by the qualities of sweetness and of glee. No one acquainted with the
acting of Ellen Terry would need to be told how well and with what
charming grace those qualities were expressed by her. In the scene of
the wooing, at the Mermaiden's Well, Lucy Ashton was not a cold woman
trying to make herself loved,--which is what most actresses habitually
proffer upon the stage,--but a loving woman, radiant with the
consciousness of the love that she feels and has inspired. Nothing could
be imagined more delicate, more delicious, more enchanting than the
high-bred distinction and soft womanlike tone of that performance. The
character, at the climax of this scene, is made to manifest decision,
firmness, and force; and the superb manner in which she set the
maternal authority at naught and stood by her lover might seem to denote
a nature that no tyranny could subdue. Subdued, however, she is, and
forced to believe ill of her absent lover, and so the fatal marriage
contract is signed and the crash follows. When Ellen Terry came on for
that scene the glee had all vanished; the face was as white as the
garments that enswathed her; and you saw a creature whom the hand of
death had visibly touched. The stage has not at any time heard from any
lips but her own such tones of pathos as those in which she said the
simple words:--
"May God forgive you, then, and pity me--
If God can pity more than mothers do."
It is not a long scene, and happily not,--for the strain upon the
emotion of the actress was intense. The momentary wild merriment, the
agony of the breaking heart, the sudden delirium and collapse, were not
for an instant exaggerated. All was nature--or rather the simplicity,
fidelity, and grace of art that make the effect of nature.
Beautiful scenery, painted by Craven, framed the piece with appropriate
magnificence. The several seaside pictures were admirably
representative of the grandeur, the gaunt loneliness, and the glorious
colour for which Scotland is so much loved.
The public gain in that production was a revival of interest in one of
the most famous novels in the language; the possession of a scenical
pageant that filled the eye with beauty and strongly moved the
imagination; a play that is successful in the domain of romantic poetry;
a touching exemplification of the great art of acting; and once again
the presentment of that vast subject,--the relation of heart to heart,
under the dominion of love, in human society,--that more absorbs the
attention, affects the character, and controls the destiny of the human
race than anything else that is beneath the sun.
XVI.
THE MERRY WIVES AND FALSTAFF.
Shakespeare wrote _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ in 1601, and during the
Christmas holidays of that year it was presented upon the stage, before
Queen Elizabeth and her court, at Windsor Castle. In 1602 it was
published in London in quarto form, and in 1619 a reprint of that quarto
was published there. The version that appears in the two quartos is
considered by Shakespeare scholars to be spurious. The authentic text,
no doubt, is that of the comedy as it stands in the first folio (1623).
Shakespeare had written _Henry IV._--both parts of it--and also _Henry
V._, when this comedy was acted, and therefore he had completed his
portrait of Falstaff, whose life is displayed in the former piece and
whose death is described in the latter. _Henry IV._ was first printed in
1598 (we know not when it was first acted), and it passed through five
quarto editions prior to the publication of it in the folio of 1623. In
the epilogue to the second part of that play a promise is made that the
story shall be continued, "with Sir John in it," but it is gravely
doubted whether that epilogue was written by Shakespeare. The
continuation of the story occurs in _Henry V._, in which Falstaff does
not figure, although he is mentioned in it. Various efforts have been
made to show a continuity between the several plays in which Falstaff is
implicated, but the attempt always fails. The histories contain the real
Falstaff. The Falstaff of the comedy is another and less important man.
If there really were a sequence of story and of time in the portraiture
of this character plays would stand in the following order: 1, _Henry
IV., Part First_; 2, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_; 3, _Henry IV., Part
Second_; 4, _Henry V._ As no such sequence exists, or apparently was
intended, the comedy should be viewed by itself. Its texture is
radically different from that of the histories. One of the best
Shakespeare editors, Charles Knight, ventures the conjecture that _The
Merry Wives of Windsor_ was written first. Shakespeare invented the
chief part of the plot, taking, however, a few things from Tarlton's
_Newes out of Purgatorie_, which in turn was founded on a story called
The _Lovers of Pisa_. It is possible also that he may have derived
suggestions from a German play by Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick--a
contemporary, who died in 1611--to which _The Merry Wives of Windsor_
bears some resemblance, and of which he may have received an account
from English actors who had visited Germany, as the actors of his time
occasionally did.
