it is time to stop their ominous flight, and send them back to that life of sloth and pride, where the poison of dull-eyed envy preys only upon itself.
There was a want of proper spirit and gallantry shown the other day in the critical reception of Mr. Booth’s Lear. It was not thought that he would make any thing of it, and therefore it was not said that he did. Because he was on his trial, he was not to have a hearing. Because he was not ‘the most favoured actor of the day,’ he was to have no favour at all shown him. Fiat justitia, ruat cælum. When Mr. Booth does nothing but make wry faces and odd harsh noises in a character, in imitation of Mr. Kean, we will say, that he does it ill: but when he plays it as he did Lear, we will say that he does it not ill, but well, and that in prejudging him, we have been mistaken. It does not lessen Mr. Macready in our opinion, that (as we understand) he refused this character in obstinate despair of doing it justice: but if this was a proof of modesty and judgment in him, it certainly ought to raise our idea of Mr. Booth’s talents, that he was able to get through it in the way he did. Where failure would have been so fatal and so marked, it was a sufficient triumph even to a proud ambition not to fail. If the part in our adventurous actor’s hands wanted something of the breadth and majesty of Lear, it did not want for life or spirit, or a human interest. If he did not give the torrent and whirlwind of the passion, he had plenty of its gusts and flaws. Without his crown, or even the faded image of one, circling his brow, he bustled about the stage with a restlessness and impetuosity of feeling that kept expectation continually awake and gratified the attention which had been so excited. There was no feebleness, and no vulgarity in any part of Mr. Booth’s acting, but it was animated, vigorous, and pathetic throughout. The audience, we are sure, the first night, thought and felt as we did. In the exclamation, ‘I am every inch a king,’ his energy rose to dignity: again, in his reiteration of Gloucester’s epithet of ‘the fiery Duke,’ applied to his son-in-law, his manifest impatience, and increasing irritability, showed that Mr. Booth had felt the full force of that beautiful passage in which his own half-conscious infirmity is played off so finely on the ill-fated old king; and in the scenes with Edgar as mad Tom, where his wits begin to unsettle, the distraction and alienation of his mind, wandering from its own thoughts to catch hold of a clue less painful, and yet broken and entangled like them, were pourtrayed with equal skill and delicacy. In the more set speeches, as in the curse on his daughters, Mr. Booth, we thought, comparatively failed; but where action was to come in aid of the sentiment and point the meaning, he was almost uniformly correct and impressive. In fact, it is only when the poet’s language is explained by the comment of gesture or some sudden change of look, or situation—that is, when tragedy is enlivened by pantomime, that it becomes intelligible to the greater part of the audience; and we do not see how an actor can be supposed to do those things well which are almost abstractions in his art, and in which he is not encouraged by the sympathy or corrected by the judgment of his hearers. We observed, that the finest touches of thought, of poetry and nature in this play, which were not set off by the accompaniment of show and bustle, passed in profound silence, and without the smallest notice. The sublimity of repose is one in which our play-house frequenters do not seem to be proficients, and the players may be excused, if they do not always cultivate (as we might wish) this occult and mysterious branch of their profession. Of Mr. C. Kemble’s Edgar we cannot speak in terms of too high praise. In the supposed mad-scenes, his conception and delivery of the part excited the warmest approbation; his fine face and figure admirably relieved the horror of the situations; and, whenever we see Mad Tom played (which is not often), we should wish to see it played by him. The rest of the play was very respectably got up, and all we could object to was the interspersion of the love-scenes by Tate. The happy ending, and the triumph and dotage of the poor old king in repeating again and again, ‘Cordelia’s Queen, Cordelia’s Queen,’ were perhaps allowable concessions to the feelings of the audience.
