Chapter XXIV: Preface (15)

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.

‘Hear, Nature, hear; dear goddess, hear a father!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful:
Into her womb convey sterility,
Dry up in her the organs of increase,
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen, that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatur’d torment to her:
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel,
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child.’

Now this should not certainly be spoken in a fit of drunken choler,
without any ‘compunctious visitings of nature,’ without any
relentings of tenderness, as if it was a mere speech of hate,
directed against a person to whom he had the most rooted and
unalterable aversion. The very bitterness of the imprecations is
prompted by, and turns upon, an allusion to the fondest
recollections: it is an excess of indignation, but that indignation,
from the depth of its source, conjures up the dearest images of
love: it is from these that the brimming cup of anguish overflows;
and the voice, in going over them, should falter, and be choked with
other feelings besides anger. The curse in Lear should not be
_scolded_, but recited as a Hymn to the Penates! Lear is not a
Timon. From the action and attitude into which Mr. Kean put himself
to repeat this passage, we had augured a different result. He threw
himself on his knees; lifted up his arms like withered stumps; threw
his head quite back, and in that position, as if severed from all
that held him to society, breathed a heart-struck prayer, like the
figure of a man obtruncated!—It was the only moment worthy of
himself, and of the character.

In the former part of the scene, where Lear, in answer to the cool
didactic reasoning of Gonerill, asks, ‘Are you our daughter?’ &c.,
Mr. Kean, we thought, failed from a contrary defect. The suppression
of passion should not amount to immobility: that intensity of
feeling of which the slightest intimation is supposed to convey
everything, should not seem to convey nothing. There is a difference
between ordinary familiarity and the _sublime_ of familiarity. The
mind may be staggered by a blow too great for it to bear, and may
not recover itself for a moment or two; but this state of suspense
of its faculties, ‘like a phantasma, or a hideous dream,’ should not
assume the appearance of indifference, or _still-life_. We do not
think Mr. Kean kept this distinction (though it is one in which he
is often very happy) sufficiently marked in the foregoing question
to his daughter, nor in the speech which follows immediately after,
as a confirmation of the same sentiment of incredulity and surprise.

‘Does any here know me? This is not Lear:
Does Lear walk thus? speak thus? where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied—Ha! waking—’tis not so;
Who is it that can tell me who I am?
Lear’s shadow? I would learn; for by the marks
Of sovereignty, of knowledge, and of reason,
I should be false persuaded I had daughters.
Your name, fair gentlewoman?’—

These fearful interrogatories, which stand ready to start away on
the brink of madness, should not certainly be asked like a common
question, nor a dry sarcasm. If Mr. Kean did not speak them so, we
beg his pardon.—In what comes after this, in the apostrophe to
Ingratitude, in the sudden call for his horses, in the defence of
the character of his train as ‘men of choice and rarest parts,’ and
in the recurrence to Cordelia’s ‘most small fault,’ there are plenty
of stops to play upon, all the varieties of agony, of anger and
impatience, of asserted dignity and tender regret—Mr. Kean struck
but two notes all through, the highest and the lowest.

This scene of Lear with Gonerill, in the first act, is only to be
paralleled by the doubly terrific one between him and Regan and
Gonerill in the second act. To call it a decided failure would be
saying what we do not think: to call it a splendid success would be
saying so no less. Mr. Kean did not appear to us to set his back
fairly to his task, or to trust implicitly to his author, but to be
trying experiments upon the audience, and waiting to see the result.
We never saw this daring actor want confidence before, but he seemed
to cower and hesitate before the public eye in the present instance,
and to be looking out for the effect of what he did, while he was
doing it. In the ironical remonstrance to Regan, for example:

‘Dear daughter, I confess that I am old—
Age is unnecessary, &c.’

