sweetness, and of original, inventive, and felicitous fancy, and some of
them are tenderly freighted with that indescribable but deeply affecting
undertone of pathetic sentiment which is a characteristic attribute of
Tennyson's poetry.
The characters in the comedy were creatures of flesh and blood to the
author, and they come out boldly, therefore, on the stage. Marian Lea is
a woman of the Rosalind order--handsome, noble, magnanimous,
unconventional, passionate in nature, but sufficient unto herself,
humorous, playful, and radiant with animal spirits. Ada Rehan embodied
her according to that ideal. The chief exaction of the part is
simplicity--which yet must not be allowed to degenerate into tameness.
The sweet affection of a daughter for her father, the coyness yet the
allurement of a girl for her lover, the refinement of high birth, the
blithe bearing and free demeanour of a child of the woods, and the
predominant dignity of purity and honour--those are the salient
attributes of the part. Ada Rehan struck the true note at the
outset--the note of buoyant health, rosy frolic, and sprightly
adventure--and she sustained it evenly and firmly to the last. Every eye
was pleased with the frank, careless, cheerful beauty of her presence,
and every ear was soothed and charmed with her fluent and expressive
delivery of the verse. In this, as in all of the important
representations that Ada Rehan has given, the delightful woman-quality
was conspicuously present. She can readily impersonate a boy. No actress
since Adelaide Neilson has done that so well. But the crowning
excellence of her art was its expression of essential womanhood. Her
acting was never trivial and it never obtruded the tedious element of
dry intellect. It refreshed--and the spectator was happier for having
seen her. Many pleasant thoughts were scattered in many minds by her
performance of Maid Marian, and no one who saw it will ever part with
the remembrance of it.
XIX.
ELLEN TERRY: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.
It was perhaps an auspicious portent, it certainly is an interesting
fact, that the first play that was ever acted in America at a regular
theatre and by a regular theatrical company was Shakespeare's comedy of
_The Merchant of Venice_. Such at least is the record made by William
Dunlap, the first historian of the American theatre, who names
Williamsburg, Virginia, as the place and September 5, 1752 as the date
of that production. It ought to be noted, however (so difficult is it to
settle upon any fact in this uncertain world), that the learned
antiquarian Judge C.P. Daly, fortified likewise by the scrupulously
accurate Ireland, dissents from Dunlap's statement and declares that
Cibber's alteration of Shakespeare's _Richard the Third_ was acted by a
regular company in a large room in Nassau Street, New York, at an
earlier date, namely, on March 5, 1750. All the same, it appears to
have been Shakespeare's mind that started the dramatic movement in
America. The American stage has undergone great changes since that time,
but both _The Merchant of Venice_ and _Richard the Third_ are still
acted, and in the _Merchant_, if not in _Richard_, the public interest
is still vital. In New York, under Edwin Booth's management, at the
Winter Garden theatre, January 28, 1867, and subsequently at Booth's
theatre, and in London, under Henry Irving's management, at the Lyceum
theatre, November 1, 1879, sumptuous productions of the _Merchant_ have
brilliantly marked the dramatic chronicle of our times. Discussion of
the great character of Shylock steadily proceeds and seems never to
weary either the disputants or the audience. The sentiment, the fancy,
and the ingenuity of artists are often expended not only upon the
austere, picturesque, and terrible figure of the vindictive Jew, but
upon the chief related characters in the comedy--upon Bassanio and
Portia, Gratiano and Nerissa, Lorenzo and Jessica, the princely and
pensive Antonio, the august Duke and his stately senators, and the
shrewd and humorous Gobbo. More than one painting has depicted the
ardent Lorenzo and his fugitive infidel as they might have looked on
that delicious summer night at Belmont when they saw "how the floor of
heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," and when the
blissful lover, radiant with happiness and exalted by the sublime,
illimitable, unfathomable spectacle of the star-strewn firmament,
murmured, in such heaven-like cadence, of the authentic music of heaven.
It is not to be denied that lovely words are spoken to Jessica, and that
almost equally lovely words are spoken by her. Essayists upon the
_Merchant_ have generally accepted her without a protest--so much do
youth and beauty in a woman count in the scale when weighed against duty
and integrity. There is no indication that Shylock was ever unjust or
unkind to Jessica. Whatever he may have been to others he seems always
to have been good to her; and she was the child of that lost Leah of his
youthful devotion whom he passionately loved and whom he mourned to the
last. Yet Jessica not only abandoned her father and his religion, but
robbed him of money and jewels (including the betrothal ring, the
turquoise, that her mother had given to him), when she fled with the
young Christian who had won her heart. It was a basely cruel act; but
probably some of the vilest and cruelest actions that are done in this
world are done by persons who are infatuated by the passion of love.
