As to the regular church-going peasantry, there can be no great difference as to religious light and feelings between them and their forefathers in the time of Popery, when the service was performed in Latin, as it is at present in most foreign countries. The only religious people (except as a matter of outward shew and ceremony) are sectaries; for the instant religion becomes a subject for serious thought and private reflection, it produces differences of opinion, which branch out into as many speculative fancies and forms of worship, as there are differences of temper or accidents of education.[[35]] This, however, is the exception, not the rule, in the present state of things—now that zeal is no longer kindled at the fires of persecution, and that Acts of Uniformity no longer throw the whole country into a ferment of opposition. The missionaries and fanatics sometimes indeed set up a methodist chapel, where the staid inhabitants go in an evening to spite the parson of the parish, or to while away an hour or so; or perhaps a melancholy mechanic has a serious call and holds forth, or a pining spinster, moved by the spirit to listen to him—
‘Anon as patient as the female dove,
The whilst her golden couplets are disclos’d,
Awhile sits drooping:’
but the younger and healthier sort make a sport of it as of any other fantastical innovation; throw owls and skeletons of kites and carrion crows into the place of worship; and make a violent noise all the time the parson is preaching, to drown the nasal twang of evangelical glad-tidings, and the comfortable groans of the faithful.—All this while there is no end of the bastard-getting and swearing: and a girl, after having had three or four children by the same man, or by different men (as it happens), and who is as big as she can tumble again, is at length asked in church, without much scandal or offence to the community. It is a new topic for the village, and is excused on that account. It is, besides, an evidence quashed; and whatever others may take it into their heads to do, she need not talk. Liberality flourishes; a good example is set; and the species is propagated with as little trouble and formality as possible. The parson gets something by the christening, and the apothecary has a finger in the pie. This is a state of things which ought to be reformed—but how or when?
MR. MACREADY’S MACBETH.
| The Examiner.] | [June 25, 1820. |
Mr. Macready’s Macbeth, which he had for his benefit, and which he has played once or twice since, is a judicious and spirited performance. But we are not in the number of those who think it his finest character. Sensibility, not imagination, is his forte. Natural expression, human feeling, seems to woo him like a bride; but the ideal and preternatural beckon him only at a distance and mock his embraces. He sees no dim, portentous visions in his mind’s eye; his acting has no shadowy landscape back-ground to surround it; he is not waited on by spirits of the deep or of the air; neither fate nor metaphysical aid are in league with him; he is prompter to himself, and treads within the circle of the human heart. The machinery in Macbeth is so far lost upon him: there is no secret correspondence between him and the Weird Sisters. The poet has put a fruitless sceptre in his hand,—a curtain is between him and the ‘air-drawn dagger with its gouts of blood’; he does not cower under the traditions of the age, or startle at ‘thick-coming fancies.’ He is more like a man debating the reality, or questioning the power of the grotesque and unimaginable forms that hover round him, than one hurried away by his credulous hopes, or shrinking from intolerable fears. There is not a weight of superstitious terror loading the atmosphere and hanging over the stage when Mr. Macready plays the part. He has cast the cumbrous slough of Gothic tragedy, and comes out a mere modern, agitated by common means and intelligible motives. The preternatural agency is no more than an accompaniment, the pretended occasion, not the indispensable and all-powerful cause. It appears to us then, that this excellent and able actor, struck short of the higher and imaginative part of the character, and consequently was deficient in the human passion, which is the mighty appendage to it. We thought Mr. Macready in a manner conscious of this want of entire possession of the character. He was looking out for new readings, transposing attitudes and stage effects, trying substitutes and experiments, studying passages instead of reciting them, rehearsing Macbeth, not being it. His performance of it was critical and fastidious: you would say that he was considering how he should act the part, so as to avoid certain errors or produce certain effects—not that he ever flung himself into the subject, and swam to shore, safe from carping objection, and above the reach of all praise. Mr. Macready does not often imitate other actors, but he endeavours not to imitate them, and that’s almost as bad. He should think of nothing but his part, and rely on nothing but his own powers. Singularity is not excellence. If to follow in the track of others shews a servile genius and pitiful ambition, neither is it right to go out of the strait road merely because others travel in it—‘but still to follow nature is the rule’—John Kemble was the best Macbeth (upon the whole) that we have seen. There was a stiff, horror-stricken stateliness in his person and manner, like a man bearing up against supernal influences; and a bewildered distraction, a perplexity and at the same time a rigidity of purpose, like one who had been stunned by a blow from fate. Mr. Kean is great only in one scene, that after the murder of Duncan; his acting also consists only in the direct embodying of human passion, and is entirely ‘docked and curtailed’ of the sweeping train of poetical imagination. On the evening we saw Mr. Macready’s Macbeth Mrs. Faucit played Lady Macbeth, and acted up to that arduous part with great spirit and self-possession; and Mr. Terry was the representative of Macduff. The only fault of this gentleman’s acting is its slowness. The words fall from his lips, like pendent drops from icicles. A speech, as he gives it, is equal to ‘twa lang Scotch miles.’ This not only causes a stagnation and heaviness in the sentiments, but often cuts the sense in two. Thus in the exclamation which Macduff utters on hearing of the slaughter of his children, ‘Oh Hell-Kite, all?’ Mr. Terry paused at the hyphen, as if to take time to think, and by this means made it like an apostrophe to ‘Hell,’ adding the other syllable of the word, which determined the meaning and direction of his thoughts, afterwards. Mr. Egerton as usual played Banquo, and makes as solid a Ghost as we would wish to encounter of a winter’s eve.
David Rizzio we have not been able to get a peep at: but a friend whispered us that it was poor, and we see it is praised in the New Times!
On Friday Miss Stephens had a bumper for her benefit. The entertainments were the Lord of the Manor, a Concert, and the Libertine. In the first, Mr. Duruset from indisposition, and after making one feeble effort, omitted the songs, by the indulgence of the audience; after that, we do not see why he should be required to go through the rest of the part, for he has not ‘a speaking face.’ Jones’s Mr. Contrast is a striking, fulsome fop. But he makes foppery not only an object of laughter, but of disgust; and perhaps this is going beyond the mark intended. We would recommend to our readers to go and see Mr. Liston’s Moll Flagon by all means. It is irresistible. We may say of it with the poet—