Marc Antony in Julius Cæsar,
Alexander in the Rival Queens,
Orsino in Alfonso,
Pierre in Venice Preserved.
Mr. Cooper's Antony was, as usual, a chequer work of good and bad: one beauty there was, however, which would atone for a thousand faults. We have never seen any thing in histrionic excellence to surpass, few to equal it. We mean when, in the first scene of the third act, after the assassination of Cæsar, he returned to the senate house, and, dropping on one knee, hung over the mangled body: his attitude surpassed all powers of description. Then when after gazing for a time in horror at the corse, with his hands clasped in speechless agony, he looked to heaven, as if appealing to its justice, and again turning to his murdered friend, exclaimed——
O mighty Cæsar!—--Dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils
Shrunk to this little measure?—Fare thee well.
All the conflicting passions, and excruciating feelings which Antony can be supposed to have felt on that awful occasion—astonishment, fear, suspicion, grief, tender affection, indignation, and horror seem rising in tumultuous confusion in his face, and glared and flashed in his eyes. And though Mr. Cooper less than any actor of equal merit that we recollect affects the heart in pathetic passages, we only do him justice in declaring that we have rarely known the feelings of an audience so forcibly or successively appealed to, as by him in the last words: "Fare thee well."
Through the whole of that scene Mr. Cooper was truly admirable. In the speech in which he shakes the conspirators by their bloody hands, and, like a consummate, artful politician, postpones the indulgence of his grief and indignation for the accomplishment of a higher purpose, he was not excelled by Barry himself. But in the harangue from the Rostrum he missed the mark by aiming too high. Could he forget that that celebrated speech is considered the chief test of the performer of Antony, he would, we think, deliver it well; but, intent upon making the most of it, he failed, and was laboriously erroneous and defective.
In the last speech beginning "This was the noblest Roman of them all" Mr. Cooper was censurable. If he had ever committed it to memory, he had now forgotten it, and omitting the very best lines, destroyed the whole effect of that beautiful passage. That he should be so negligent is to be deplored. For errors in judgment, deficiency in talents and powers, nay, for casual lapses themselves, candor will make allowance—but want of diligence admits of no excuse or palliation.
ALEXANDER.
In this character Mr. Cooper would extort commendation from the most churlish critic. Alexander is a compound of Hero and Lover, and in both extravagant and enthusiastic almost to madness. It is in the former of these Mr. C. chiefly displayed his powers. His voice, his person, and his manner qualified him for an impressive delineation of that portion of the character—but as a lover Mr. Cooper only serves to remind us with disadvantage to him, of actors we have seen before. In the proud and boastful exultation, the starts of anger, the quick resentment, and ardent friendship, the sudden alternation of storm and calm, and, in a word, the medley of eccentric vices and virtues which compose this gigantic offspring of Lee's bright but fevered brain, the severest criticism must concur with the public opinion, which ranks Mr. Cooper's Alexander high among the first specimens of the art exhibited in the English language. Adverting to the first scene of the second act, when irritated by Lysimachus demanding the princess Parisatis in marriage; in the swell of passion from the mild rebuke,
Lysimachus, no more—it is not well;
My word you know, was to Hephestion given,
up to the storm of rage