“I never expressed such an opinion. Just now we were talking of tragic acting; but as for your comic actors, they are exquisite. No one can equal Matthews at the Lyceum or Mrs. Keeley. There you have natural freshness, energy, lightness, and refinement. Our German comic plays and actors are nothing to it. You see I can be impartial, and I will plainly tell you what my impressions are. When I saw ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Sadler’s-wells, I had to bite my lips to keep myself from laughing. Juliet, instead of proceeding from an Italian nunnery, appeared fresh from a finishing school at Brompton; the orthopedical stays and the back-board were not to be mistaken. And as for Romeo, so great was my confidence in him, that I would, without the least hesitation, have handed an express-train over to his care; he was so cool, sharp, and collected. It was just the same with Mercutio, Tybalt, and Friar Lawrence. Not that they were deficient in mimic and vocal power—no such thing! but because they conducted themselves in a frantic manner, and because they got up and down the scale of human sounds from a whisper to a roar. For the very reason that they did all this, I came to the conclusion that there is no tragic passion in these gentlemen. I saw them afterwards in comedies, and they delighted me. The broader the comedy, the nearer it approaches to the farce, the more natural does the acting appear to me. Dont laugh at me; but I never enjoyed anything so much as I did the last year’s Christmas pantomime at Drury-lane. There you have plastic jokes, madness with method, edifying nonsense—a kaleidoscope for aged children.”
“How you go on!” said Mr. Baxter. “Don’t you know that those pantomimes, for the most part, are nothing but a tissue of stale jokes taken at random from the last volume of Punch?”
“No matter! The jokes, however stale, strike one as new by dint of a clever arrangement and a judicious intermixture of all the follies of the season. It is not an easy matter, let me tell you, to translate a printed witticism into an intelligible and striking tableau. Quick and dreamlike as the scenic changes are, not a single allusion can escape the audience: they are all executed in a lapidary style. Life in London garrets and streets, shops and cellars, shown up in a sort of carnival procession—surely there is a good deal of art in that! Hogarth might have sketched this sort of thing with a drop or so more of gall; but I doubt whether he could have surpassed it in striking truthfulness. Besides I prefer seeing such scenes acted to seeing them engraved. These are the plays to bring out the mechanical excellence of your countrymen. Your young gentleman appears stiff and awkward enough in the drawing-room. But your clown on the stage is the beau ideal of mercurial agility. The fellow has patent steel springs in every one of his joints. Our own misnamed ‘English riders’ are mere lay-figures if compared to the clowns which overleap one another in your Christmas pantomimes. There is but one dark spot in their representations, namely, the ballet. To see twenty or thirty female Englishmen of full regulation-size dancing a ballet, is an overpowering luxury. To this day I protest that nothing was farther from the thoughts of those worthy virgins than the performance of a dance, but that their elongated legs were so many geometrical instruments moving about with a view to the practical demonstration of the various problems in Euclid. English ladies, as all the world knows, are madly fond of the higher branches of abstract science.”
“You are a rabid critic, and a rabid critic you will remain to the end of your days,” said Mr. Baxter. “You Germans cannot get on without classifications and generalisations. For instance, you think proper to imagine a profound philosophy in the Christmas pantomimes, which, after all, are acted for the special delight of the infant population. And you dare to doubt the genius of Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Siddons, merely because you know that a few bad actors are now and then in the habit of murdering Shakespeare. However, it is impossible to exhaust the subject of the difference between English and German taste. Our tragedy is as strongly pronounced as our comedy, and what you blame in the former, you like in the latter. I am free to confess that our actors overdo their parts; but they do not overdo them to such an extent as you fancy, accustomed as you are to the contemplative, monological pathos of the German tragedians. Possibly our heroes would be all the better for a gentler roar, but certainly it cannot be said of them, that their acting is soporific. But let us leave this wordy theme! There is no denying it, that the best days of the stage are over, here and in Germany: with you from the want of substance, air, and elbow-room; with us, from an excess of overwhelming practical activity. Besides there are many other causes which it is impossible to enumerate. There is but one point to which I would call your attention; and I would have you mind it whenever you make comparisons. With us, dramatic art has never been idolised as in Germany; we have never considered it as an institution for national education and an academy of ethics. Within the last few years only this view has been adopted and enforced by some writers. I can understand what your stage has been to you since the days of Lessing, and the losses and wants for which in Germany it was an indemnification. But you began at the wrong end. The drama is the flower of national life; you sought to convert it into its seed and root. On some occasions you have even gone the length of considering it the fruit and the object of national life. You cared more for the ideal reflection than for the real action which was to be reflected. It has often made me smile to hear your æsthetical patriots clamour for a German fleet or a German emperor, for no other reason but because these two ‘properties’ would do an immense deal of good to the drama; and I have also smiled when listening to their lamentations that Germany can never be great and powerful, since her national stage is sustained by the leavings of the French theatres. Our managers import loads of French farces and vaudevilles, and the papers show them up for it now and then; but no one believes our nationality in danger. As well might we fear the most serious consequences to the power of England, from the importation of French milliners, stays, and Culs de Paris.”
