YOUNG’S HAMLET
| The Times.] | [September 9, 1817. |
Covent-Garden Theatre.
This theatre opened last night with Hamlet, and the Miller and his Men. The chief improvement in the house seems to us to be the large mirrors at each end of the first row of boxes, which reflect the company in a brilliant perspective, and have a very magical effect. The great chandelier suspended from the top of the theatre, we should admire more, if it did not put out our eyes in looking at it; nor do we think the glare it produces any addition to the general appearance of the company or the house. The only advantage resulting from it—that of throwing the light upon the countenances of the actors from above instead of from below (which last method inverts the natural shadows of the face, and distorts the expression), is defeated by the gas lights which are still retained between the stage and the orchestra. Nor do we know how these can well be dispensed with, as it is by raising or withdrawing them that the stage is enlightened or darkened as the occasion requires it. The house was exceedingly full, and the play went off as well as could be expected. Mr. Young’s Hamlet is not his most happy or successful effort. He in a great measure imitates Mr. Kemble, and Mr. Kemble is a bad model in this part; even where he is original he is not more what he ought to be, not more like Hamlet. He declaims it very well, and rants it very well; but where is the expression of the feeling?—where the thought beyond all ordinary means of expression, wrapped up in itself as in a dim cloud, shown most by being hid, that derives its energy from rest, not from action, and is as it were audible from its very silence? Mr. Young, we allow, rehearsed several passages very well, as detached passages from a school-boy’s exercise: but he wanted keeping—the fine inflections, sudden or gradual, of the character—the unthought-of swellings of the passion—the involuntary ebbing and flowing of his idle purposes. This actor in fact executes his conception well: but then his conception is either common-place, or wrong. He has not always the judgment or the genius to pitch each passage in the right key, and in harmony with the rest. We will mention only two instances. In reciting the description of man as the noblest of creatures, ‘the paragon of animals,’ &c., Mr. Young was so vehement, that he seemed quite angry; and his sudden turning round to the players at the conclusion of the speech was exactly as if they had given him some serious offence by their ‘smiling.’ Again, he spoke the soliloquy after the scene in which the player gives the description of Pyrrhus, in a style not conveying the idea of his own melancholy and weakness as contrasted with the theatrical fury of the imaginary hero, but as if he had himself caught by mere physical infection the very fury which he describes himself to be without. This was certainly not right, but (what is perhaps better) it was applauded. Mr. Bonnell Thornton was Horatio, and appeared not to have recovered all the evening from his fright at first seeing the Ghost. His pronunciation is thick, as if he spoke with pebbles in his mouth; nor is his emphasis judicious. Mr. Egerton’s Ghost is the most substantial we ever saw. He does not look like one that has ‘peaked or pined’ long, and has by no means realized Hamlet’s wish—
‘Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.’
Miss Matthews played ‘the pretty Ophelia’ very pleasingly. She is as good an Ophelia as we have lately seen—better, we think than Miss Stephens, because she does not sing quite so well. This character ought not indeed to be in general given to a fine singer; for it has been well observed, that ‘Ophelia does not go mad because she can sing, but she sings because she has gone mad.’
DOWTON IN THE HYPOCRITE
| The Times.] | [September 19, 1817. |
Drury Lane Theatre.