he might be said to be waiting for the report of the House to know
how low he should bend his knee in mimic reverence, how far he
should sink his voice into the tones of feebleness, despondency, and
mendicancy. But, if ever, it was upon _this_ occasion that he ought
to have raised himself above criticism, and sat enthroned (in the
towering contemplations of his own mind) with Genius and Nature.
They alone (and not the critic’s eye, nor the tumultuous voices of
the pit) are the true judges of Lear! If he had trusted only to
these, his own counsellors and bosom friends, we see no limit to the
effect he might have produced. But he did not give any particular
effect to the exclamation—

——‘Beloved Regan,
Thy sister’s naught: oh, Regan, she hath tied
Sharp-tooth’d unkindness, like a vulture here:’

nor to the assurance that he will not return to her again—

‘Never, Regan:
She hath abated me of half my train,
Look’d black upon me; struck me with her tongue,
Most serpent-like, upon the very heart.
All the stored vengeances of heaven fall
On her ingrateful top!’

nor to the description of his two daughters’ looks—

——‘Her eyes are fierce; but thine
Do comfort, and not burn:’

nor to that last sublime appeal to the heavens on seeing Gonerill
approach—

‘Oh, heav’ns!
If you do love old men, if your sweet sway
Hallow obedience, if yourselves are old,
Make it your cause, send down, and take my part.
Art not asham’d to look upon this beard?
Oh, Regan, will you take her by the hand?’

One would think there are tones, and looks, and gestures, answerable
to these words, to thrill and harrow up the thoughts, to ‘appal the
guilty, and make mad the free,’ or that might ‘create a soul under
the ribs of death!’ But we did not see, or hear them. It was Mr.
Kean’s business to furnish them: it would have been ours to feel
them, if he had! It is not enough that Lear’s crosses and
perplexities are expressed by single strokes. There should be an
agglomeration of horrors, closing him in like a phalanx. His speech
should be thick with the fulness of his agony. His face should, as
it were, encrust and stiffen into amazement at his multiplied
afflictions. A single image of ruin is nothing—there should be a
growing desolation all around him. His wrongs should seem enlarged
tenfold through the solid atmosphere of his despair—his thoughts
should be vast and lucid, like the sun when he declines—He should be
‘a huge dumb heap’ of woe! The most that Mr. Kean did was to make
some single hits here and there; but these did not tell, because
they were separated from the main body and movement of the passion.
They might be compared to interlineations of the character, rather
than parts of the text. In the sudden reiteration of the
epithet—‘_fiery_ quality of the Duke,’ applied to Cornwall by
Gloucester, at which his jealousy blazes out to extravagance, we
thought Mr. Kean feeble and indecisive: but in breaking away at the
conclusion of the scene, ‘I will do such things: what they are, yet
I know not; but they shall be the terrors of the earth,’—he made one
of those tremendous bursts of energy and grandeur, which shed a
redeeming glory round every character he plays.

Mr. Kean’s performance of the remainder of the character, when the
king’s intellects begin to fail him, and are, at last, quite
disordered, was curious and quaint, rather than impressive or
natural. There appeared a degree of perversity in all this—a
determination to give the passages in a way in which nobody else
would give them, and in which nobody else would expect them to be
given. But singularity is not always excellence. Why, for instance,
should our actor lower his voice in the soliloquy in the third act,
‘Blow winds, and crack your cheeks,’ &c. in which the tumult of
Lear’s thoughts, and the extravagance of his expressions, seem
almost contending with the violence of the storm? We can conceive no
reason but that it was contrary to the practice of most actors
hitherto. Mr. Rae’s manner of mouthing the passage would have been
‘more germane to the matter.’ In asking his companion—

