The pretty, fashionable heroine does not change into a fury when the man whom she loves is brought home murdered. When we meet her again she is quite quiet,—a calm, cold woman of the world, with only one object in life, which is to punish the murderer. It is a task like any other, but it is inevitable, and must be undertaken as a matter of course. She makes no display of anger, and takes no perverse pleasure in thoughts of vengeance. The murderer is nothing to her,—he is a stranger. But she has been rendered desolate in the flower of her youth; the table of life, which is never spread more than once, has been upset before her eyes at the very moment of her anticipated happiness, and this is an injury which she is going to repay. She is proud, and has no illusions; she is a just judge, who recompenses evil with evil and good with good. This “Fédora” is reserved and unreasoning.
The scene changes. She loves the man whom she has been pursuing, and she discovers that the dead man has been false to both of them, and she realizes that now for the first time life’s table is spread for her, while the secret police, to whom she has betrayed him, are waiting outside, and she clings to him terrified, showers caresses upon him, kisses him with unspeakable tenderness. There is something in her of the helplessness of a little child, mingled with a mother’s protecting care, as she implores him to remain, and entices him to love, and seeks refuge in his love, as a terrified animal seeks refuge in its hole.
There are two other features of Eleonora Duse’s art which deserve notice. These are, the way in which she tells a lie, and the way she acts death. As I have said already, she is not a realist, and she frames her characters from her inner consciousness, not from details gathered from the outward features of life. Her representation of death is also the outcome of her instinct. A death scene has no meaning for her unless it reflects the inner life. As a process of physical dissolution, she takes no interest in it. She has not studied death from the side of the sick-bed, and she makes short work of it in “Fédora,” as also in “La Dame aux Camélias.” In the first piece, the point which she emphasizes is the sudden determination to take the poison; in the second, it is her joy at having the man whom she loves near her at the last.
Then her manner of lying. When Duse tells a lie, she does it as if it were the simplest and most natural thing in the world. Her lies and deceptions are as engaging, persuasive, and fantastic as a child’s. Lying is an important factor in the character of a woman who has much to fight against, and it is a weapon which she delights to use, and the use of it renders her unusually fascinating and affectionate. Even those who do not understand the words of the play, know when Duse is telling a lie, because she becomes so unusually lively and talkative, and her large eyes have an irresistible sparkle in them.
“Cavalleria Rusticana” was the only good Italian play that Duse acted. She was more of a realist in this piece than in any other, because she reproduced what she had seen daily before her eyes,—her native surroundings, her fellow-countrymen,—instead of that which she had learned by listening to her own soul. Her Santuzza—the poor, forsaken girl with the raw, melancholy, guttural accents of despair—was life-like and convincing, but the barbaric wildness of the exponent was something which was as startling in this stupid, pale weakly creature as a roar from the throat of a roe deer.
V
And now to sum up:—Eleonora Duse goes touring all round the world. She is going to America, and she is certain to go back to Berlin and St. Petersburg and Vienna, and other places where she may or may not have been before. She will have to travel and act, travel and act, as all popular actresses have done before her. She will grow tired of it, unspeakably tired,—we can see that already,—but she will be obliged to go on, till she becomes stereotyped, like all the others.
When we see her again, will she be the same as she is now? Her technical power is extraordinary, but her art is simple; melancholy and dignity are its chief ingredients. Will Duse’s womanly nature be able to bear the strain of never-ending repetition? This fear has been the cause of my endeavor to accentuate her individuality as it appeared to me when I saw her. Hers is not one of those powerful natures which always regain their strength, and are able to fight through all difficulties. Her entire acting is tuned upon one note, which is usually nothing more than an accompaniment in the art of acting; that note is sincerity. In my opinion she is the greatest woman genius on the stage.
Nowadays we are either too lavish or too sparing in our use of the word genius; we either brandish it abroad with every trumpet, or else avoid it altogether. We are willing to allow that there are geniuses amongst actors and actresses, and that such have existed, and may perhaps continue to exist, but I have never observed that any attempt is made to distinguish between the genius of man and woman on the stage. This may possibly be accounted for by the fact that the difference was not great. The hero was manly, the heroine womanly, and the old people, whether men or women, were either comic or tearful, and the characters of both sexes were usually bad. The difference lay chiefly in the dress, the general comportment, and the voice: one could see which was the woman, and she of course acted a woman’s feelings; tradition ruled, and in accordance with it the actress imitated the man, declaimed her part like him, and even went as far as to imitate the well-known tragic step. Types, not individuals, were represented on the stage, and I have seldom seen even the greatest actresses of the older school deviate from this rule.
The society pieces were supposed to represent every-day life; therefore it was necessary before all else that the actress should be a lady, and where a lady’s feelings are limited, hers were necessarily limited too. To every actress, the tragedian not excepted, the question of chief importance was how she looked.