IN spite of “wind and weather” the people of Chicago crowded Haverly’s
Theatre, where Irving and Miss Terry appeared, night after night,
for two weeks; and the critics of the great papers of the West, the
“Times,” “Tribune,” “Inter-Ocean,” and “Daily News,” were equal to the
occasion. They showed a knowledge of their work, and an appreciation
of dramatic art, as illustrated by Irving, quite in keeping with the
spirit and ambition of their new and wonderful city. A news-collector,
having in view the prejudices of New York and London, as to the
literary and journalistic cultivation of Chicago, selected an
enthusiastic line or two from the Chicago notices of Irving and Miss
Terry, with a view to cast ridicule upon western criticism. This kind
of thing is common to news-collectors on both sides of the Atlantic. A
reporter desires to please his editor, and to cater for his public. In
London, believing that New York will be stirred with the report of a
hostile demonstration against an American artist, he makes the most of
the working of a rival American clique there against Lotta. New York
looks down loftily upon the art culture of Chicago, and London chiefly
knows Chicago through its great fire, borne with so much fortitude, and
for its “corners in pork.” The local caterer for the news columns of
New York and London panders to these ideas. The best-educated writer,
the neatest essayist, might appear foolish by cutting unconnected
sentences out of his work, and printing them alone.
In the journalistic literature of modern criticism there is nothing
better than some of the essays on Irving and his art that appeared in
the papers of Chicago and the West. In this connection it is worth
while pointing out that the absence of an international copyright
between England and America forces native writers, who otherwise would
be writing books, into the press. So long as publishers can steal or
buy “for a mere song” the works of popular English authors they will
not give a remunerative wage to the comparatively unknown writers
of their own country. Therefore, busy thinkers,—men and women with
literary inspirations devote themselves to journalism. It would be
surprising if, under these circumstances, the western press should
not here and there entertain and instruct its readers with literary
and critical work as much entitled to respect, and as worthy to live,
as the more pretentious and more happily and fortunately placed
literature of London, Boston, and New York. The American authors best
known to-day, and most praised in both hemispheres, have written for
the newspapers, and some of them had their training on the press:
Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Howells, Aldrich, John Hay, James, Habberton,
Winter, Bryant, Artemus Ward (I leave the reader to complete the list,
for I mention these name _en passant_ and at random); and how many
others are coming on through the columns of the newspapers to take up
the running, who shall say? The Chicago press often sacrifices dignity
and good taste in the headings with which it seeks to surprise and
excite its readers. But this is a feature of Western journalism that
will go out with the disappearance of the lower civilization to which,
in covering the entire ground of its circulation, it unhesitatingly
appeals. The London press is not free from the charge of pandering
to depraved tastes in its reports of sensational murders and divorce
cases, though the great body of its writers and contributors no doubt
sit down to their work with a higher sense of their responsibility to
the public than is felt by their American contemporaries.
“Do you think that is so?” Irving asked, when I was propounding this
view to an American colleague.
“Yes,” said the journalist addressed; “but I think our newspapers are
far more interesting than yours. At the same time you beat us in
essay-writing, for that is what your editorials are,—they are essays.”
“That is true,” said Irving, “and very fine some of them are.”
But to return to Chicago criticism,—I repeat that among the best and
most appreciative and most scholarly of the criticisms upon Irving
and his art, in England and America, are the writings of the Chicago
journalists,—McPhelin, of the “Tribune,” Barron, of the “Inter-Ocean,”
McConnell, of the “Times,” and Pierce, of the “Daily News.” The two
first mentioned are quite young men, not either of them more than
twenty-five. I am tempted to quote, in justification of this opinion,
and as an example of Chicago work, the following extracts from one of
several equally well-written criticisms in the “Tribune”:—
It is true that in every department of art the power of the
imagination has declined with the advance of knowledge. The Greek
actors went into convulsions through excess of passion. A Roman actor
in the midst of frenzied recitation struck a slave dead. If we have
not so much imagination as the ancients (a fact which we need not
regret), we have finer sensibilities, more penetrating insight, and a
truer consciousness of life’s mystery and meaning. The art of to-day,
if less exuberant than that of yesterday, is more serene, and, above
all, its methods are more truthful.
They are the great actors who have kept pace with the most advanced
thought, who have typified in their art the spirit of their age, who
have inaugurated eras. Conservatism is stagnation. In its infancy
the art of acting was monstrous exaggeration. This was natural, for
it was fostered in the childhood of the world, and children love
exaggeration. When, at last, the stilts and masks were thrown away,
exaggeration of speech was preserved. Actors recited their lines
in loud, monotonous sing-song. The ranters of our stage to-day are
the lineal descendants of these men. Le Kain in France, and Garrick
in England, made great strides towards natural methods in dramatic
representation. The reflective genius of Kemble, at the beginning
of this century, did much to complete the revolution in taste begun
by Garrick. Kean was noted for the splendor and the volume of his
power rather than for innovations in methods of expression. The
actors who followed him prided themselves on their adherence to
tradition,—tradition for which the rest of the world cared nothing.