‘How dost, my boy? Art cold?
I’m cold myself’——

there was a shrinking of the frame, and a chill glance of the eye,
like the shivering of an ague-fit: but no other feeling surmounted
the physical expression. On meeting with Edgar, as Mad Tom, Lear
wildly exclaims, with infinite beauty and pathos, ‘Didst thou give
all to thy daughters, and art thou come to this?’ And again,
presently after, he repeats, ‘What, have his daughters brought him
to this pass? Couldst thou save nothing? Didst thou give ’em
all?’—questions which imply a strong possession, the eager
indulgence of a favourite idea which has just struck his heated
fancy; but which Mr. Kean pronounced in a feeble, sceptical,
querulous under-tone, as if wanting information as to some ordinary
occasion of insignificant distress. We do not admire these
cross-readings of a work like Lear. They may be very well when the
actor’s ingenuity, however paradoxical, is more amusing than the
author’s sense: but it is not so in this case. From some such
miscalculation, or desire of finding out a clue to the character,
other than ‘was set down’ for him, Mr. Kean did not display his
usual resources and felicitous spirit in these terrific scenes:—he
drivelled, and looked vacant, and moved his lips, so as not to be
heard, and did nothing, and appeared, at times, as if he would quite
forget himself. The pauses were too long; the indications of remote
meaning were too significant to be well understood. The spectator
was big with expectation of seeing some extraordinary means
employed: but the general result did not correspond to the waste of
preparation. In a subsequent part, Mr. Kean did not give to the
reply of Lear, ‘Aye, every inch a king!’—the same vehemence and
emphasis that Mr. Booth did; and in this he was justified: for, in
the text, it is an exclamation of indignant irony, not of conscious
superiority; and he immediately adds with deep disdain, to prove the
nothingness of his pretensions—

‘When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.’

Almost the only passage in which Mr. Kean obtained his usual
heartfelt tribute, was in his interview with Cordelia, after he
awakes from sleep, and has been restored to his senses.

‘Pray, do not mock me:
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward; and to deal plainly,
I fear, I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks, I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful; for I’m mainly ignorant
What place this is; and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nay, I know not
Where I did lodge last night. _Do not laugh at me,
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia._

_Cordelia._ And so I am; I am.’

In uttering the last words, Mr. Kean staggered faintly into
Cordelia’s arms, and his sobs of tenderness, and his ecstasy of joy
commingled, drew streaming tears from the brightest eyes,

‘Which sacred pity had engender’d there.’

Mr. Rae was very effective in the part of Edgar, and was received
with very great applause. If this gentleman could rein in a certain
‘false gallop’ in his voice and gait, he would be a most respectable
addition, from the spirit and impressiveness of his declamation, to
the general strength of any theatre, and we heartily congratulate
him on his return to Drury-lane.—Mrs. West made an interesting
representative of Cordelia. In all parts of plaintive tenderness,
she is an excellent actress. We could have spared the
love-scenes—and one of her lovers, Mr. Hamblin. Mr. Holland was
great in Gloster. In short, what is he not great in, that requires a
great deal of sturdy prosing, an ‘honest, sonsy, bawzont face,’ and
a lamentably broken-down, hale, wholesome, hearty voice, that seems
‘incapable of its own distress?’ We like his jovial, well-meaning
way of going about his parts. We can afford, out of his good cheer,
and lively aspect, and his manner of bestriding the stage, to be
made melancholy by him at any time, without being a bit the worse
for it. Mr. Dowton’s Kent was not at all good: it was a downright
discarded serving-man. Mr. Russel, in the absence of the Fool,
played the zany in the Steward. The tragedy was, in general, got up
better than we expected.

