Anderson's impersonation of Hermione was her realisation of the part, in
figure, face, presence, demeanour, and temperament. She did not afflict
her auditor with the painful sense of a person struggling upward toward
an unattainable identity. She made you conscious of the presence of a
queen. This, obviously, is the main thing--that the individuality shall
be imperial, not merely wearing royal attire but being invested with the
royal authenticity of divine endowment and consecration. Much emphasis
has been placed by Shakespeare upon that attribute of innate grandeur.
Leontes, at the opening of the trial scene, describes his accused wife
as "the daughter of a king," and in the same scene her father is
mentioned as the Emperor of Russia. The gentleman who, in act fifth,
recounts to Autolycus the meeting between Leontes and his daughter
Perdita especially notes "the majesty of the creature, in resemblance of
the mother." Hermione herself, in the course of her
vindication--expressed in one of the most noble and pathetic strains of
poetical eloquence in our language--names herself "a great king's
daughter," therein recalling those august and piteous words of
Shakespeare's Katharine:--
"We are a Queen, or long have thought so, certain
The daughter of a king."
Poor old Antigonus, in his final soliloquy, recounting the vision of
Hermione that had come upon him in the night, declares her to be a woman
royal and grand not by descent only but by nature:--
"I never saw a vessel of like sorrow,
So filled and so becoming. In pure white robes,
Like very sanctity, she did approach."
That image Mary Anderson embodied, and therefore the ideal of
Shakespeare was made a living thing--that glorious ideal, in shaping
which the great poet "from all that are took something good, to make a
perfect woman." Toward Polixenes, in the first scene, her manner was
wholly gracious, delicately playful, innocently kind, and purely frail.
Her quiet archness at the question, "Will you go yet?" struck exactly
the right key of Hermione's mood. With the baby prince Mamillius her
frolic and banter, affectionate, free, and gay, were in a happy vein of
feeling and humour. Her simple dignity, restraining both resentment and
grief, in face of the injurious reproaches of Leontes, was entirely
noble and right, and the pathetic words, "I never wished to see you
sorry, now I trust I shall," could not have been spoken with more depth
and intensity of grieved affection than were felt in her composed yet
tremulous voice. The entrance, at the trial scene, was made with the
stateliness natural to a queenly woman, and yet with a touch of
pathos--the cold patience of despair. The delivery of Hermione's
defensive speeches was profoundly earnest and touching. The simple cry
of the mother's breaking heart, and the action of veiling her face and
falling like one dead, upon the announcement of the prince's death, were
perfect denotements of the collapse of a grief-stricken woman. The skill
with which the actress, in the monument scene--which is all repose and
no movement--contrived nevertheless to invest Hermione with steady
vitality of action, and to imbue the crisis with a feverish air of
suspense, was in a high degree significant of the personality of genius.
For such a performance of Hermione Shakespeare himself has provided the
sufficient summary and encomium:--
"Women will love her, that she is a woman
More worth than any man; men that she is
The rarest of all women."
It is one thing to say that Mary Anderson was better in Perdita than in
Hermione, and another thing to say that the performance of Perdita was
preferred. Everybody preferred it--even those who knew that it was not
the better of the two; for everybody loves the sunshine more than the
shade. Hermione means grief and endurance. Perdita means beautiful youth
and happy love. It does not take long for an observer to choose between
them. Suffering is not companionable. By her impersonation of Hermione
the actress revealed her knowledge of the stern truth of life, its
trials, its calamities, and the possible heroism of character under its
sorrowful discipline. Into that identity she passed by the force of her
imagination. The embodiment was majestic, tender, pitiable,
transcendent, but its colour was the sombre colour of pensive melancholy
and sad experience. That performance was the higher and more significant
of the two. But the higher form of art is not always the most
alluring--never the most alluring when youthful beauty smiles and rosy
pleasure beckons another way. All hearts respond to happiness. By her
presentment of Perdita the actress became the glittering image and
incarnation of glorious youthful womanhood and fascinating joy. No
exercise of the imagination was needful to her in that. There was an
instantaneous correspondence between the part and the player. The
embodiment was as natural as a sunbeam. Shakespeare has left no doubt
about his meaning in Perdita. The speeches of all around her continually
depict her fresh and piquant loveliness, her innate superiority, her
superlative charm; while her behaviour and language as constantly show
forth her nobility of soul. One of the subtlest side lights thrown upon
the character is in the description of the manner in which Perdita heard
the story of her mother's death--when "attentiveness wounded" her
"till, from one sign of dolour to another, she did bleed tears." And of
the fibre of her nature there is perhaps no finer indication than may be
felt in her comment on old Camillo's worldly view of prosperity as a
vital essential to the permanence of love:--
"I think affliction may subdue the cheek,
But not take in the mind."
