The actresses both of tragedy and genteel comedy formerly wore large hoops, and whenever they made a speech walked across the stage and changed sides with the performer who was to speak next, thus veering backwards and forwards, like a shuttlecock, during the entire performance. This custom partially prevailed in the continental theatres till very lately.
I recollect Mr. Barry, who was accounted the handsomest man of his day, and his lady (formerly Mrs. Dancer); also Mr. Digges, who used to play the Ghost in “Hamlet.” One night in doubling that part with (I believe) Polonius, Digges forgot, on appearing as the Ghost, previously to rub off the bright red paint with which his face had been daubed for the other character. A sprite with a large red nose and vermilioned cheeks was extremely novel and much applauded. There was also a famous actor who used to play the Cock that crew to call off the Ghost when Hamlet had done with him: this performer did his part so well that every body used to say he was the best Cock that ever had been heard at Smock-alley; and six or eight other gentry of the dunghill species were generally brought behind the scenes, who, on hearing him, mistook him for a brother cock, and set up their pipes all together: and thus, by the infinity of crowing at the same moment, the hour was the better marked, and the Ghost glided back to the other world in the midst of a perfect chorus of cocks—to the no small admiration of the audience.
The distinguishing merits of the old actors I cannot recollect, and indeed of many of the more modern ones I profess myself but a very moderate judge. One thing, however, I am sure of;—that, man or boy, I never admired tragedy, however well personated. Lofty feelings and strong passions may be admirably mimicked therein; but the ranting, whining, obviously premeditated starting, disciplined gesticulation, &c.—the committing of suicide in mellifluous blank verse, and rhyming when in the agonies of death,—stretch away so very far from nature, as to destroy all that illusion whereon the effect of dramatic exhibition in my mind entirely depends. Unless occasionally to witness some very celebrated new actor, I have not attended a tragedy these forty years; nor have I ever yet seen any tragedian on the British stage who made so decided an impression on my feelings as Mr. Kean, in some of his characters, has done. When I have seen other celebrated men enact the same parts, I have remained quite tranquil, however my judgment may have been satisfied: but he has made me shudder, and that, in my estimation, is the grand triumph of the tragedian’s art. I have seldom sat out the last murder scene of any play except “Tom Thumb,” or “Chrononhotonthologos,” which certainly are no burlesques on some of our standard tragedies.
In serious comedy, Kean’s Shylock and Sir Giles Overreach, seemed to me neither more nor less than actual identification of those portraitures: so much so, in fact, that I told him myself, after seeing him perform the first-mentioned part, that I could have found in my heart to knock his brains out the moment he had finished his performance.[[31]]
[31]. Nothing could be more truly disgusting than the circumstance of the most ruffianly parts of the London population, under the general appellation of a “British audience,” assuming to themselves the feelings of virtue, delicacy, decorum, morals, and modesty—for the sole purpose of driving into exile one of the first performers that ever trod the stage of England!—and that for an offence which (though abstractedly unjustifiable) a great number of the gentry, not a few of the nobility, and even members of the holy church militant, are constantly committing and daily detected in: which commission and detection by no means seem to have diminished their popularity, or caused their reception to be less cordial among saints, methodists, legal authorities, and justices of the quorum.
The virtuous sentence of transportation passed against Mr. Kean by the mob of London certainly began a new series of British morality; and the laudable societies for the “suppression of vice” may shortly be eased of a great proportion of their labours by more active moralists, (the frequenters of the upper gallery) culled from High-street St. Giles’s, the Israelites of Rag-fair, and the Houses of Correction. Hogarth has, in his print of “Evening,” immortalised the happy state of the horned citizens at his period.
Two errors, however, that great actor has in a remarkable degree: some of his pauses are so long, that he appears to have forgotten himself; and he pats his breast so often, that it really reminds one of a nurse patting her infant to keep it from squalling: it is a pity he is not aware of these imperfections!
If, however, I have been always inclined to undervalue tragedy, on the other hand, the great comic performers of my time in Ireland I perfectly recollect. I allude to the days of Ryder, O’Keeffe, Wilks, Wilder, Vandermere, &c. &c. &c.