Mrs. Jameson, who in her beautiful essay on Portia extenuates the
conduct of Jessica, would have us believe that Shylock valued his
daughter far beneath his wealth, and therefore deserved to be deserted
and plundered by her; and she is so illogical as to derive his
sentiments on this subject from his delirious outcries of lamentation
after he learned of her predatory and ignominious flight. The argument
is not a good one. Fine phrases do not make wrong deeds right. It were
wiser to take Jessica for the handsome and voluptuous girl that
certainly she is, and to leave her rectitude out of the question.
Shakespeare in his drawing of her was true to nature, as he always is;
but the student who wants to know where Shakespeare's heart was placed
when he drew women must look upon creatures very different from Jessica.
The women that Shakespeare seems peculiarly to have loved are Imogen,
Cordelia, Isabella, Rosalind, and Portia--Rosalind, perhaps, most of
all; for although Portia is finer than Rosalind, it is extremely
probable that Shakespeare resembled his fellow-men sufficiently to have
felt the preference that Tom Moore long afterward expressed:
"Be an angel, my love, in the morning,
But, oh! be a woman to-night."
When Ellen Terry embodied Portia--in Henry Irving's magnificent revival
of _The Merchant of Venice_--the essential womanhood of that character
was for the first time in the modern theatre adequately interpreted and
conveyed. Upon many play-going observers indeed the wonderful wealth of
beauty that is in the part--its winsome grace, its incessant sparkle,
its alluring because piquant as well as luscious sweetness, its
impetuous ardour, its enchantment of physical equally with emotional
condition, its august morality, its perfect candour, and its noble
passion--came like a surprise. Did the great actress find those
attributes in the part (they asked themselves), or did she infuse them
into it? Previous representatives of Portia had placed the emphasis
chiefly, if not exclusively, upon morals and mind. The stage Portia of
the past has usually been a didactic lady, self-contained, formal,
conventional, and oratorical. Ellen Terry came, and Portia was figured
exactly as she lives in the pages of Shakespeare--an imperial and yet an
enchanting woman, dazzling in her beauty, royal in her dignity, as
ardent in temperament as she is fine in brain and various and splendid
in personal peculiarities and feminine charm. After seeing that
matchless impersonation it seemed strange that Portia should ever have
been represented in any other light, and it was furthermore felt that
the inferior, mechanical, utilitarian semblance of her could not again
be endured. Ellen Terry's achievement was a complete vindication of the
high view that Shakespearean study has almost always taken of that
character, and it finally discredited the old stage notion that Portia
is a type of decorum and declamation.
Aside from Hazlitt, who thought that Portia is affected and pedantic,
and who did not like her because he did not happen to appreciate her,
the best analytical thinkers about Shakespeare's works have taken the
high view of that character. Shakespeare himself certainly took it; for
aside from her own charming behaviour and delightful words it is to be
observed that everybody in the play who speaks of her at all speaks her
praise. It is only upon the stage that she has been made artificial,
prim, and preachy. That misrepresentation of her has, perhaps, been
caused, in part, by the practice long prevalent in our theatre of
cutting and compressing the play so as to make Shylock the chief figure
in it. In that way Portia is shorn of much of her splendour and her
meaning. The old theatrical records dwell almost exclusively upon
Shylock, and say little if anything about Portia. In Shakespeare's time,
no doubt, _The Merchant of Venice_ was acted as it is written, the
female persons in it being played by boys, or by men who could "speak
small." Alexander Cooke (1588-1614) played the light heroines of
Shakespeare while the poet was alive. All students of the subject are
aware that Burbage was the first Shylock, and that when he played the
part he wore a red wig, a red beard, and a long false nose. No record
exists as to the first Portia. The men who were acting female characters
upon the London stage when that institution was revived immediately
after the Restoration were Kynaston, James Nokes, Angel, William
Betterton, Mosely, and Floid. Kynaston, it is said, could act a woman so
well that when at length women themselves began to appear as actors it
was for some time doubted whether any one of them could equal him. The
account of his life, however, does not mention Portia as one of his
characters.
Indeed the play of _The Merchant of Venice_, after it languished out of
sight in that decadence of the stage which ensued upon the growth of the
Puritan movement in England, did not again come into use until it was
revived in Lord Landsdowne's alteration of it produced at the theatre in
Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1701, and even then it was grossly perverted.