_Artaxerxes._—We believe that this is the most beautiful opera in
the world, though we have great authorities against us: but we do
not believe, that it is better acted now than it ever was, though we
have no less an authority for us, were we disposed to be of that
opinion, than the Manager himself. The _Cognoscenti_, he tells us,
hold that this Musical Drama was never so got up before as it is at
present; _viz._, by Mr. Braham, Mr. Incledon, Miss Carew, and the
pretty little Madame Vestris. There is no degree of excellence,
however high, with which this Opera could be played, that we should
not hail with delight; and we would at any time go ten miles on
foot, only to see it played as we formerly did. The time we allude
to, was when Miss Stephens first came out in Mandane, when Miss
Rennell (who is since dead) played Artaxerxes, when Mr. Incledon
played the same part he does still, better than he does at present,
when Miss Carew was the fair Semira, who listens no less
delightfully than she sings, and some one (we forget who) played
Arbaces, not very well. As to Mr. Braham, he was not there, nor was
he wanted;—for we prefer the music of Arne, to Mr. Braham’s, and Mr.
Braham willingly gives us none but his own. He has omitted some of
the most exquisite airs in Artaxerxes to introduce others of his own
composing;—and where he has not done this, he might as well, for he
so overloads, embellishes, accompanies, and flourishes over the
original songs that one would hardly know them again. Can anything
be more tantalising than to hear him sing ‘Water parted from the
sea?’ Instead of one continued stream of plaintive sound, labouring
from the heart with fond emotion, and still murmuring as it flows,
it was one incessant exhibition of frothy affectation and sparkling
pretence; as if the only ambition of the singer, and the only
advantage he could derive from the power and flexibility of his
voice, was to run away at every opportunity from the music and the
sentiment. Does Mr. Braham suppose that the finest pieces of
composition were only invented, and modulated into their faultless
perfection, for him to play tricks with, to make _ad libitum_
experiments of his powers of execution upon them, and to use the
_score_ of the musician only as the rope-dancer does his rope, to
vault up and down on,—to shew off his _pirouettes_ and his
summersaults, and to perform feats of impossibility? This celebrated
person’s favourite style of singing is like bad Opera-dancing, of
which not grace, but trick is the constant character. So Mr.
Braham’s object is not to please but astonish his hearers—to do what
is difficult and absurd, not what is worth doing—to unfold the
richness, depth, sweetness, and variety of his tones, not to touch
the chords of sentiment. In fact, it is the essence of all perverted
art, to display art, and carry itself to the opposite extreme from
nature, lest it should be mistaken for her, instead of returning
back to and identifying itself as much as possible with nature (both
as means and end) that they may seem inseparable, and no one discern
the difference. The accomplished singer, whom we are criticising,
too often puts himself in the place of his subject. He mistakes the
object of the public. We do not go to the theatre to admire him, to
hear him _tune_ his voice like an instrument for sale. We go to be
delighted with certain ‘concords of sweet sounds,’ which strike
certain springs in unison in the human breast. These things are
found united in nature, and in the works of the greatest masters,
such as Arne and Mozart. What they have joined together, why will
Mr. Braham put asunder? Why will he pour forth, for instance, as in
this very song which he murdered, a volume of sound in one note,
like the deep thunder, or the loud water-fall, and in the next,
without any change of circumstance, try to thrill the ear by an
excess of the softest and most voluptuous effeminacy? There is no
reason why he should—but that he _can_, and is allowed to do so. Mr.
Braham, we know, complains that the fault is not in his own taste,
but in the vitiated ear of the town which he is obliged (much
against his will) to pamper with trills, quavers, crotchets,
_falsettos_, _bravuras_, and all the idle brood of affectation and
sickly sensibility. He might have been taught a lesson to the
contrary, a year or two ago, when he sung with Miss Stephens at
Covent-Garden; and never surely was the difference of two styles
more marked, or the triumph of good taste over bad more complete.
Mr. Braham could not plead want of skill, of power, of practice: it
was the difference of style only; and Miss Stephens’s simple,
artless manner, gave nothing but pure pleasure, while Mr. Braham’s
ornamental, laboured, complicated, or tortured execution, excited
feelings of mingled astonishment, regret, and disappointment. There
is Miss Tree again, who is another instance. What is it that gives
such a superiority to her singing? Nothing but its truth, its
seriousness, its sincerity. She has no capricios, plays no fantastic
tricks; but seems as much in the power, at the mercy of the
composer, as a musical instrument: her lips transmit the notes she
has by heart, as the Æolian harp is stirred by the murmuring wind;
and her voice seems to brood over, and become enamoured of the
sentiment. But simplicity, we believe, will not do alone without
sentiment, and we suspect Mr. Braham of a want of sentiment. He
apparently sings, as far as the passion is concerned, from the
marginal directions, _con furio_, _con strepito_, _adagio_, etc.,
which are but indifferent helps to expression; and where a performer
cannot fasten instinctively on the sympathy of his hearers, he has
no better resource than to make an appeal to their wonder. To
confess the extent of our insensibility, or our prejudice, we do not
admire Mr. Braham’s ‘Mild as the moonbeams,’ which is in his most
lisping and languishing, nor his ‘Wallace,’ which is in his most
heroic manner. What we like best, is his Oratorio style of singing,
and that is the most manly, the most direct, and the least an abuse
of the great powers which both Nature and Art have given to him.
Having said so much of Mr. Braham, we will say nothing of Mr.
Incledon. Miss Carew, as Mandane, warbled like a nightingale, and
held her head on one side like a peacock; of Madame Vestris, we
repeat that she is pretty. Indeed, we liked her the best of the
four.