Henri Quatre.—There are two lines in a modern poem which we often repeat to ourselves—
’Twas Lancelot of the Lake, a bright romance,
That like a trumpet made young spirits dance:’
and we were much disposed to apply them to this romantic, light and elegant drama. We prophesy that the Managers and the public have a splendid career before them for the season. This will do. We saw it in the first opening scene, a view near Paris, the clearest, the most sparkling, the most vivid we ever saw. ‘Ah! brilliant land! ah! sunny, cloudless skies! Not all the ink, that has been shed to blacken thee, can blot thy shining face! Not all the blood that has been spilt to enslave thee can choke up thy living breath!’ If we can thus be transported to another and a gayer region, and made to drink the warmth and lustre of another climate by the painter’s magic art, what can we desire more?—What the pencil had in this case done, the poet’s pen did not undo: what the author had written, the actors did not spoil. They do order these things well at Covent Garden. We never saw a piece better got up in all its parts, nor one more adapted to the taste of the town in scenery, in dresses, in songs, in passing allusions, in popular sentiments; nor one that went off with less ennui, or with more continual bursts of flattering applause. The writing (as far as it was French) was, as might be expected, lively and sentimental: as far as we could perceive Mr. Morton to have had a hand in it, it consisted of strong touches of obvious nature, and showed a perfect understanding with the actors and the audience. The characters were strikingly conceived, and admirably sustained. Mr. Macready’s Henri Quatre was (we think) his very happiest effort. There was an originality, a raciness in it that hit our palates. With something, nay, with much of the stiffness and abruptness of one of ‘the invincible knights of old,’ used to march in rusty armour, there was at the same time the ease, the grace and gallantry of an accomplished courtier. ‘He is ten times handsomer,’ says the fair Jocrisse, ‘than Uncle Jervais,’ and according to her husband’s comment, ‘Handsome is that handsome does.’ There was a spirit of kindness blended with authority in his tones and in his actions; he was humane, and yet a king and a soldier. Some of the sentiments put into his mouth were worthy of the attention of princes, if they had time for serious reflection, and called forth loud and repeated plaudits. Henry professed his desire to reign by love not fear in the hearts of his subjects; and quoted a saying of his mother’s on the mode of effecting this purpose, that ‘a pound of honey would draw more flies than a ton of vinegar.’ We seemed suddenly and unaccountably carried back to the heroic times of camps and courts, in the company of this good-natured, high spirited, old fashioned monarch, and his favourite counsellor, Sully, a pattern of sound thinking and plain-speaking, who was characteristically represented by Mr. Egerton. It is his business to prevent the king from doing anything wrong,—‘no sinecure,’ as he honestly declares. We like these bitter jests; and we found that others were of our thinking, though they flew about as thick as hail. We should have thought this piece more likely to have been imported from Spain than France, at the present crisis of affairs. At any rate, Mr. Morton has given a truly English version of it. Mr. Emery played a blunt, rough old soldier (Moustache,) well, who is afterwards appointed keeper of a prison—‘Because,’ he says to his sovereign, ‘you think me a savage.’ ‘No!’ (is the answer,) ‘but because with the courage and rough outside of a lion you have the heart of a man.’ The scenes in which Charles Kemble, as Eugene de Biron, is committed to his charge under sentence of death—is liberated by him to perform a last act of friendship and of affection, and returns on his parole of honour to meet his fate (from which however he is delivered by having, in his night’s adventure, saved the lives of Henri and Sully, who had been attacked by assassins in a forest hard by) are among the most interesting of the story. We do not enter into the details of the plot, because we hope all our readers will go to see this piece, and it is anticipating a pleasure to come. Besides, we are bad hands at getting up a plot, and should on that account make but indifferent ministers of state. But the whole was delightful. Miss M. Tree was delightful as the village representative of the fair Gabrielle; Mr. Liston was happy as the husband of Jocrisse, ‘whom the king had deigned to salute,’ and to put a diamond ring on her finger, which was to introduce them to the Louvre in their wooden shoes on his coronation day.—Miss Stephens sung sweetly; Mr. Fawcett was at home in the old general; Irish Johnstone blundered in his own beautiful brogue, and every thing was as it should be. We like things to succeed in this manner: that they do not always do so, is assuredly no fault of ours.
L.
No. VI
[June, 1820.