Tradition declares that he wrote this comedy at the command of Queen
Elizabeth, who had expressed a wish to see Falstaff in love. This was
first stated by John Dennis, in the preface to an alteration of _The
Merry Wives of Windsor_ which was made by him, under the name of _The
Comical Gallant, or the Amours of Sir John Falstaff_, and was
successfully acted at Drury Lane theatre. That piece, which is paltry
and superfluous, appeared in 1702. No authority was given by Dennis for
his statement about Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare's play. The
tradition rests exclusively on his word. Rowe, Pope, Theobald, and other
Shakespeare editors, have transmitted it to the present day, but it
rests on nothing but supposition and it is dubious. Those scholars who
accept the story of Dennis, and believe that Shakespeare wrote the piece
"to order" and within a few days, usually fortify their belief by the
allegation that the comedy falls short of Shakespeare's poetical
standard, being written mostly in prose; that it degrades his great
creation of Falstaff; that it is, for him, a trivial production; and
that it must have been written in haste and without spontaneous impulse.
If judgment were to be given on the quarto version of _The Merry Wives_,
that reasoning would commend itself as at least plausible; but it is
foolish as applied to the version in the folio, where the piece is found
to be remarkable for nimbleness of invention, strength and variety of
natural character, affluent prodigality of animal spirits, delicious
quaintness, exhilarating merriment, a lovely pastoral tone, and many
touches of the transcendent poetry of Shakespeare. Dennis probably
repeated a piece of idle gossip that he had heard, the same sort of
chatter that in the present day constantly follows the doings of
theatrical people,--and is not accurate more than once in a thousand
times. _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ is a brilliant and delightful
comedy, quite worthy of its great author (though not in his most
exalted mood), who probably wrote it because his mind was naturally
impelled to write it, and no doubt laboured over it exactly as he did
over his other writings: for we know, upon the testimony of Ben Jonson,
who personally knew him and was acquainted with his custom as a writer,
that he was not content with the first draught of anything, but wrote it
a second time, and a third time, before he became satisfied with it. Dr.
Johnson, who had studied Shakespeare as carefully as any man ever
studied him, speaking of _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, says that "its
general power--that power by which all works of genius should finally be
tried--is such that perhaps it never yet had reader or spectator who did
not think it too soon at an end." A comedy that deserves such praise as
this--which assuredly is not misplaced--need not be dismissed as a
pot-boiler.
Knight's conjecture that _The Merry Wives_ was written before the
histories were written is a plausible conjecture, and perhaps worthy of
some consideration. It is not easy to believe that Shakespeare, after he
had created Falstaff and thoroughly drawn him, was capable of lessening
the character and making it almost despicable with paltriness--as
certainly it becomes in _The Merry Wives_. That is not the natural way
of an artistic mind. But it is easier to credit the idea that the
Falstaff of _The Merry Wives_ was the first study of the character,
although not first shown, which subsequently expanded into the
magnificent humorous creation of the histories. Falstaff in the comedy
is a fat man with absurd amorous propensities, who is befooled,
victimised, and made a laughing-stock by a couple of frolicsome women,
who are so much amused by his preposterous folly that they scarcely
bestow the serious consideration of contempt and scorn upon his
sensuality and insolence. No creature was ever set in a more ludicrous
light or made more contemptible,--in a kindly, good-humoured way. The
hysterical note of offended virtue is never sounded, nor is anywhere
seen the averted face of shocked propriety. The two wives are bent on a
frolic, and they will merrily punish this presumptuous sensualist--this
silly, conceited, gross fellow, "old, cold, withered, and of intolerable
entrails." If we knew no more of Falstaff than the comedy tells us of
him we should by no means treasure him as we do now; but it is through
the histories that we learn to know and appreciate him, and it is of the
man portrayed there that we always unconsciously think when, in his
humiliating discomfiture, we hear him declare that "wit may be made a
Jack-a-lent when 'tis upon ill employment." For the Falstaff of the
histories is a man of intellect, wisdom, and humour, thoroughly
experienced in the ways of the world, fascinating in his drollery,
human, companionable, infinitely amusing, and capable of turning all
life to the favour of enjoyment and laughter--a man who is passionate in
the sentiment of comradeship, and who, with all his faults (and perhaps
because of some of them, for faultless persons are too good for this
world), inspires affection. "Would I were with him," cries the wretched
Bardolph, "wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell." It is not
Bardolph only whose heart has a warm corner for the memory of the poor
old jovial sinner, wounded to death by the falling off of
friendship--the implacable hardness of new-born virtue in the
regenerated royal mind.
A comprehensive view of Falstaff--a view that includes the afflicting
circumstances of his humiliation and of his forlorn and pathetic death
not less than the roistering frolics and jocund mendacity of his life
and character--is essential to a right appreciation of the meaning of
him. Shakespeare is never a prosy moralist, but he constantly teaches
you, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, that the moral law of the
universe, working continually for goodness and not for evil, operates in
an inexorable manner. Yet it is not of any moral consideration that the
spectator of Falstaff upon the stage ever pauses to think. It is the
humour of the fat knight that is perceived, and that alone. The
thoughtful friends of Falstaff, however, see more in him than this, and
especially they like not to think of him in a deplorable predicament.
