(_London Magazine_, Feb., 1822)
Of all the actors who flourished in my time--a melancholy phrase
if taken aright, reader--Bensley had most of the swell of soul,
was greatest in the delivery of heroic conceptions, the emotions
consequent upon the presentment of a great idea to the fancy. He had
the true poetical enthusiasm--the rarest faculty among players. None
that I remember possessed even a portion of that fine madness which
he threw out in Hotspur's famous rant about glory, or the transports
of the Venetian incendiary at the vision of the fired city.[1] His
voice had the dissonance, and at times the inspiriting effect of
the trumpet. His gait was uncouth and stiff, but no way embarrassed
by affectation; and the thorough-bred gentleman was uppermost in
every movement. He seized the moment of passion with the greatest
truth; like a faithful clock never striking before the time; never
anticipating or leading you to anticipate. He was totally destitute
of trick and artifice. He seemed come upon the stage to do the poet's
message simply, and he did it with as genuine fidelity as the nuncios
in Homer deliver the errands of the gods. He let the passion or the
sentiment do its own work without prop or bolstering. He would have
scorned to mountebank it; and betrayed none of that _cleverness_ which
is the bane of serious acting. For this reason, his Iago was the only
endurable one which I remember to have seen. No spectator from his
action could divine more of his artifice than Othello was supposed to
do. His confessions in soliloquy alone put you in possession of the
mystery. There were no bye-intimations to make the audience fancy
their own discernment so much greater than that of the Moor--who
commonly stands like a great helpless mark set up for mine Ancient,
and a quantity of barren spectators, to shoot their bolts at. The Iago
of Bensley did not go to work so grossly. There was a triumphant tone
about the character, natural to a general consciousness of power; but
none of that petty vanity which chuckles and cannot contain itself
upon any little successful stroke of its knavery--which is common with
your small villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did not
clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting his wits at a
child, and winking all the while at other children who are mightily
pleased at being let into the secret; but a consummate villain
entrapping a noble nature into toils, against which no discernment was
available, where the manner was as fathomless as the purpose seemed
dark, and without motive. The part of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night,
was performed by Bensley, with a richness and a dignity of which (to
judge from some recent castings of that character) the very tradition
must be worn out from the stage. No manager in those days would have
dreamed of giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons: when Bensley
was occasionally absent from the theatre, John Kemble thought it
no derogation to succeed to the part. Malvolio is not essentially
ludicrous. He becomes comic but by accident. He is cold, austere,
repelling; but dignified, consistent, and, for what appears, rather of
an over-stretched morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan;
and he might have worn his gold chain with honour in one of our old
round-head families, in the service of a Lambert, or a Lady Fairfax.
But his morality and his manners are misplaced in Illyria. He is
opposed to the proper _levities_ of the piece, and falls in the
unequal contest. Still his pride, or his gravity, (call it which you
will) is inherent, and native to the man, not mock or affected, which
latter only are the fit objects to excite laughter. His quality is at
the best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible. His bearing
is lofty, a little above his station, but probably not much above
his deserts. We see no reason why he should not have been brave,
honourable, accomplished. His careless committal of the ring to the
ground (which he was commissioned to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a
generosity of birth and feeling.[2] His dialect on all occasions is
that of a gentleman, and a man of education. We must not confound him
with the eternal low steward of comedy. He is master of the household
to a great Princess, a dignity probably conferred upon him for other
respects than age or length of service.[3] Olivia, at the first
indication of his supposed madness, declares that she "would not
have him miscarry for half of her dowry." Does this look as if
the character was meant to appear little or insignificant? Once,
indeed, she accuses him to his face--of what?--of being "sick of
self-love,"--but with a gentleness and considerateness which could
not have been, if she had not thought that this particular infirmity
shaded some virtues. His rebuke to the knight, and his sottish
revellers, is sensible and spirited; and when we take into
consideration the unprotected condition of his mistress, and the
strict regard with which her state of real or dissembled mourning
would draw the eyes of the world upon her house-affairs, Malvolio
might feel the honour of the family in some sort in his keeping, as
it appears not that Olivia had any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look
to it--for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice respects at the buttery
hatch. That Malvolio was meant to be represented as possessing some
estimable qualities, the expression of the Duke in his anxiety to
have him reconciled, almost infers: "Pursue him, and intreat him to
a peace." Even in his abused state of chains and darkness, a sort of
greatness seems never to desert him. He argues highly and well with
the supposed Sir Topas,[4] and philosophizes gallantly upon his straw.
There must have been some shadow of worth about the man; he must have
been something more than a mere vapour--a thing of straw, or Jack in
office--before Fabian and Maria could have ventured sending him upon a
courting errand to Olivia. There was some consonancy (as he would say)
in the undertaking, or the jest would have been too bold even for that
house of misrule. There was "example for it," said Malvolio; "the lady
of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe." Possibly too he
might remember--for it must have happened about his time--an instance
of a Duchess of Malfy (a countrywoman of Olivia's, and her equal at
least) descending from her state to court her steward--
The misery of them that are born great!