In the thirty-seven plays of Shakespeare there is no strain of the
poetry of sentiment and grace essentially sweeter than that which he has
put into the mouth of Perdita; and poetry could not be more sweetly
spoken than it was by Mary Anderson in that delicious scene of the
distribution of the flowers. The actress evinced comprehension of the
character in every fibre of its being, and she embodied it with the
affluent vitality of splendid health and buoyant temperament--presenting
a creature radiant with goodness and happiness, exquisite in natural
refinement, piquant with archness, soft, innocent, and tender in
confiding artlessness, and, while gleeful and triumphant in beautiful
youth, gently touched with an intuitive pitying sense of the thorny
aspects of this troubled world. The giving of the flowers completely
bewitched her auditors. The startled yet proud endurance of the king's
anger was in an equal degree captivating. Seldom has the stage displayed
that rarest of all combinations, the passionate heart of a woman with
the lovely simplicity of a child. Nothing could be more beautiful than
she was to the eyes that followed her lithe figure through the merry
mazes of her rustic dance--an achievement sharply in contrast with her
usually statuesque manner. It "makes old hearts fresh" to see a
spectacle of grace and joy, and that spectacle they saw then and will
not forget. The value of those impersonations of Hermione and Perdita,
viewing them as embodied interpretations of poetry was great, but they
possessed a greater value and a higher significance as denotements of
the guiding light, the cheering strength, the elevating loveliness of a
noble human soul. They embodied the conception of the poet, but at the
same time they illumined an actual incarnation of the divine spirit.
They were like windows to a sacred temple, and through them you could
look into the soul of a true woman--always a realm where thoughts are
gliding angels, and feelings are the faces of seraphs, and sounds are
the music of the harps of heaven.
VI.
HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN OLIVIA.
It has sometimes been thought that the acting of Henry Irving is seen at
its best in those impersonations of his that derive their vitality from
the grim, ghastly, and morbid attributes of human nature. That he is a
unique actor, and distinctively a great actor, in Hamlet, Mathias,
Eugene Aram, Louis XI., Lesurque, and Dubosc, few judges will deny. His
performances of those parts have shown him to be a man of weird
imagination, and they have shown that his characteristics, mental and
spiritual, are sombre. Accordingly, when it was announced that he would
play Dr. Primrose--Goldsmith's simple, virtuous, homely, undramatic
village-preacher, the _Vicar of Wakefield_,--a doubt was felt as to his
suitability for the part and as to the success of his endeavour. He
played Dr. Primrose, and he gained in that character some of the
brightest laurels of his professional career. The doubt proved
unwarranted. More than one competent observer of that remarkable
performance has granted it an equal rank with the best of Henry Irving's
achievements; and now, more clearly than before, it is perceived that
the current of his inspiration flows as freely from the silver spring of
goodness as from the dark and troubled fountain of human misery.
On the first night of _Olivia_, at the Lyceum Theatre (it was May 27,
1885, when the present writer happened to be in London), Henry Irving's
performance of Dr. Primrose was fettered by a curb of constraint. The
actor's nerves had been strained to a high pitch of excitement and he
was obviously anxious. His spirit, accordingly, was not fully liberated
into the character. He advanced with cautious care and he executed each
detail of his design with precise accuracy. To various auditors, for
that reason, the work seemed a little Methodistical; and drab is a
colour at which the voice of the scoffer is apt to scoff. But the
impersonation of Dr. Primrose soon became equally a triumph of
expression and of ideal; not only flowing out of goodness, but flowing
smoothly and producing the effect of nature. It was not absolutely and
identically the Vicar that Goldsmith has drawn, for its personality was
unmarked by either rusticity or strong humour; but it was a kindred and
higher type of the simple truth, the pastoral sweetness, the benignity,
and the human tenderness of that delightful original. To invest goodness
with charm, to make virtue piquant, and to turn common events of
domestic life to exquisite pathos and noble exaltation was the actor's
purpose. It was accomplished; and Dr. Primrose, thitherto an idyllic
figure, existent only in the chambers of fancy, is henceforth as much a
denizen of the stage as Luke Fielding or Jesse Rural; a man not merely
to be read of, as one reads of Uncle Toby and Parson Adams, but to be
known, remembered, and loved.