Mr. Baxter made a short pause, and, since Dr. Keif would not speak, he continued his oration pro domo.
“Let me tell you, that there are thousands of Englishmen in town and country, who quote Shakespere as they do the Bible, but they know nothing whatever of the stage; and there are patrons of the stage, to whom you may demonstrate the decline of that institution, without eliciting one word of reproval against the Foreign Office. In Germany, the stage is petted and subsidised by a score or so of royal and princely personages. English theatres are speculations, as all other commercial undertakings; they have nothing to rely on but the support of the public. The Queen takes a box at the Princess’s, or at Covent Garden; no one will ever expect her to do more for the ‘national drama,’ or the Italian opera. The very boards which yesterday witnessed the death struggles of Desdemona and the jealousy of the Moor, are this evening given up to Franconi or a band of Indian jugglers. If any one here were to lament this ‘desecration of the Temple of the Muses,’ he would simply make himself ridiculous. The dog of Aubrey, which excited Göthe’s and Schiller’s indignation, will be a welcome guest on any London stage, so it pays. But for all that, the public know how to distinguish between poesy and clap-trap. Our actors take their position in society as gentlemen, though they have not, as your actors, the ‘position of public functionaries.’ Our dramatic authors do not indulge in oraculous preface, because they do not think it absolutely necessary that they should be prophets, while they do think it absolutely necessary to be entertaining. A poetical entertainment ennobles; poesy which is not entertaining falls short of its mark, and remains without effect. I am free to confess, that Sheridan and Otway remain unsurpassed in their respective lines. Shelley’s Beatrice, though unfit for the stage, has indication of dramatic genius of a high order; but one swallow does not make a summer. Our critics regret this; but they do not lament it as a national misfortune—they do not demonstrate from this fact the spiritual and moral decline of the nation. They are aware that dramatic productiveness is not to be had to order, that guano and artificial tendencies cannot raise a crop; they have been content with the works of Cumberland, Knowles, Bulwer, D. Jerrold, and Tom Taylor, without measuring their productions by the standard of the most renowned precedents, or abusing each individual author because he is not a Shakespeare. And for all that, Old England flourishes in power and glory. But stop, we have lost our way, and got into Seven Dials, which is, after all, but a worse edition of Drury-lane. Let us go back. The ‘Witches’ Sabbath’ must by this time be at its height, and we may as well look at what is going on.”
They picked their way through a very narrow and dark lane.
Dr. Keif heaved a deep sigh and said—“I see you have stored up a lecture for my benefit. Your sallies and innuendoes go right against the rotten side of our German hot-house life; but—but surely you must admit, that the stage is an indication of the spirit and taste of society; and certainly you are the last man whom I could have expected to deliver this matter-of-fact sermon, to which I have just had—politeness compels me to call it—the pleasure of listening. My Germanic opposition has driven you into the ranks of the Manchester men. But surely you cannot possibly have the face to tell me, that the one-sided, utilitarian tendencies of England are beautiful.”
“Beautiful,” replied Mr. Baxter, with a sigh. “Did I call them beautiful? Surely not; but necessity, my dear Doctor, is a mighty goddess. We, too, who are dilettanti, would be better off for ourselves and others, if we had learnt something of agriculture, political economy, or some substantial profession or trade. This remark applies to nations also. What’s the use of going in pursuit of ‘the Beautiful’ and ‘the Great,’ when you are at a loss how to clothe Beauty and shelter Greatness. Pray be candid for this once. Was it not the case of the German Titans, when a mere chance, an earthquake, flung the keys of the house within their reach? Were they not, most of them, wilful dreamers, dabblers in politics and poetry—men who judged the progress of events after its picturesque or dramatic effect; and who, though brimful with schemes for the improvement of the ‘people,’ and overflowing with sympathy for the sufferings of the same ‘people,’ had not the least idea how to set about gaining an army, improving the finances, establishing the good cause on a basis of material interests, saving time, and making the most of the favour of the moment? These matter-of-fact virtues and abilities were everywhere wanting. And now what has been the result for the Beautiful and the Great?”
“But Sir,” said Dr. Keif, “I protest your words make me giddy. Are you my old friend Baxter? You speak in the spirit of the Quaker Bright, and Cobden of plausible reputation. Do you really believe that the German revolution made fiasco, because the Germans read Schiller and Göthe; and that England is great and powerful, only because a sense for art and good taste is confined to the favoured few, while the life of your middle classes is spread over the dead level of the flattest materialism imaginable?”