They are forced to woo, because none dare woo them.
To be sure the lady was not very tenderly handled for it by her
brothers in the sequel, but their vengeance appears to have been
whetted rather by her presumption in re-marrying at all, (when they
had meditated the keeping of her fortune in their family) than by her
choice of an inferior, of Antonio's noble merits especially, for her
husband; and, besides, Olivia's brother was just dead. Malvolio was a
man of reading, and possibly reflected upon these lines, or something
like them in his own country poetry--
--Ceremony has made many fools.
It is as easy way unto a duchess
As to a hatted dame, if her love answer:
But that by timorous honours, pale respects,
Idle degrees of fear, men make their ways
Hard of themselves.
"'Tis but fortune, all is fortune. Maria once told me, she did affect
me; and I have heard herself come thus near, that, should she fancy,
it should be one of my complexion." If here was no encouragement, the
devil is in it. I wish we could get at the private history of all
this. Between the Countess herself, serious or dissembling--for one
hardly knows how to apprehend this fantastical great lady--and the
practices of that delicious little piece of mischief, Maria--
The lime twigs laid
By Machiavel the waiting maid--
the man might well be rapt into a fool's paradise.
Bensley threw over the part an air of Spanish loftiness. He looked,
spake, and moved like an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce,
opinionated, but his superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a
sense of worth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb. It was
big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it was hollow. You
might wish to see it taken down, but you felt that it was upon an
elevation. He was magnificent from the outset; but when the decent
sobrieties of the character began to give way, and the poison of
self-love in his conceit of the Countess's affection gradually to
work, you would have thought that the hero of La Mancha in person
stood before you. How he went smiling to himself! with what ineffable
carelessness would he twirl his gold chain! what a dream it was! you
were infected with the illusion, and did not wish that it should be
removed! you had no room for laughter! if an unseasonable reflection
of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable
infirmity of man's nature, that can lay him open to such frenzies--but
in truth you rather admired than pitied the lunacy while it
lasted--you felt that an hour of such mistake was worth an age with
the eyes open. Who would not wish to live but for a day in the conceit
of such a lady's love as Olivia? Why, the Duke would have given his
principality but for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or waking, to
have been so deluded. The man seemed to tread upon air, to taste
manna, to walk with his head in the clouds, to mate Hyperion. O! shake
not the castles of his pride--endure yet for a season, bright moments
of confidence--"stand still ye watches of the element," that Malvolio
may be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord--but fate and retribution say
no--I hear the mischievous titter of Maria--the witty taunts of Sir
Toby--the still more insupportable triumph of the foolish knight--the
counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked--and "thus the whirligig of time,"
as the true clown hath it, "brings in his revenges." I confess that I
never saw the catastrophe of this character while Bensley played it
without a kind of tragic interest. There was good foolery too. Few now
remember Dodd. What an Aguecheek the stage lost in him! Lovegrove,
who came nearest to the old actors, revived the character some few
seasons ago, and made it sufficiently grotesque; but Dodd was _it_,
as it came out of nature's hands. It might be said to remain _in
puris naturalibus_. In expressing slowness of apprehension this actor
surpassed all others. You could see the first dawn of an idea stealing
slowly over his countenance, climbing up by little and little, with
a painful process, till it cleared up at last to the fulness of a
twilight conception--its highest meridian. He seemed to keep back
his intellect, as some have had the power to retard their pulsation.
The balloon takes less time in filling, than it took to cover
the expansion of his broad moony face over all its quarters with
expression. A glimmer of understanding would appear in a corner of his
eye, and for lack of fuel go out again. A part of his forehead would
catch a little intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it to
the remainder.