T.

No. VII

[_July, 1820._

The Drama is a subject of which we could give a very entertaining
account once a month, if there were no plays acted all the year.
But, as some artists have said of Nature, ‘the Theatres put us out.’
The only article we have written on this matter that has given us
entire satisfaction—(we answer, be it observed, for nobody but
ourselves)—is the one we wrote in the winter, when, in consequence
of two great public calamities, the theatres were closed for some
weeks together. We seized that lucky opportunity, to take a peep
into the raree-show of our own fancies,—the moods of our own
minds,—and a very pretty little kaleidoscope it made. Our readers,
we are sure, remember the description. Our head is stuffed full of
recollections on the subject of the Drama, some of older, some of
later date, but all treasured up with more or less fondness; we, in
short, love it, and what we love, we can talk of for ever. We love
it as well as Mr. Weathercock loves maccaroni; as Mr. Croker loves
the Quarterly Review, and the Quarterly Review the Edinburgh; as
Kings love Queens; and Scotchmen love their country. But, as happens
in some of these instances, we love it best at a distance. We like
to be a hundred miles off from the Acted Drama in London, and to get
a friend (who may be depended on) to give an account of it for us;
which we read, at our leisure, under the shade of a clump of
lime-trees. What is the use indeed of coming to town, merely to
discover that Mr. Elliston is ‘fat, fair, and forty,’ and becomes
silk hose worse than fleecy hosiery?

‘Odious, in _satin_! ’Twould a saint provoke!’

