This is what M. J. de Tillet wrote about the performance in the Revue Bleue of December 1896:
“Cette fois ç’a été le vrai triomphe, sans restrictions et sans réserves. Je vous ai dit la semaine dernière qu’elle avait atteint, et presque dépassé le sommet de l’art. Je viens de relire Lorenzaccio, et ç’a été une joie nouvelle, plus rassise et plus convaincue, de retrouver et d’évoquer ses intonations et ses gestes. Elle a donné la vie à ce personnage de Lorenzo, que personne n’avait osé aborder avant elle; elle a maintenu, a travers toute la pièce, ce caractère complexe et hésitant; elle en a rendu toutes les nuances avec une vérité et une profondeur singulières. Admirable d’un bout à l’autre, sans procédés et sans ‘déblayage,’ sans excès et sans cris, elle nous a émus jusqu’au fond de l’âme, par la simplicité et la justesse de sa diction, par l’art souverain des attitudes et des gestes. Et, j’insiste sur ce point, elle a donné au rôle tout entier, sans faiblesse et sans arrêt, une inoubliable physionomie. Qu’elle parle ou quelle se taise, elle est Lorenzaccio des pieds à la tête, corps et âme; elle ‘vit’ son personnage, et elle le fait vivre pour nous. Le talent de Mme Sarah Bernhardt m’a parfois plus inquiété que charmé. C’est une raison de plus pour que je répète aujourd’hui qu’elle a atteint le sublime. Jamais, je n’ai rien vu, au théâtre, qui égalât ce qu’elle a donné dans Lorenzaccio.”
In Mr. Bernard Shaw’s collected dramatic criticism, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, there is an interesting chapter comparing the two artists in the part of Magda, in which he says that Duse’s performance annihilated that of Sarah Bernhardt for him. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that it did the same for everyone. I saw Sarah Bernhardt play the part superbly in Paris, and I saw Duse play the part superbly in London, and I should have said that Duse lent the character a nobility and a dignity that are not to be found in the text of the play, and that Sarah Bernhardt made of Magda what the author wanted her to be: a rather noisy, exuberant, vulgar, successful prima donna, a cabotine, not without genius, and with moments, when her human feelings were touched, of greatness; that she portrayed the ostentation of the actress, and the sudden intoxication of success and celebrity, with their attendant disillusions, on a talented middle-class German girl; and, when the note called for it, the majesty of motherhood, to perfection; but let us assume that Duse in this part gave something more memorable, and the part certainly suited her temperament, her irony, her dignity, perhaps better than any other, and gave her a unique opportunity for self-expression, even at the cost of reality, and of the play. Let us go further, and say that in Dumas’ La Femme de Claude Duse played the part of Césarine, a Sarah Bernhardt part if ever there was one, the part of a wicked, seductive woman; and made of her creation in that part a trembling, quivering, living, vibrating thing; an unforgettable study of vice and charm and deadly wickedness and lure, which Sarah Bernhardt never excelled. Even if we admit all this, the fact still remains that Sarah Bernhardt could play a poetic tragedy in a fashion beyond Duse’s reach; that she could play Phèdre and Cleopatra and Doña Sol; and that Duse, in the rôle of Cleopatra, dwindled and was overwhelmed by it. The critics forgot, when they compared the two artists, the glory of Sarah Bernhardt’s past, the extent of range of her present, the possibilities of her future; her interpretations of Racine, of Victor Hugo; her understanding of poetry and verse; they did not compare the whole art of Duse with the whole art of Sarah Bernhardt, and had they done so they would have at once realised the absurdity of doing such a thing—an absurdity as great as to compare Keats’ poetry with Tolstoy’s novels, or Burne-Jones with George Sand.
The French critics were more discriminating, and anyone who has the curiosity to turn up what Lemaître says of Duse in La Dame aux Camélias will find a subtle and discriminating contrast between the art of these two great actresses. Personally I am thankful to have seen them both, and to have thought each unapproachable in her own way.
From 1893 to 1903 Sarah Bernhardt’s career broadened and shone in an Indian summer of maturity and glory, and it was during this period that she produced the most interesting plays of her repertory, and it was certainly during this period that she received from French criticism the highest meed of serious praise. But her career was by no means over in 1903. In 1920 all the theatres in Paris closed one day, so that all the actors of Paris might see her play in Athalie; and as I write she is still producing new plays.
In what did the magic, the secret of Sarah Bernhardt consist? The mainsprings of her life and her career were indomitable determination, blent with a fine indifference to the opinion of the crowd, and a saving sense of proportion enabling her to keep a cool head and a just estimate of worldly fame amidst a tornado of praise, and sometimes in face of volleys of abuse. But as to the secret of her art, when one has said that Sarah Bernhardt worked like a slave until she attained a perfect mastery over the means at her disposal; that her attitudes and gestures were a poem in themselves; that if she played Phèdre in dumb-show it would have been worth while going to see; and that if she played Doña Sol in the dark it would have been worth a pilgrimage to hear—when one has said this, one has said nearly all that can be put into words, and one has said nothing; one has left out the most important part, and in fact everything that matters, because one has omitted her personality, a blend of gestures, look, voice, movement, intonation combined, and something else, the charm, the witchery, the spell which defy analysis.
When as Cleopatra she approached Antony, saying: “Je suis la reine d’Egypte,” the fate of empires, the dominion of the world, the lordship of Rome, could have no chance in the balance against five silver words and a smile, and we thought that the world would be well lost; and we envied Antony his ruin and his doom.
But this magic, this undefinable charm, is a thing which it is useless to write about. One must state its existence, and with a thought of pity for those who have not had the opportunity of feeling it, and still more for those who are unable to feel it, pass on. There is no more to be said. It is impossible, too, to define the peculiar thrill that has convulsed an audience when Sarah rose to an inspired height of passion. When the spark fell in these Heaven-sent moments, she seemed to be carried away, and to carry us with her in a whirlwind from a crumbling world. It is fruitless to dwell at length on this theme, but I will recall some minor occasions on which the genius of Sarah Bernhardt worked miracles.
I remember one such occasion in the autumn of 1899. The South African War had been declared, and a concert was being held at the Ritz Hotel in aid of the British wounded. It was a raw and dark November afternoon. In the drawing-room of the Ritz Hotel there was gathered together a well-dressed and singularly uninspiring crowd, depressed by the gloomy news from the front, and suffering from anticipated boredom at the thoughts of an entertainment in the afternoon. Sarah Bernhardt walked on to the platform dressed in furs, and prepared to recite “La Chanson d’Eviradnus,” by Victor Hugo, and an accompanist sat down before the piano to accompany the recitation with music. I remember my heart sinking. I felt that a recitation to music of a love-song in that Ritz drawing-room on that dark afternoon, before a decorous, dispirited crowd, mostly stolid Britishers, was inappropriate; I wished the whole entertainment would vanish; I felt uncomfortable and I pitied Sarah from the bottom of my heart. Then Sarah opened her lips and began to speak the wonderful lyric (I quote for the pleasure of writing the words):
“Si tu veux faisons un rêve,