Mr. Kean’s Lear.—We need not say how much our expectations had been previously excited to see Mr. Kean in this character, and we are sorry to be obliged to add, that they were very considerably disappointed. We had hoped to witness something of the same effect produced upon an audience that Garrick is reported to have done in the part, which made Dr. Johnson resolve never to see him repeat it—the impression was so terrific and overwhelming. If we should make the same rash vow never to see Mr. Kean’s Lear again, it would not be from the intensity and excess, but from the deficiency and desultoriness of the interest excited. To give some idea of the manner in which this character might, and ought to be, made to seize upon the feelings of an audience, we have heard it mentioned, that once, when Garrick was in the middle of the mad-scene, his crown of straw came off, which circumstance, though it would have been fatal to a common actor, did not produce the smallest interruption, or even notice in the house. On another occasion, while he was kneeling to repeat the curse, the first row in the pit stood up in order to see him better; the second row, not willing to lose the precious moments by remonstrating, stood up too; and so, by a tacit movement, the entire pit rose to hear the withering imprecation, while the whole passed in such cautious silence, that you might have heard a pin drop. John Kemble (that old campaigner) was also very great in the curse: so we have heard, from very good authorities; and we put implicit faith in them.—What led us to look for the greatest things from Mr. Kean in the present instance, was his own opinion, on which we have a strong reliance. It was always his favourite part. We have understood he has been heard to say, that ‘he was very much obliged to the London audiences for the good opinion they had hitherto expressed of him, but that when they came to see him over the dead body of Cordelia, they would have quite a different notion of the matter.’ As it happens, they have not yet had an opportunity of seeing him over the dead body of Cordelia: for, after all, our versatile Manager has acted Tate’s Lear instead of Shakspear’s: and it was suggested, that perhaps Mr. Kean played the whole ill out of spite, as he could not have it his own way—a hint to which we lent a willing ear, for we would rather think Mr. Kean the most spiteful man, than not the best actor, in the world! The impression, however, made on our minds was, that, instead of its being his master-piece, he was to seek in many parts of the character;—that the general conception was often perverse, or feeble; and that there were only two or three places where he could be said to electrify the house. It is altogether inferior to his Othello. Yet, if he had even played it equal to that, all we could have said of Mr. Kean would have been that he was a very wonderful man;—and such we certainly think him as it is. Into the bursts, and starts, and torrent of the passion in Othello, this excellent actor appeared to have flung himself completely: there was all the fitful fever of the blood, the jealous madness of the brain: his heart seemed to bleed with anguish, while his tongue dropped broken, imperfect accents of woe; but there is something (we don’t know how) in the gigantic, outspread sorrows of Lear, that seems to elude his grasp, and baffle his attempts at comprehension. The passion in Othello pours along, so to speak, like a river, torments itself in restless eddies, or is hurled from its dizzy height, like a sounding cataract. That in Lear is more like a sea, swelling, chafing, raging, without bound, without hope, without beacon, or anchor. Torn from the hold of his affections and fixed purposes, he floats a mighty wreck in the wide world of sorrows. Othello’s causes of complaint are more distinct and pointed, and he has a desperate, a maddening remedy for them in his revenge. But Lear’s injuries are without provocation, and admit of no alleviation or atonement. They are strange, bewildering, overwhelming: they wrench asunder, and stun the whole frame: they ‘accumulate horrors on horror’s head,’ and yet leave the mind impotent of resources, cut off, proscribed, anathematised from the common hope of good to itself, or ill to others—amazed at its own situation, but unable to avert it, scarce daring to look at, or to weep over it. The action of the mind, however, under this load of disabling circumstances, is brought out in the play in the most masterly and triumphant manner: it staggers under them, but it does not yield. The character is cemented of human strength and human weaknesses (the firmer for the mixture):—abandoned of fortune, of nature, of reason, and without any energy of purpose, or power of action left,—with the grounds of all hope and comfort failing under it,—but sustained, reared to a majestic height out of the yawning abyss, by the force of the affections, the imagination, and the cords of the human heart—it stands a proud monument, in the gap of nature, over barbarous cruelty and filial ingratitude. We had thought that Mr. Kean would take possession of this time-worn, venerable figure, ‘that has outlasted a thousand storms, a thousand winters,’ and, like the gods of old, when their oracles were about to speak, shake it with present inspiration:—that he would set up a living copy of it on the stage: but he failed, either from insurmountable difficulties, or from his own sense of the magnitude of the undertaking. There are pieces of ancient granite that turn the edge of any modern chisel: so perhaps the genius of no living actor can be expected to cope with Lear. Mr. Kean chipped off a bit of the character here and there: but he did not pierce the solid substance, nor move the entire mass.—Indeed, he did not go the right way about it. He was too violent at first, and too tame afterwards. He sunk from unmixed rage to mere dotage. Thus (to leave this general description, and come to particulars) he made the well-known curse a piece of downright rant. He ‘tore it to tatters, to very rags,’ and made it, from beginning to end, an explosion of ungovernable physical rage, without solemnity, or elevation. Here it is; and let the reader judge for himself whether it should be so served.