Forty years later, however, on St. Valentine's Day 1741, at Drury Lane,
when Macklin regenerated the character of Shylock, the original piece
was restored to the theatre. Women in the meantime had come upon the
stage. The garrulous and delightful Pepys, who had seen Kynaston play a
female part, records in his marvellous Diary that he first saw women as
actors on January 3, 1661. Those were members of Killigrew's company,
which preceded that of Davenant by several months, if not by a year; and
therefore the common statement in theatrical books that the first woman
that ever appeared on the English stage was Mrs. Sanderson, of
Davenant's company, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, is erroneous: and indeed
the name of the first English actress is as much unknown as the name of
the first Portia. When Macklin restored Shakespeare's _Merchant of
Venice_ to the stage it is not likely that the character of Portia was
dwarfed, for its representative then was Kitty Clive, and that actress
was a person of strong will. With Clive the long list begins of the
Portias of the stage. She was thirty years old when she played the part
with Macklin, and it is probable that she played it with dignity and
certain that she played it with sparkling animation and piquant grace.
The German Ulrici, whose descriptive epithets for Portia are "roguish
and intellectual," would doubtless have found his ideal of the part
fulfilled in Clive. The Nerissa that night was Mrs. Pritchard, then also
thirty years old, but not so famous as she afterward became.
The greatest actress on the British stage in the eighteenth century
undoubtedly was Margaret Woffington (1719-1760). Sarah Siddons, to whom
the sceptre passed, was only five years old when Woffington died. Both
those brilliant names are associated with Portia. Augustin Daly's _Life
of Woffington_--the best life of her that has been written, and one of
the most sumptuous books that have been made--contains this reference to
her performance of that part: "All her critics agree that her
declamation was accurate and her gesture grace and nature combined; but
in tragic or even dramatic speeches her voice probably had its limits,
and in such scenes, being overtaxed, told against her. As Portia she
appeared to great advantage; but when Lorenzo says, 'This is the voice,
or I am much deceived, of Portia,' and Portia replies, 'He knows me, as
the blind man knows the cuckoo, by the bad voice,' the audience laughed
outright, and Woffington, conscious of her deficiency, with great
good-humour joined with them in their merriment." The incident is
mentioned in the _Table Talk_ (1825) of Richard Ryan, to which book Daly
refers. Mrs. Siddons made her first appearance on the London stage as
Portia December 29, 1775, and conspicuously failed in the part on that
occasion, but she became distinguished in it afterward; yet it is
probable that Mrs. Siddons expressed its nobility more than its
tenderness, and much more than its buoyant and glittering glee, which
was so entirely and beautifully given by Ellen Terry. After Peg
Woffington and before Mrs. Siddons the most conspicuous Portia was Mrs.
Dancer, whom Hugh Kelley, in his satirical composition of _Thespis_,
calls a "moon-eyed idiot,"--from which barbarous bludgeon phrase the
reader derives a hint as to her aspect. Some of the tones of Mrs.
Dancer's voice were so tender that no one could resist them. Spranger
Barry could not, for he married her, and after his death she became Mrs.
Crawford. Miss Maria Macklin, daughter of the first true Shylock of the
stage, acted Portia, April 13, 1776, with her father. She is recorded as
an accomplished woman but destitute of genius--in which predicament she
probably was not lonesome. On June 11, 1777 Portia was acted at the
Haymarket by Miss Barsanti, afterward Mrs. Lister, an actress who, since
she excelled in such parts as were customarily taken by Fanny Abington
(the distinct opposite of Portia-like characters), must have been
unsuited for it. The names of Miss Younge, Miss Farren, Miss E. Kemble,
Miss Ryder, Mrs. Pope, Miss De Camp, and Miss Murray are in the record
of the stage Portias that comes down to 1800. Probably the best of all
those Portias was Mrs. Pope.
The beautiful Mrs. Glover played Portia in 1809 at the Haymarket
theatre. Mrs. Ogilvie played it, with Macready as Shylock (his first
appearance in that part), on May 13, 1823. Those figures passed and left
no shadow. Two English actresses of great fame are especially associated
with Portia--Ellen Tree, afterward Mrs. Charles Kean, and Helen Faucit,
now Lady Martin; and no doubt their assumptions of the part should be
marked as exceptions from the hard, didactic, declamatory, perfunctory
method that has customarily characterised the Portia of the stage. Lady
Martin's written analysis of Portia is noble in thought and subtle and
tender in penetration and sympathy. Charlotte Cushman read the text
superbly, but she was much too formidable ever to venture on assuming
the character. Portia is a woman who deeply loves and deeply rejoices
and exults in her love, and she is never ashamed of her passion or of
her exultation in it; and she says the finest things about love that are
said by any of Shakespeare's women; the finest because, while supremely
passionate, the feeling in them is perfectly sane. It is as a lover that
Ellen Terry embodied her, and while she made her a perfect woman, in all
the attributes that fascinate, she failed not, in the wonderful trial
scene, to invest her with that fine light of celestial anger--that
momentary thrill of moral austerity--which properly appertains to the
character at the climax of a solemn and almost tragical situation.