We had rather stay where we are, and think how young, how genteel,
how sprightly Lewis was at seventy! Garrick too was fat and pursy;
but who ever perceived it through that airy soul of his, that life
of mind, that bore him up ‘like little wanton boys that swim on
bladders?’ Or why should we take coach to prevent our friend and
coadjutor, of the whimsical name,—that Bucolical Juvenile, the Sir
Piercie Shafton of the London Magazine,—from carrying off his Mysie
Happer, the bewitching Miss Brunton, from our critical advances, and
forestalling our praises of the grey twinkling eyes, the large white
teeth, and querulous catechising voice of this accomplished little
rustic? We shall leave him in full possession of his prize;—she
shall be his _Protection_, and he shall be her _Audacity_: but we
cannot consent to give up to his agreeable importunity our right and
interest in the Miss Dennetts—the fair, the ‘inexpressive three.’ We
will not erase their names from our pages, but twine them in cypher,
as they are ‘written in our heart’s tables,’—though they do not
dance at the Opera! We have not this gentleman’s exquisitely happy
knack in the geography of criticism: nor do we carry a map of London
in our pockets to make out an exact scale of merit and _virtu_; nor
judge of black eyes, a white cheek, and so forth, by the bills of
mortality. We do not hate pathos because it is found in the Borough;
our taste (such as it is) can cross the water, by any of the four
bridges, in search of spirit and nature; we can make up our minds to
beauty even at Whitechapel! Our friend and correspondent, Janus,
grieves and wonders at this. He asks us why we do not express his
sentiments instead of our own? and we answer, ‘It is because we are
not you.’ He runs away from vulgar places and people, as from the
plague; swoons at the mention of the Royal Cobourg; mimics his
barber’s pronunciation of _Ashley’s_; and is afraid to trust himself
at Sadler’s Wells, lest his clothes should be covered with
gingerbread, and spoiled with the smell of gin and tobacco. Now we,
in our turn, laugh at all this. We are never afraid of being
confounded with the vulgar; nor is our time taken up in thinking of
what is ungenteel, and persuading ourselves that we are mightily
superior to it. The gentlemen in the gallery, in Fielding’s time,
thought every thing _low_; and our friend, Mr. Weathercock, presents
his compliments to us, and tells us we are wrong in condescending to
any thing beneath ‘Milanie’s foot of fire.’ We have no notion of
condescending in any thing we write about: we seek for truth and
beauty wherever we can find them, and think that with these we are
safe from contamination. ‘Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.’
Our comparative negligence, in this respect, probably arises from
the difference that exists between our dress and that of our
correspondent. A good judge has said, ‘a man’s mind is parcel of his
fortunes,’—and a man’s taste is part of his dress. If we wore
‘diamond rings on our fingers, antique cameos in our breast-pins,
cambric pocket-handkerchiefs breathing forth Attargul, and pale
lemon-coloured kid gloves,’ our perceptions might be strangely
altered. We might then think Mr. Young ‘the perfect gentleman both
on and off the stage,’ and consider Mr. Jones’s ‘cut-steel watch
chain quite refreshing.’ As it is, we differ from him on most of the
above points. Yet, for any thing we see to the contrary, we might
safely have staid in the country another month, and deputed the
modern Euphuist, as our tire-man of the theatre, to adjust Mr.
Kemble’s boots, to tie on Mr. Abbott’s sash to his liking, to dry
Miss Stephens’s bonnet, and dye Miss Tree’s stockings any colour but
blue:—but we heard from good authority that there was a new tragedy
worth seeing, and also that it was written by an old friend of ours.
_That_ there was no resisting. So ‘we came, saw, and were
satisfied.’—Virginius is a good play:—we repeat it. It is a real
tragedy; a sound historical painting. Mr. Knowles has taken the
facts as he found them, and expressed the feelings that would
naturally arise out of the occasion. Strange to say, in this age of
poetical egotism, the author, in writing his play, has been thinking
of Virginius and his daughter, more than of himself! This is the
true imagination, to put yourself in the place of others, and to
feel and speak for them. Our unpretending poet travels along the
high road of nature and the human heart; and does not turn aside to
pluck pastoral flowers in primrose lanes, or hunt gilded butterflies
over enamelled meads, breathless and exhausted;—nor does he, with
vain ambition, ‘strike his lofty head against the stars.’ So far
indeed, he may thank the Gods for not having made him poetical. Some
cold, formal, affected, and interested critics have not known what
to make of this. It was not what _they_ would have done. One finds
fault with the style as poor, because it is not inflated. Another
can see nothing in it, because it is not interlarded with modern
metaphysical theories, unknown to the ancients. A third declares
that it is all borrowed from Shakspear, because it is true to
nature. A fourth pronounces it a superior kind of melodrame, because
it pleases the public. The two last things to which the dull and
envious ever think of attributing the success of any work (and yet
the only ones to which genuine success is attributable), are Genius
and Nature. The one they hate, and of the other they are ignorant.
The same critics who despise and slur the Virginius of Covent
Garden, praise the Virginius and the David Rizzio of Drury Lane,
because (as it should appear) there is nothing in _them_ to rouse
their dormant spleen, stung equally by merit or success, and to
mortify their own ridiculous, inordinate, and hopeless vanity. Their
praise is of a piece with their censure; and equally from what they
applaud and what they condemn, you perceive the principle of their
perverse judgments. They are soothed with flatness and failure, and
doat over them with parental fondness; but what is above their
strength, and demands their admiration, they shrink from with
loathing, and an oppressive sense of their own imbecility: and what
they dare not openly condemn, they would willingly secrete from the
public ear! We have described this class of critics more than once,
but they breed still: all that we can do is to sweep them from our
path as often as we meet with them, and to remove their dirt and
cobwebs as fast as they proceed from the same noisome source.
Besides the merits of Virginius as a literary composition, it is
admirably adapted to the stage. It presents a succession of
pictures. We might suppose each scene almost to be copied from a
beautiful bas-relief, or to have formed a group on some antique
vase. ‘’Tis the taste of the ancients, ’tis classical lore.’ But it
is a speaking and a living picture we are called upon to witness.
These figures so strikingly, so simply, so harmoniously combined,
start into life and action, and breathe forth words, the soul of
passion—inflamed with anger, or melting with tenderness. Several
passages of great beauty were cited in a former article on this
subject; but we might mention in addition, the fine imaginative
apostrophe of Virginius to his daughter, when the story of her birth
is questioned:

