That night we were SWAMPED AT SEA!
——:o:——
OUR NEW ACTORS.
Three imitations of Charles Lamb’s essay on “Some of our Old Actors” were published in a Parody Competition in The World, October, 15, 1879. The first prize was awarded to the following:—
Taking up a to-days Standard—I know not by what freak of fancy I came to purchase one—I glanced at a few of the theatrical advertisements, which occupy no inconsiderable space in its columns. One of these presented the cast of parts in the Iron Chest at the Lyceum Theatre—Sir Edward Mortimer, by Henry Irving. What an ambitious sound it has! How clearly it brings before me the comely sad face—thoughtful and therefore sad—and the almost painfully-intense manner of the modern actor!
Of all the ‘Sir Edwards’ who have flourished in my time—a dismal phrase if taken aright, reader—that mad genius, the great little man with the fine Italian face and flashing eyes, Edmund Kean, is the most unforgetable. That of Irving comes next. He, since Kean, most fully realises the author’s idea of the style of man best suited to fill the part—‘a man of sable hue, and one in whose soul there’s something o’er which his melancholy sits and broods.’ But the secret of Irving’s success lies in his fine annihilation of self—a rare quality among players—combined with an originality which triumphs over tradition. There is a marked naturalness about his acting of this character, bottomed on enthusiasm. Like genius, he seems at times to have the power of kindling his own fire into any degree of intensity.
Kean, of whom Mrs. Siddons said, ‘There is too little of him to do anything;’ but of whom his landlady said, ‘There is something about Mr. Kean, ma’am, that tells me he will be a great man;’ Kean, whose exclamation, ‘My God, if I should succeed now, I think it will drive me mad!’ was prophetic, and who, when successful, cried, ‘D— Lord Essex, Mary; the pit rose at me!’—Kean tore the passion of the play to tatters.
Irving’s recenter style does not go to work so grossly. Seemingly convinced of the facts that whatever is done for effect will be seen to be done for effect, and that Nature for ever puts a premium on reality, he interests, as all may, by being persistently and intensely human. There is a consonancy, so to speak, which the green probationer in tragedy spoils by failing to exercise that repression which is an index of power.
In Hamlet, Mathias, in the remorseful rant of Eugene Aram, and the rest, Irving has proved himself histrionic to a degree that will always command intelligent recognition.
All have seen Sothern! What a Dundreary the world has in him! What witty conceits that pleasant creature has to trifle an hour or two away!—he whose ineffable fooling, if done by another, would partake of the essentially ludicrous. Then there is my beloved Toole, whose quirks never left a sting, who drolls inimitably, and whose quality is so irresistible that like a sunbeam, he exists but to cheer—a touching function, reader. My beloved Toole is, in his walk, in no way inferior.