The Morning Chronicle.
Nov. 16, 1813.
Shakespear’s tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra was brought out last night at Covent-Garden with alterations, and with considerable additions from Dryden’s All for Love. The piece seems to have been in some measure got up for the occasion, as there are several claptraps in the speeches, which admit of an obvious allusion to passing characters and events, and which were eagerly seized by the audience. Of the execution of the task which the compiler has imposed upon himself, we cannot speak in terms of much praise. Almost all the transpositions of passages which he has attempted, are, we think, injudicious and injurious to the effect. Thus the rich and poetical description of the person of Cleopatra, in the beginning of the second act—‘The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, burnt on the water,’ &c. which prepares the way for, and almost seems to justify the subsequent infatuation of Antony, is here postponed till near the catastrophe, where it answers no end, and excites little interest. It would also have been much better, if the author had contented himself merely with omitting certain passages, which he might deem objectionable to a modern audience, without encumbering either the plot or dialogue with any foreign interpolation. He might have separated the gold of Shakespear from the alloy which at times accompanies it, but he ought not to have mixed it up with the heavy tinsel of Dryden. We cannot approve of the attempt to effect ‘an amalgamation of the wonderful powers’ of these writers, who are, in the preface to the printed play, classed together as ‘two of England’s greatest poets.’ There is not the slightest comparison between them, either in kind or degree. There is all the difference between them, that can subsist between artificial and natural passion. Dryden never goes out of himself: he is a man of strong sense and powerful feeling, reasoning upon what he should feel in certain situations, and expressing himself in studied declamation, in general topics, expanding and varying the stock of his own ideas, so as to produce a tolerable resemblance to those of mankind in different situations, and building up, by the aid of logic and rhetoric—that is, by means of certain truths and images, generally known and easily applied, a stately and impressive poem. Whereas Shakespear does not suppose himself to be others, but at once becomes them. His imagination passes out of himself into them, and as it were, transmits to him their feelings and circumstances. Nothing is made out by inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis, but all comes immediately from nature—the thoughts, the images, the very words are hers. His plays can only be compared with Nature—they are unlike every thing else.
Antony and Cleopatra, though not in the first order of Shakespear’s productions, is one of the best of his historical plays. It is every where full of that pervading comprehensive power, by which the poet seemed to identify himself with time and nature. The pomp and voluptuous charms of Cleopatra are displayed in all their force and lustre, as well as the effeminate grandeur of the soul of Mark Antony. The repentance of Enobarbus after his treachery to his master, the most beautiful and affecting part of the play, is here, for some reason, entirely omitted. Nothing can have more local truth and perfect character than the passage in which Cleopatra is represented as conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence. ‘He’s speaking now, or murmuring—where’s my serpent of old Nile?’ Or again, when she says to Antony, after the defeat of Actium, and his resolution to risk another fight—‘It is my birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor, but since my Lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.’ The transition, in the present compilation, from these flashes of genius which lay open the inmost soul, to the forced mechanical style and architectural dialogue of Dryden, is abrupt and painful.
The play was got up with every advantage of external pomp and decoration. Mr. Young, as Mark Antony, exhibited a just and impressive picture of the Roman hero, struggling between the dictates of his love and honour. Mrs. M’Gibbon was a respectable and interesting representative of Octavia. Mrs. Faucit’s Cleopatra conveyed at least a reflex image of the voluptuous magnificence of the Queen of Egypt. In the ironical scenes with Antony, her manner sometimes bordered too much on the affected levity of a modern fine lady, and wanted the passion and dignity of the enamoured and haughty sovereign. In the part of Ventidius, we are sorry to say, that we think Mr. Terry was by no means successful. His manner had all the turbulent ferocity of a gloomy savage, none of the lofty firmness of the Roman Senator. The expression of the passion was every where too coarse and too physical; his muscles assumed a preternatural rigidity, and the mode in which he articulated every sentence was distinct, almost to dislocation. The house, however, seemed to be of a different opinion; for, in the several scenes with Mr. Young, he was loudly and tumultuously applauded.
ARTAXERXES
The Morning Chronicle.
Oct. 18, 1813.
Miss Stephens made her appearance again on Saturday at Covent-Garden, as Mandane, in Artaxerxes. She becomes more and more a favourite with the public. Her singing is delicious; but admired as it is, it is not yet admired as it ought to be. Oh, if she had been wafted to us from Italy!—A voice more sweet, varied, and flexible, was perhaps never heard on an English stage. In ‘The Soldier tired,’ her voice, though it might be said to cleave the very air, never once lost its sweetness and clearness. ‘Let not rage thy bosom firing’ was deservedly and rapturously encored. But if we were to express a preference, it would be to her singing the lines, ‘What was my pride is now my shame,’ &c. in which the notes seemed to fall from her lips like the liquid drops from the bending flower, and her voice fluttered and died away with the expiring conflict of passion in her bosom. We know, and have felt the divine power and impassioned tones of Catalani—the lightning of her voice and of her eye—but we doubt whether she would give the ballad style of the songs in Artaxerxes, simple but elegant, chaste but full of expression, with equal purity, taste, and tenderness.
Mr. Liston’s acting in Love, Law, and Physic, was as excellent as it always is. It is hard to say, whether the soul of Mr. Liston has passed into Mr. Lubin Log, or that of Mr. Lubin Log into Mr. Liston:—but a most wonderful congeniality and mutual good understanding there is between them. A more perfect personation we never witnessed. The happy compound of meanness, ignorance, vulgarity, and conceit, was given with the broadest effect, and with the nicest discrimination of feeling. Moliere would not have wished for a richer representative of his Gentilhomme Bourgeois. We insist the more on this point, because of all imitations we like the imitation of nature best. The marked cockneyism of pronouncing the V for the W, was the only circumstance to which we could object, and this is an interpolation on the part since we first saw it, suggested (we suppose) by friends. It is a hackneyed and cheap way of producing a laugh, unworthy of the true comic genius of Liston.