‘I never saw you look so like your mother
In all my life’—

the exquisite lines ending,

... ‘The lie
Is most unfruitful then, that makes the flower—
The very flow’r our bed connubial grew
To prove its barrenness’——

or the sudden and impatient answer of Virginius to Numitorius, who
asks if the slave will swear Virginia is her child—

‘To be sure she will! Is she not his slave?’

or again, the dignified reply to his brother, who reminds him it is
time to hasten to the Forum,

‘Let the Forum wait for us!’

This is the true language of nature and passion; and all that we can
wish for, or require, in dramatic writing. If such language is not
poetical, it is the fault of poets, who do not write as the heart
dictates! We have seen plays that produced much more tumultuous
applause; none scarcely that excited more sincere sympathy. There
were no clap-traps, no sentiments that were the understood signals
for making a violent uproar; but we heard every one near us express
heartfelt and unqualified approbation; and tears more precious
supplied the place of loud huzzas. Each spectator appeared to appeal
to, and to judge from the feelings of his own breast, not from
vulgar clamour; and we trust the success will be more lasting and
secure, as its foundations are laid in the deep and proud humility
of nature. Mr. Knowles owes every thing, that an author can owe, to
the actors; and they owed every thing to their attention to truth
and to real feeling. Mr. Macready’s Virginius is his best and most
faultless performance,—at once the least laboured and the most
effectual. His fine, manly voice sends forth soothing, impassioned
tones, that seem to linger round, or burst with terrific grandeur
from the home of his heart. Mr. Kemble’s Icilius was heroic,
spirited, fervid, the Roman warrior and lover; and Miss Foote was
‘the freeborn Roman maid,’ with a little bit, a delightful little
bit, of the English schoolgirl in her acting. We incline to the
_ideal_ of our own country-women after all, when they are so young,
so innocent, so handsome. We are both pleased and sorry to hear a
report which threatens us with the loss of so great a favourite; and
one chief source of our regret will be, that she will no longer play
Virginia. The scenery allotted to this tragedy encumbered the stage,
and the simplicity of the play. Temples and pictured monuments
adorned the scene, which were not in existence till five hundred
years after the date of the story; and the ruins of the Capitol, of
Constantine’s arch, and the temple of Jupiter Stator, frowned at
once on the death of Virginia, and the decline and fall of the Roman
empire. As to the dresses, we leave them to our deputy of the
wardrobe; but, we believe, they were got right at last, with some
trouble. In the printed play, we observe a number of passages marked
with inverted commas, which are omitted in the representation. This
is the case almost uniformly wherever the words ‘Tyranny,’ or
‘Liberty,’ occur. Is this done by authority, or is it prudence in
the author, ‘_lest the courtiers offended should be?_’ Is the name
of Liberty to be struck out of the English language, and are we not
to hate tyrants even in an old Roman play? ‘Let the galled jade
wince: our withers are unwrung.’ We turn to a pleasanter topic, and
are glad to find an old and early friend unaltered in sentiment as
he is unspoiled by success:—the same boy-poet, after a lapse of
years, as when we first knew him; unconscious of the wreath he has
woven round his brow, laughing and talking of his play just as if it
had been written by any body else, and as simple-hearted, downright,
and honest as the unblemished work he has produced![45]