I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than five and twenty
years ago that walking in the gardens of Gray's Inn--they were then
far finer than they are now--the accursed Verulam Buildings had not
encroached upon all the east side of them, cutting out delicate green
crankles, and shouldering away one of two of the stately alcoves
of the terrace--the survivor stands gaping and relationless as if
it remembered its brother--they are still the best gardens of any
of the Inns of Court, my beloved Temple not forgotten--have the
gravest character, their aspect being altogether reverend and
law-breathing--Bacon has left the impress of his foot upon their
gravel walks--taking my afternoon solace on a summer day upon the
aforesaid terrace, a comely sad personage came towards me, whom from
his grave air and deportment I judged to be one of the old Benchers
of the Inn. He had a serious thoughtful forehead, and seemed to be
in meditations of mortality. As I have an instinctive awe of old
Benchers, I was passing him with that sort of subindicative token of
respect which one is apt to demonstrate towards a venerable stranger,
and which rather denotes an inclination to greet him than any
positive motion of the body to that effect--a species of humility and
will-worship which I observe nine times out of ten rather puzzles
than pleases the person it is offered to--when the face turning full
upon me strangely identified itself with that of Dodd. Upon close
inspection I was not mistaken. But could this sad thoughtful
countenance be the same vacant face of folly which I had hailed so
often under circumstances of gaiety; which I had never seen without
a smile, or recognized but as the usher of mirth; that looked out
so formally flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so
impotently busy in Backbite; so blankly divested of all meaning, or
resolutely expressive of none, in Acres, in Fribble, and a thousand
agreeable impertinences? Was this the face--full of thought and
carefulness--that had so often divested itself at will of every trace
of either to give me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for two or
three hours at least of its furrows? Was this the face--manly, sober,
intelligent,--which I had so often despised, made mocks at, made merry
with? The remembrance of the freedoms which I had taken with it came
upon me with a reproach of insult. I could have asked it pardon. I
thought it looked upon me with a sense of injury. There is something
strange as well as sad in seeing actors--your pleasant fellows
particularly--subjected to and suffering the common lot--their
fortunes, their casualties, their deaths, seem to belong to the scene,
their actions to be amenable to poetic justice only. We can hardly
connect them with more awful responsibilities. The death of this fine
actor took place shortly after this meeting. He had quitted the stage
some months; and, as I learned afterwards, had been in the habit of
resorting daily to these gardens almost to the day of his decease. In
these serious walks probably he was divesting himself of many scenic
and some real vanities--weaning himself from the frivolities of the
lesser and the greater theatre--doing gentle penance for a life of no
very reprehensible fooleries,--taking off by degrees the buffoon mask
which he might feel he had worn too long--and rehearsing for a more
solemn cast of part. Dying he "put on the weeds of Dominic."[5]
The elder Palmer (of stage-treading celebrity) commonly played Sir
Toby in those days; but there is a solidity of wit in the jests of
that half-Falstaff which he did not quite fill out. He was as much too
showy as Moody (who sometimes took the part) was dry and sottish. In
sock or buskin there was an air of swaggering gentility about Jack
Palmer. He was a _gentleman_ with a slight infusion of _the footman_.
His brother Bob (of recenter memory) who was his shadow in every thing
while he lived, and dwindled into less than a shadow afterwards--was
a _gentleman_ with a little stronger infusion of the _latter
ingredient_; that was all. It is amazing how a little of the more or
less makes a difference in these things. When you saw Bobby in the
Duke's Servant,[6] you said, what a pity such a pretty fellow was only
a servant. When you saw Jack figuring in Captain Absolute, you thought
you could trace his promotion to some lady of quality who fancied the
handsome fellow in his top-knot, and had bought him a commission.
Therefore Jack in Dick Amlet was insuperable.
Jack had two voices,--both plausible, hypocritical, and insinuating;
but his secondary or supplemental voice still more decisively
histrionic than his common one. It was reserved for the spectator; and
the dramatis personæ were supposed to know nothing at all about it.
The _lies_ of young Wilding, and the _sentiments_ in Joseph Surface,
were thus marked out in a sort of italics to the audience. This secret
correspondence with the company before the curtain (which is the
bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely happy effect in some
kinds of comedy, in the more highly artificial comedy of Congreve
or of Sheridan especially, where the absolute sense of reality (so
indispensable to scenes of interest) is not required, or would rather
interfere to diminish your pleasure. The fact is, you do not believe
in such characters as Surface--the villain of artificial comedy--even
while you read or see them. If you did, they would shock and not
divert you. When Ben, in Love for Love, returns from sea, the
following exquisite dialogue occurs at his first meeting with his
father--
_Sir Sampson_. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, since I saw
thee.
_Ben_. Ey, ey, been! Been far enough, an that be all--Well father, and
how do all at home? how does brother Dick, and brother Val?
_Sir Sampson_. Dick! body o' me, Dick has been dead these two years. I
writ you word when you were at Leghorn.
_Ben_. Mess, that's true; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, as you
say--Well, and how?--I have a many questions to ask you--
Here is an instance of insensibility which in real life would be
revolting, or rather in real life could not have co-existed with the
warm-hearted temperament of the character. But when you read it in the
spirit with which such playful selections and specious combinations
rather than strict _metaphrases_ of nature should be taken, or when
you saw Bannister play it, it neither did, nor does wound the moral
sense at all. For what is Ben--the pleasant sailor which Bannister
gave us--but a piece of a satire--a creation of Congreve's fancy--a
dreamy combination of all the accidents of a sailor's character--his
contempt of money--his credulity to women--with that necessary
estrangement from home which it is just within the verge of
credibility to suppose _might_ produce such an hallucination as is
here described. We never think the worse of Ben for it, or feel it
as a stain upon his character. But when an actor comes, and instead
of the delightful phantom--the creature dear to half-belief--which
Bannister exhibited--displays before our eyes a downright concretion
of a Wapping sailor--a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar--and nothing
else--when instead of investing it with a delicious confusedness of
the head, and a veering undirected goodness of purpose--he gives to
it a downright daylight understanding, and a full consciousness of its
actions; thrusting forward the sensibilities of the character with a
pretence as if it stood upon nothing else, and was to be judged by
them alone--we feel the discord of the thing; the scene is disturbed;
a real man has got in among the dramatis personæ, and puts them out.
We want the sailor turned out. We feel that his true place is not
behind the curtain, but in the first or second gallery.
(_To be resumed occasionally_.)