On the American stage there have been many notable representatives of
the chief characters in _The Merchant of Venice_. In New York, when the
comedy was done at the old John Street theatre in 1773, Hallam was
Shylock and Mrs. Morris Portia. Twenty years afterward, at the same
house, Shylock was played by John Henry, and Portia by Mrs. Henry, while
the brilliant Hodgkinson appeared as Gratiano. Cooper, whose life has
been so well written by that ripe theatrical scholar Joseph N. Ireland,
in one of the books of the Dunlap Society, assumed Shylock in 1797 at
the theatre just then opened in Greenwich Street. The famous Miss
Brunton (then Mrs. Merry), was the Portia, and the cast included Moreton
as Bassanio, Warren as Antonio, Bernard as Gratiano, and Blissett as
Tubal. How far away and how completely lost and forgotten those once
distinguished and admired persons are! Yet Cooper in his day was
idolised: he had a fame as high, if not as widely spread, as that of
Henry Irving or Edwin Booth at present. William Creswick--lately dead at
an advanced age in London--was seen upon the New York stage as Shylock
in 1840; Macready in 1841; Charles Kean in 1845. With the latter, Ellen
Tree played Portia. Charles W. Couldock enacted Shylock on September 6,
1852, at the Castle Garden theatre, in a performance given to
commemorate the alleged centenary of the introduction of the drama into
America. The elder Wallack, the elder Booth, Edwin Forrest, G.V. Brooke,
George Vandenhoff, Wyzeman Marshall, and E.L. Davenport are among the
old local representatives of the Jew. Madam Ponisi used to play Portia,
and so did Mrs. Hoey.
In December 1858, when _The Merchant of Venice_ was finely revived at
Wallack's theatre, with the elder Wallack as Shylock, the cast included
Lester Wallack as Bassanio, John Brougham as Gratiano, A. W. Young--a
quaintly comic actor, too soon cut off--as Launcelot Gobbo, Mary
Gannon--the fascinating, the irresistible--as Nerissa, and handsome Mrs.
Sloan as Jessica. The eminent German actor Davison played Shylock, in
New York, in his own language; and many German actors, no one of them
comparable with him, have been seen in it since. Lawrence Barrett often
played it, and with remarkable force and feeling. The triumphs won in it
by Edwin Booth are within the remembrance of many playgoers of this
generation. When he last acted the Jew Helena Modjeska was associated
with him as Portia. Booth customarily ended the piece with the trial
scene, omitting the last act; and indeed that was long the stage custom;
but with the true Portia of Ellen Terry and a good cast in general the
last act went blithely and with superb effect. The comedy was not
written for Shylock alone. He is a tremendous identity, but he is not
the chief subject. The central theme is Portia and her love. That theme
takes up a large part of the play,--which is like a broad summer
landscape strewn with many-coloured flowers that flash and glitter in
the sun, while slowly a muttering thunder-storm gathers and lowers, and
presently sweeps overhead, casting one black shadow as it passes, and
leaving the fragrant and glistening plain all the brighter and sweeter
for the contrast with its defeated menace and vanishing gloom.
XX.
RICHARD MANSFIELD AS RICHARD THE THIRD.
The ideal of Richard that was expressed by this actor did not materially
differ from that which has been manifested by great tragic actors from
Garrick to Booth. He embodied a demoniac scoffer who, nevertheless, is a
human being. The infernal wickedness of Richard was shown to be impelled
by tremendous intellect but slowly enervated and ultimately thwarted and
ruined by the cumulative operation of remorse--corroding at the heart
and finally blasting the man with desolation and frenzy. That,
undoubtedly, was Shakespeare's design. But Richard Mansfield's
expression of that ideal differed from the expression to which the stage
has generally been accustomed, and in this respect his impersonation was
distinctive and original.
The old custom of playing Richard was to take the exaggerated statements
of the opening soliloquy in a literal sense, to provide him with a big
hump, a lame leg, and a fell of straight black hair, and to make him
walk in, scowling, with his lower lip protruded, and declare with
snarling vehemence and guttural vociferation his amiable purpose of
specious duplicity and miscellaneous slaughter. The opening speech,
which is in Shakespeare's juvenile manner--an orotund, verbose manner,
which perhaps he had caught from Marlowe, and which he outgrew and
abandoned--was thus utilised for displaying the character in a massed
aspect, as that of a loathsome hypocrite and sanguinary villain; and,
that being done, he was made to advance through about two-thirds of the
tragedy, airily yet ferociously slaying everybody who came in his way,
until at some convenient point, definable at the option of the actor, he
was suddenly smitten with a sufficient remorse to account for his
trepidation before and during the tent-scene; and thereafter he was
launched into combat like a meteoric butcher, all frenzy and all gore,
and killed, amid general acclamation, when he had fenced himself out of
breath.