Wills's drama of _Olivia_, based upon an episode in Goldsmith's story,
is one of extreme simplicity. It may be described as a series of
pictures displaying the consequences of action rather than action
itself. It contains an abundance of incident, but the incident is mostly
devoid of inherent dramatic force and therefore is such as must derive
its chief effect from the manner in which it is treated by the actors
who represent the piece. Nevertheless, the piece was found to be,
during its first three acts, an expressive, coherent, interesting play.
It tells its story clearly and entirely, not by narrative but by the
display of characters in their relations to each other. Its language,
flavoured here and there with the phraseology of the novel, is
consistently appropriate. The fourth and last act is feeble. Nobody can
sympathise with "the late remorse of love" in a nature so trivial as
that of Thornhill, and the incident of the reconciliation between Olivia
and her husband, therefore, goes for nothing. It is the beautiful
relation between the father and his daughter that animates the play. It
is paternal love that thrills its structure with light, warmth, colour,
sincerity, moral force, and human significance. Opinion may differ as to
the degree of skill with which Wills selected and employed the materials
of Goldsmith's story; but nobody can justly deny that he wrought for the
stage a practical dramatic exposition of the beauty and sanctity of the
holiest relation that is possible in human life; and to have done that
is to have done a noble thing.
Many persons appear to think that criticism falls short of its duty
unless it wounds and hurts. Goldsmith himself observed that fact. It
was in the story of _The Vicar of Wakefield_ that he made his playful
suggestion that a critic should always take care to say that the picture
would have been better if the painter had taken more pains. Wills
probably heard more than enough for his spiritual welfare about the
faults of his piece; yet there is really nothing weak in the play except
the conclusion. It is not easy to suggest, however, in what way the
fourth act could be strengthened, unless it were by a recasting and
renovation of the character of Squire Thornhill. But the victory was
gained, in spite of a feeble climax. Many persons also appear to think
that it is a sort of sacrilege to lay hands upon the sacred ark of a
classic creation. Dion Boucicault, perceiving this when he made a play
about _Clarissa Harlowe_, felt moved to deprecate anticipated public
resentment of the liberties that he had taken with Richardson's novel.
Yet it is difficult to see why the abundant details of that excellent
though protracted narrative should not be curtailed, in order to
circumscribe its substance within the limits of a practical drama.
Jefferson was blamed for condensing and slightly changing the comedy of
_The Rivals_. Yet the author, who probably knew something about his
work, deemed it a wretchedly defective piece, and expressed the
liveliest regret for having written it. Wills did not reproduce
Goldsmith's Vicar upon the stage: in some particulars he widely diverged
from it--and his work, accordingly, may be censured. Yet _The Vicar of
Wakefield_ is far from being a faultless production, such as a divinity
should be supposed to hedge. Critical students are aware of this. It is
not worth while to traverse the old ground. The reader who will take the
trouble--and pleasure--to refer to that excellent chapter on Goldsmith
in Dr. Craik's _History of English Literature_ will find the structural
defects of the novel specifically enumerated. If the dramatist has
ignored many details he has at least extracted from the narrative the
salient points of a consistent, harmonious story. The spectator can
enjoy the play, whether he has read the original or not. At the end of
its first act he knows the Vicar and his family, their home, their way
of life, their neighbours, the two suitors for the two girls, the
motives of each and every character, and the relations of each to all;
and he sees, what is always touching in the spectacle of actual human
life, the contrasted states of circumstance and experience surrounding
and enmeshing all. After this preparation the story is developed with
few and rapid strokes. Two of the pictures were poems. At the end of act
first the Vicar, who has been apprised of the loss of his property,
imparts this sad news to his family. The time is the gloaming. The
chimes are sounding in the church-tower. It is the hour of evening
prayer. The gray-haired pastor calls his loved ones around him, in his
garden, and simply and reverently tells them of their misfortune, which
is to be accepted submissively, as Heaven's will. The deep religious
feeling of that scene, the grouping, the use of sunset lights and
shadows, the melody of the chimes, the stricken look in the faces of the
women and children, the sweet gravity of the Vicar--instinct with the
nobleness of a sorrow not yet become corrosive and lachrymose, as is the
tendency of settled grief--and, over all, the sense of blighted
happiness and an uncertain future, made up a dramatic as well as a
pictorial effect of impressive poetic significance. In act second--which
is pictorial almost without intermission--there was a companion
picture, when the Vicar reads, at his fireside, a letter announcing the
restitution of his estate; while his wife and children and Mr. Burchell
are assembled around the spinet singing an old song. The repose with
which Henry Irving made that scene tremulous, almost painful, in its
suspense, was observed as one of the happiest strokes of his art. The
face and demeanour of Dr. Primrose, changing from the composure of
resignation to a startled surprise, and then to almost an hysterical
gladness, presented a study not less instructive than affecting of the
resources of acting. Only two contemporary actors have presented
anything kindred with Mr. Irving's acting in that situation and
throughout the scene that is sequent on the discovery of Olivia's
flight--Jefferson in America and Got in France.