The Falstaff of _The Merry Wives_ is a man to laugh at; but he is not a
man to inspire the comrade feeling, and still less is he a man to
impress the intellect with the sense of a stalwart character and of
illimitable jocund humour. Falstaff's friends--whose hearts are full of
kindness for the old reprobate--have sat with him "in my Dolphin
chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire," and "have heard the
chimes at midnight" in his society, and they know what a jovial
companion he is--how abundant in knowledge of the world; how radiant
with animal spirits; how completely inexhaustible in cheerfulness; how
copious in comic invective; how incessantly nimble and ludicrous in wit
and in waggery; how strange a compound of mind and sensuality,
shrewdness and folly, fidelity and roguery, brazen mendacity, and comic
selfishness! They do not like to think of him as merely a fat old fool,
bamboozled by a pair of sprightly, not over-delicate women, far inferior
to him in mental calibre, and made a laughing-stock for Fenton and sweet
Anne Page, and the lads and lassies of Windsor, and the chattering Welsh
parson. "Have I lived," cried Falstaff, in the moment of his
discomfiture, "to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of
English?" He is a hard case, an inveterate sinner, as worthless as any
man well could be, in the eyes of decorum and respectability; but those
who know him well grow to be fond of him, even if they feel that they
ought to be ashamed of it, and they do not quite forgive the poet for
making him contemptible.
You can find many other figures that will make you laugh, but you can
find no other figure that makes you laugh with such good reason. It
seems incredible that Shakespeare, with his all-embracing mind and his
perfect instinct of art, should deliberately have chosen to lessen his
own masterpiece of humour. For Shakespeare rejoiced in Falstaff, even
while he respected and recorded the inexorable justice of the moral law
that decrees and eventually accomplishes his destruction. There is no
one of his characters whose history he has traced with such minute
elaboration. The conception is singularly ample. You may see Falstaff,
as Shallow saw him, when he was a boy and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke
of Norfolk; you may see him all along the current of his mature years;
his highway robberies on Gadshill; his bragging narrative to Prince
Henry; his frolicsome, paternal, self-defensive lecture to the prince;
his serio-comic association with the ragamuffin recruits at Coventry;
his adroit escape from the sword of Hotspur; his mendacious
self-glorification over the body of Harry Percy; his mishaps as a
suitor to Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page; his wonderfully humorous interviews
with the Chief-Justice and with Prince John of Lancaster; his junketings
with Justice Shallow in Gloucestershire, and his rebuff and
consternation at his first and last meeting with King Henry V.; and
finally you may see him, as Mrs. Quickly saw him, on his death-bed, when
"'a cried out God! God! God! three or four times," and when "his nose
was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled o' green fields."
A good and faithful study of _King Henry IV._, and especially of the
second part of that play, is essential for a right appreciation of
Falstaff. Those scenes with the Chief-Justice are unmatched in
literature. The knight stands royally forth in them, clothed with his
entire panoply of agile intellect, robust humour, and boundless comic
effrontery. But the arrogant and expeditious Falstaff of _The Merry
Wives_--so richly freighted with rubicund sensuality, so abundant in
comic loquacity, and so ludicrous in his sorry plights--is a much less
complex person, and therefore he stands more level than the real
Falstaff does with the average comprehension of mankind. The American
stage, accordingly, by which more than by the printed book he has
become known to our people, has usually given its preference to the
Falstaff of the comedy. _The Merry Wives_ was first acted in New York on
October 5, 1788 at the John Street theatre, with Harper as Falstaff. On
April 1, 1807 it was produced at the old Park, and the Falstaff then was
John E. Harwood. The same stage offered it again on January 16, 1829,
with Hilson as Falstaff. A little later, about 1832, James H. Hackett
took up the character of Falstaff, and from that time onward
performances of _The Merry Wives_ occurred more frequently in different
cities of America. Nor was the historical play neglected. On August 7,
1848 a remarkably fine production of the comedy was accomplished at the
Astor Place Operahouse, New York, with Hackett as Falstaff, who never in
his time was equalled in that character, and has not been equalled
since. Another Falstaff, however, and a remarkably good one, appeared at
Burton's theatre on August 24, 1850, in the person of Charles Bass. On
March 14, 1853 _The Merry Wives_ was again given at Burton's theatre,
and Burton himself played Falstaff, with characteristic humour; but
Burton never acted the part as it stands in _Henry IV._ Hackett, who
used both the history (Part I.) and the comedy, continued to act
Falstaff almost to the end of his life and Hackett did not die till
1871. A distinguished representative of Falstaff in the early days of
the American theatre--the days of the renowned Chestnut in
Philadelphia--was William Warren (1767-1832), who came from England in
1796. In recent years the part has been acted by Benedict De Bar and by
John Jack. The latest Falstaff in America was that embodied by Charles
Fisher, who first assumed the character on November 19, 1872, at Daly's
theatre, and whose performance was picturesque and humorous.
