively did he bring the scene to a close as to call down thunders of applause from an audience that he had thrilled and swayed by a power undeniably great. If that scene was ever before so nobly played we were not there to see it done. Mr. Irving rose to greater heights of excellence as the play proceeded. From the moment Miss Terry put her foot upon the scene she held and controlled her audience as she would. Never before upon our stage has there appeared an actress who played Ophelia with such lovely grace and piteous pathos. To all who saw this most perfect performance it was a revelation of a higher, purer, and nobler dramatic art than they had ever seen or dreamed. What she did just here or there, or how she did it, cannot be told. Over it all was cast the glamour of the genius in which this fine woman is so greatly blessed. She does not seem to act, but to do that which nature taught her.
III.
Talking of criticism and the press, the press and the stage, one evening, Irving expressed some views in regard to the influence and relations of the newspaper and the theatre which are full of suggestiveness and point.
“Journalism and the stage,” he said, “have always been more or less in sympathy with each other. As they have progressed this sympathy may be said to have grown into an alliance in the best interests of civilization. As exponents of the highest thought of the greatest writers, as educationists of the most comprehensive character, the press and the stage are, I think, two of the most powerful institutions for good in our times, and represent the greatest possibilities in the future.
“It is interesting to contemplate how closely they are associated, these two institutions, artistically and commercially. The advertisements of the theatres represent a large revenue to the newspapers; the employment of writers and reporters in chronicling and commenting upon the work of the theatres represents, on the other hand, an important outlay for the newspapers. The press is telling the story of the theatre from day to day; and, while it extends an earnest and honest sympathy to dramatic art in its highest aspirations of excellence, I hope the time will come when the criticism of the work of the stage will be considered one of the most serious features that belong to the general and varied compositions of a newspaper.
“In the past we, in England, at all events, look upon but two men as critics in the most complete sense,—men who, by thought and study, feeling and knowledge, had the power to sympathize with the intention of the artist, to enter into the motives of the actor himself, criticising his conceptions according to his interpretation of that which he desires to express. These two writers were Lamb and Hazlett. But nowadays we have thousands of critics. Every newspaper in Great Britain has its critic. Even the trade-journals, and some of the professedly religious journals, have their critics, and some of them speak with an emphasis and an authority on the most abstruse principles of art which neither Lamb nor Hazlett would have dreamed of assuming. I don’t know how this contrasts with America; but I am sure that when the conductors of the great journals of the two worlds are fully convinced of the deep interest and the friendly interest the people are taking in the stage they will give increasing importance to the dramatic departments of their papers.”