“This is a sorry sight.”
Thus represented by Mr. Sheridan, this scene was perhaps the most interesting in the drama. What then must it have been when done by Garrick. A critic now before us speaking of Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard in this part, says, “His distraction of mind and agonizing horrors were finely contrasted by her apathy, tranquillity, and confidence. The beginning of the scene, after the commission of the murder, was conducted in terrifying whispers. Their looks and action supplied the place of words. The poet here gives only an outline of the consummate actor—“I have done the deed,” &c. “Didst thou not hear,” &c. The dark colouring given by Garrick to these abrupt speeches made the scene tremendous to the auditors. The wonderful expression of heart-felt horror which Garrick felt when he viewed his bloody hands, can only be conceived by those who saw him.” Murphy, who confirms this account by Davies, says that when Garrick reentered the scene with the bloody daggers in his hands, he [Murphy] was absolutely scared out of his senses. It is but fair to add, that the great dramatic censor who wrote in 1770 says “Without any exaggeration of compliment to Mr. Sheridan, we must place him in a very respectable degree of competition with Mr. Garrick in the dagger-scene; and confess a doubt whether any man ever spoke the words “this is a sorry sight,” better.
How vapid, meagre, frigid, and unaffecting has been the performance of this part since Mr. Kemble’s reign. According to his institutes, Macbeth closes the door with the cold unfeeling caution of a practised house-breaker, then listens, in order to be secure, and addresses lady Macbeth as if, in such a conflict, Macbeth could be awake to the suggestions of the lowest kind of cunning.
In his entrance to the witches in the cauldron scene, Mr. Cooper suffers the character to sink. This is one of the parts with which the audience, at one time, used to be most gratified by the powers of their great actors. The critic from whom we have cited above, adverting to Henderson’s Macbeth, which was astonishingly great, says, “In the masterly conjuration of the witches, in the cavern, so idly omitted by Kemble, he was wonderfully impressive.”
Yet there is upon the whole so little exceptionable, and such abundant beauties in Mr. Cooper’s Macbeth, that we think he ought there to plant his standard. Imagination figures to us the magnificent exhibition he might make of it, by studying from the best authorities and descriptions, the various attitudes and action of Garrick in the scenes alluded to, which are recorded not only in several books and portraits, but in the memory of many men living.
Henry iv.
Of Mr. Cooper’s Hotspur we do not wish to speak in depreciation, nor are we prepared greatly to praise it. To compensate, however, for this, to our own wishes, we confess our inability to say too much of his performance of Leon. And we feel pleasure in adding that in
Adelgitha,
he reaped a whole harvest of laurels. His Michael Ducas, being not only a masterly, but an original performance, one which we cannot reasonably hope to see excelled, and which we may in vain, perhaps, expect to see equalled.
We have a long arrear against us on account of the theatre. But we hope to discharge it in regular order and in due time. Meantime we cannot refrain from expressing by forestallment our great satisfaction at the successful run and favourable reception of “The Foundling of the Forest.” If the manager and actors are indebted to the public for the great encouragement and approbation bestowed upon that play, the public are no less indebted to the manager for his zeal, unsparing expense, and judicious arrangements in the casting of the parts, and to the actors, particularly Mr. Wood, for their excellent performance of it. But upon that subject we shall enlarge hereafter.