“Why I think we have seen enough.”
“Wait one moment, I want to look at some one I know. Am I to understand that you didn’t like the piece?” said Mr. Baxter.
“On the contrary; I like it very much. There’s nothing like a piece of tragical clap-trap in your English theatres.”
“Ay!—well!—just so! But then the piece was ‘done’ from the French.”
“The natural source of the modern British drama. But never mind the piece; it’s the acting which amuses me. Mrs. Lackaday telling young Ronsay of her boding dream, and Ronsay pitching into her with a declaration of love—you must confess that the scene would have done credit to the most wooden marionettes.”
“Yes, indeed! That scene was capital!”
“Was’nt it! The fellow stood there, like a big gun, until his turn came, and then he went off! He turned his eyes upwards, that you might have seen the whites at the distance of a mile; and he sparred with his hands, as if preparing for a set-to with the moon; and all of a sudden he stood stock still again, exactly like a gun, and the audience was fairly enraptured! And did it not strike you, that the two people had the same modulation and declamation, as a married couple of forty years’ standing, whose features have acquired the same expression, and whose limbs have fallen into the same mode of movement? At times I am inclined to believe, that the tragic actors, male and female, have been ground their trade to the tune of one and the same patent barrel-organ. Their pathos is set to music. They all delight in the same pause between the article, the adjective, and the substantive; they all make endless stops, and utter the word which follows with a kind of explosion. I presume these poor fellows try to imitate Macready.”
“That is to say,” remarked Mr. Baxter, “they caricature him.”
“But do you know whom Macready caricatures or imitates? I have read a good deal about Garrick, Kemble, and Mrs. Siddons, and I ought to swear by them, as you all do; but still I cannot help suspecting that, even in the golden period of English tragedy, ‘all was not gold that glittered.’ There is no originality. There is too much respect for antiquated traditions among the craft.”
“Certainly there is a good deal of tradition about it. But our actors are not at liberty to depart from those ancient ways; and the slightest deviation would raise a storm against the unfortunate innovator. The taste of the public demands—”