Evil is restless and irresistibly prone to action. Goodness is usually
negative and inert. Dr. Primrose is a type of goodness. In order to
invest him with piquancy and dramatic vigour Henry Irving gave him
passion, and therewithal various attributes of charming eccentricity.
The clergyman thus presented is the fruition of a long life of virtue.
He has the complete repose of innocence, the sweet candour of absolute
purity, the mild demeanour of spontaneous, habitual benevolence, the
supreme grace of unconscious simplicity. But he is human and passionate;
he shows--in his surroundings, in his quick sympathy with natural
beauty, and in his indicated rather than directly stated ideals of
conduct--that he has lived an imaginative and not a prosaic life; he is
vaguely and pathetically superstitious; and while essentially grand in
his religious magnanimity he is both fascinating and morally formidable
as a man. Those denotements point at Henry Irving's ideal. For his
method it is less easy to find the right description. His mechanical
reiteration of the words that are said to him by Sophia, in the moment
when the fond father knows that his idolised Olivia has fled with her
lover; his collapse, when the harmless pistols are taken from his
nerveless hands; his despairing cry, "If she had but died!"; his
abortive effort to rebuke his darling child in the hour of her
abandonment and misery, and the sudden tempest of passionate affection
with which the great tender heart sweeps away that inadequate and paltry
though eminently appropriate morality, and takes its idol to itself as
only true love can do--those were instances of high dramatic achievement
for which epithets are inadequate, but which the memory of the heart
will always treasure.
It was said by the poet Aaron Hill, in allusion to Barton Booth, that
the blind might have seen him in his voice and the deaf might have heard
him in his visage. Such a statement made concerning an actor now would
be deemed extravagant. But, turning from the Vicar to his cherished
daughter, that felicitous image comes naturally into the mind. To think
of Ellen Terry as Olivia will always be to recall one especial and
remarkable moment of beauty and tenderness. It is not her distribution
of the farewell gifts, on the eve of Olivia's flight--full although that
was of the emotion of a good heart torn and tortured by the conflict
between love and duty--and it is not the desperate resentment with which
Olivia beats back her treacherous betrayer, when, at the climax of his
baseness, he adds insult to heartless perfidy. Those, indeed, were made
great situations by the profound sincerity and the rich, woman-like
passion of the actress. But there was one instant, in the second act of
the play, when the woman's heart has at length yielded to her lover's
will, and he himself, momentarily dismayed by his own conquest, strives
to turn back, that Ellen Terry made pathetic beyond description. The
words she spoke are simply these, "But I said I would come!" What
language could do justice to the voice, to the manner, to the sweet,
confiding, absolute abandonment of the whole nature to the human love by
which it had been conquered? The whole of that performance was
astonishing, was thrilling, with knowledge of the passion of love. That
especial moment was the supreme beauty of it. At such times human nature
is irradiated with a divine fire, and art fulfils its purpose.
VII.
ON JEFFERSON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
Joseph Jefferson has led a life of noble endeavour and has had a career
of ample prosperity, culminating in honourable renown and abundant
happiness. He was born in Philadelphia, February 20, 1829. He went on
the stage when he was four years old and he has been on the stage ever
since. His achievements as an actor have been recognised and accepted
with admiration in various parts of the world; in Australia and New
Zealand and in England, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as in the United
States. Among English-speaking actors he is the foremost living
representative of the art of eccentric comedy. He has not, of late
years, played a wide range of parts, but, restricting himself to a few
characters, and those of a representative kind, the manner in which he
has acted them is a perfect manner--and it is this that has gained for
him his distinctive eminence. Jefferson, however, is not simply and
exclusively an actor. His mind is many sided. He has painted landscape
pictures of a high order of merit,--pictures in which elusive moods and
subtle sentiments of nature are grasped with imaginative insight and
denoted and interpreted with a free, delicate, and luminous touch. He
has also addressed the public as an author. He has written an easy,
colloquial account of his own life, and that breezy, off-hand,
expeditious work,--after passing it as a serial through their Century
Magazine,--the Century Company has published in a beautiful volume. It
is a work that, for the sake of the writer, will be welcomed everywhere,
and, for its own sake as well as his, will everywhere be preserved.