The sorrow and anger here are well enacted, being neither overdone nor forced. It is here at least shown that Miss Neilson can, when she pleases, express great passions with that suppressed vehemence which carries the cultivated spectator away far more than violence of voice and gesture. Such suppression, with a view to producing greater effect by leaving much to the excited imagination of the beholder, is not practiced only by the tactful histrionic artist—it pervades all art. To take a single brief example: the greatest sculptors, knowing that the chisel could produce form, not color, have shrunk from indicating the pupil of the eye in their statues, and left the eyeball smooth, because the imagination was more pleased with entire absence of the organ than with its imperfect representation. So with ultra-clamorous passion and wild melodramatic action on the stage: both are better omitted than expressed. These remarks are made here in connection with Miss Neilson's first fair displays of passionate sorrow and sorrowful passion: presently they may be applied again, less favorably, to her Juliet. In her Rosalind, however—to refer to As You Like It once more—she gives another fine example of the power of suppressed, suggestive action accompanying the expression of hot wrath. When the tyrant duke informs her that she is banished from his court, she kneels before him in supplication and begs to know the reason of his harsh decree. But the instant he intimates that her father is a traitor, and she another as his daughter, she springs to her feet, and in an attitude of intense defiance, but without a motion of her folded arms, flings back her scornful retort:
So was I when your highness took his dukedom;
So was I when your highness banished him:
Treason is not inherited, my lord;
Or, if we did derive it from our friends,
What's that to me? my father was no traitor.
Here again is a display of power without distortion or over-acting, such as must give the actress fair title to celebrity.
Let us return now to Juliet and her approaching doom. There is a sad scene in her chamber at early daybreak, for banished Romeo must leave her and haste to Mantua, lest sunrise betray him still lingering in Verona. Juliet at first lovingly detains him, then fearfully urges him to fly; then as he descends from the balcony would fain recall him, and sinks in a swoon when she finds he is really gone. The parents come in and announce their determination that she must marry Paris forthwith: finding her unwilling to comply, they leave her with fierce threats in case she continue disobedient, and even the time-serving, timid old Nurse, though aware of her marriage with Romeo, urges her to comply with their wishes. Thus left entirely to herself, Juliet determines to die rather than prove false to her husband. She hastens to the Friar who married them, and he gives her the philter, which she accepts joyfully and carries home in her bosom. Up to this point her acting is good, because it is natural. Love, grief, stern determination are here successively and skillfully developed by Miss Neilson. But in the next act, just before she drinks the philter alone in her chamber, she oversteps the modesty of nature. In her attempt to express extreme terror at the fearful visions that her excited imagination conjures up, she loses herself in a wild whirlwind of vociferation, accompanied by frantic looks and gestures. All the loud artillery of old melodrama seems at once to be unlimbered and brought into action, with so much noise and smoke that one can neither hear the signals of the bugle nor see the manœuvring of the guns. Of course, even to this part a superior actress like Miss Neilson can impart a certain dignity and interest which would be lacking in an inferior performer. She strikes a certain horror to the spectator by the very hideousness of her terror displayed. It is natural that a young girl about to be laid out alive in a tomb should be tormented with fearful imaginings; but then that young girl cherishes an all-pervading love for a living husband, whom she hopes to rejoin by means of her entombment: she expects that the gates of the mausoleum will open to admit her to life, not death, and she is urged by fear of a hateful second marriage; therefore it is unlikely—no matter what gloomy, blood-stained phantoms she may see—that she should shriek out her fears with such appalling clamor as would arouse any well-organized household, and thus defeat her prospects of success. As Miss Neilson has shown in former instances, a less violent announcement of her feelings would be far more forcible and far more natural. Besides, the actress has not yet reached the time when she wishes to depict her greatest misery: that climax is reached when she wakes in the vault and finds not only Tybalt "festering in his shroud," but her Romeo, her husband, a bloody corpse at her feet. If ever the ungovernable shriek of dying despair be allowable on the stage, it must be at such a time, when Juliet falls upon the still warm body. Even the effect of such a wild performance at the very climax and end of a tragedy may be questioned; but there can be little doubt that the great violence exerted before in describing her horrible suspicions merely, deprives the actress of power to throw increased stress into her performance as the play moves to its close, and she is confronted with a far more horrible reality.
As though she feels that her power of melodramatic declamation has been weakened, Miss Neilson in the graveyard seems to rely more on melodramatic action. And it is very melodramatic. She rises from Romeo's body, where she has flung herself, where it would be natural she should remain to kill herself, and standing at some distance from the corpse, stabs herself openly with a stage dagger, then falling, drags herself slowly, accompanied by soft music, back to the body, and there at last expires. How much more effective would this part become if more were left to the beholder's imagination! Great artists generally avoid open stabbing on the stage, as it almost invariably produces the impression of trickery. We may see the gleaming blade and the arm descending to strike the blow, but it is best not to see the weapon pretending to enter the victim's body; and this can always be avoided by proper management. When Ristori as Medea murdered her children at the base of Saturn's statue, the other actors grouped around and screened the act from the view of the audience: when the crowd opened again, the bodies were discovered lying on the steps of the pedestal. The death of Juliet, instead of bringing tears to all eyes, as Miss Neilson undoubtedly could make it do, is thus rendered ineffective by over-acting; and when she drags herself six or eight feet along the stage, prostrate and stabbed,
Oh, 'tis dreadful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she,
Beautiful, exceedingly!
On the last evening of her engagement Miss Neilson appeared in the Lady of Lyons, and after the performance recited the following epilogue, suggested by Lord Lytton's recent death:
Fair Ladies and good Sirs: Since last this play
Was acted on this stage, has passed away
Its noble author from the gaze of men,
No more, alas! to wield his facile pen.
In Knébworth's ancient park, across the sea,
Lord Lytton sleeps, but not his witchery.
The dramatist, romancer, poet, still
Can touch our hearts and captivate our will;
For laureled genius has the power to brave
Death's fell advance, and lives beyond the grave:
Bear witness, this grand audience clustered here.
Your plaudits cannot reach dead Lytton's ear,
But no more sweet libation can you pour
To Lytton's memory, on this distant shore,
Than your prolonged applause, which now proclaims,
Though the great author's gone, his fame remains.
M. M.