On the English stage the historical play of _Henry IV._ was exceedingly
popular in Shakespeare's time. The first Falstaff, according to Malone,
whom everybody has followed as to this point, was John Heminge
(1555-1630). After him came John Lowin (1572-1654), who is thought to
have acted the part in the presence of Charles I. His successor seems to
have been Lacy, who died in 1681. Next came Cartwright, and in 1699 or
1700 the great Betterton (1635-1710) assumed the fat knight, acting him
in both parts of the history and in the comedy. Genest records
twenty-two revivals of the first part of _Henry IV._ upon the London
stage, at five different theatres, between 1667 and 1826; fifteen
revivals of the second part between 1720 and 1821; and sixteen revivals
of _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ between 1667 and 1811. Many English
actors have played Falstaff since Betterton's time, an incomplete though
sufficiently ample list of them comprising Estcourt, 1704; F. Bullock,
1713; J. Evans and J. Hall, 1715; Mills, 1716; Quin, "dignity and
declamation," 1738; Berry, 1747; Love (whose true name was James Dance),
1762; Shuter, 1774; John Henderson, one of the greatest actors that ever
lived, 1774; Mrs. Webb (once only), 1776; Ryder, 1786; Palmer, 1788;
King, 1792; Fawcett, 1795; Stephen Kemble, who was so fat that he could
play it without stuffing or bladder, 1802; Blissett, 1803; George
Frederick Cooke, 1804; Bartley, 1812; Charles Kemble, 1824; Dowton,
1824; Elliston, 1826; and Samuel Phelps, 1846. The latest representative
of Falstaff in England was H. Beerbohm-Tree, who, although a man of
slender figure, contrived to simulate corpulence, and who manifested in
his acting a fine instinct as to the meaning of the character and
considerable resources of art in its expression, although the
predominant individuality and the copious luxuriance of Falstaff's rosy
and juicy humour were not within his reach. Upon the American stage the
part is practically disused; and this is a pity, seeing that a source of
great enjoyment and one of the most suggestive and fruitful topics that
exist in association with the study of human nature are thus in a great
degree sequestered from the public mind. Still it is better to have no
Falstaff on the stage than to have it encumbered with a bad one; and
certainly for the peculiar and exacting play of _Henry IV._ there are
now no actors left: at least they are not visible in America.
XVII.
ADA REHAN.
In browsing over the fragrant evergreen pages of Cibber's delightful
book about the stage, and especially in reflecting upon the beautiful
and brilliant women who, drawn by his magic pencil, dwell there,
perpetual, in life, colour, and charm, the reflective reader may perhaps
be prompted to remember that the royal line of stage beauties is not
extinct, and that stage heroines exist in the present day who are quite
as well worthy of commemoration as any that graced the period of Charles
the Second or of good Queen Anne. Our age, indeed, has no Cibber to
describe their loveliness and celebrate their achievements; but surely
if he were living at this hour that courtly, characteristic, and
sensuous writer--who saw so clearly and could portray so well the
peculiarities of the feminine nature--would not deem the period of Ellen
Terry and Marie Wilton, of Ada Rehan and Sarah Bernhardt and Genevieve
Ward, of Clara Morris and Jane Hading, unworthy of his pen. As often as
fancy ranges over those bright names and others that are kindred with
them--a glittering sisterhood of charms and talents--the regret must
arise that no literary artist with just the gallant spirit, the
chivalry, the sensuous appreciation, the fine insight, and the pictorial
touch of old Cibber is extant to perpetuate their glory. The hand that
sketched Elizabeth Barry so as to make her live forever in a few brief
lines, the hand that drew the fascinating and memorable portrait of
Susanna Mountfort ("Down goes her dainty diving body to the ground, as
if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own
attractions")--what might it not have done to preserve for the knowledge
of future generations the queens of the theatre who are crowned and
regnant to-day! Cibber could have caught and reflected the elusive charm
of such an actress as Ada Rehan. No touch less adroit and felicitous
than his can accomplish more than the suggestion of her peculiar
allurement, her originality, and her fascinating because sympathetic and
piquant mental and physical characteristics.