These artists were content to stand still while the culture of the
century passed by them. At last there emerged out of obscurity, out of
the jostling multitude of mediocrity, a man who drank in the spirit
of his age,—a man who broke down the rotten barriers of tradition; a
man who caught the intensity, the poetry, the artistic realism of his
time; a man who inaugurated a new epoch in the art of acting. Final
success was achieved only after a long and bitter struggle against
conservative prejudices.
This man was Henry Irving.
In a broad and comprehensive way his position on the English stage has
been defined above. After witnessing his impersonations of Louis XI.
and Shylock, some conclusions may be drawn as to his genius and his
methods.
There is nothing phenomenal or meteoric about this new actor. Henry
Irving is not what Diderot would have us believe a great actor should
be, namely, a man without sensibility. Diderot said that sensibility
was organic weakness; that it crippled the intelligence, rendering
acting alternately warm and cold; and that the great actor should
have penetration, without any sensibility whatever. But Talma called
sensibility the faculty of exaltation which shakes an actor’s very
soul and which enables him to enter into the most tragic situations
and the most terrible of passions as if they were his own. In the
discussion of these conflicting theories Henry Irving has always taken
Talma’s view. He comes nearer realizing Diderot’s ideal of greatness
than any other actor of whom we have record.
His imagination is picturesque almost to the verge of sublimity. His
fancy is lively and apparently inexhaustible. When he unrolls before
us the varied-colored robe of life we look in vain to find one color
missing. It is a fancy that is not only vivid, but that is most
poetic. How touching is that return of Shylock to his lonely home,
walking wearily over the deserted bridge,—the bridge that echoed only
a moment before to the shouts and laughter of the merry maskers! The
old man walks to the house from which his daughter has fled, knocks
twice at the door, and looks up patiently and expectantly towards the
casement. Then the curtain falls. The people who do not applaud such a
tender touch as this should stop going to the theatre.
* * * * *
In saying that Irving is realistic, that word is not used in its
grosser sense. Realism should be the union of the ideal and the true.
There may be truth in Zola’s realism, but there is no ideality; for
ideality rejects the trivial, the vulgar, the earthly, and grasps the
essence. There may be ideality in Mrs. Burnett’s novels, but sentiment
is substituted for truth. The realism of Howells, for instance, is
a union of the ideal and the true. Irving’s ideals are in harmony
with the realistic tendency of literary thought, because they are
drawn from humanity, and not from Olympus. His are human, not heroic,
ideals. His Louis XI. is as true to nature as any impersonation can
be; and yet it is ideal, inasmuch as the essence of the character is
incorporated in action, and the baseness, the cruelty, the bigotry,
of the king are not repugnant. Here is the union of the ideal and the
true. If a man like Zola were playing Louis XI. he would shock and
disgust us by a portrayal not essential, but of superficial grossness.
In attempting to estimate Irving’s genius one cannot catalogue
qualities, but must indicate in a general way the nature of that
genius as it is judged from its manifestations. Irving cannot be
classified, for he is the leader of a new school of acting, as
Tennyson is the leader of a new school of poetry. They who in the
future will write of the great Victorian Era will find, perhaps, a
resemblance between the actor and the poet, not only because both
have opened up new fields of art, but because the chief characteristic
of each is originality in form. If Tennyson is the poet who should be
read by poets, Irving is the actor who should be studied by actors.
The idea intended to be conveyed is, that both Tennyson and Irving
excel in perfection of detail; in other words, of technique, or form.
The great poet who wishes to be heard in the future must give us the
polish and the intensity of Tennyson; the actor who would be great
must give us the polish and the intensity of Irving.
Any line in Irving’s acting will illustrate his intensity, by which is
meant the grasping of a fuller meaning than appears on the surface.
When Shylock is flattering Portia in the trial scene, exclaiming, “A
Daniel come to judgment,” etc., it is startling, the manner in which
he leans forward suddenly and whispers with venomous unction and
cunning the insidious compliment, “How much more elder art thou than
thy looks!” The words are very simple, but their effects depend on the
intensity of meaning with which they are uttered.
Praise has already been accorded Irving’s Shylock, because it is a
type of the medieval Jew, interpreted, not according to the traditions
of a bigoted age, but in the light of the liberality of the nineteenth
century. This creation is, perhaps, the best proof of the assertion
that Henry Irving has embodied in his art the spirit of his age, and
therein lies his greatness.
Several lessons American managers will draw from the success of
the Irving engagement. One is that Shakespearian plays must not be
mutilated to give prominence to one actor. Artistic harmony must not
be sacrificed to personal ambition. Another lesson is that an actor
must not undertake all alone to act a play; he must have a company
of actors, not a company of incompetent amateurs. A third is that
Shakespearian plays are the jewels of dramatic literature, and their
setting should surely be as rich as that given to the extravagant
productions that are doing so much to vitiate popular taste.
In conclusion it may be remarked that it is gratifying that Henry
Irving in his American tour has been regarded, not from a fashionable
or a national, but from a purely artistic stand-point. In art the
Spartan and the Athenian are brothers; the same love of beauty lives
in Rome and in Geneva, in London and in New York. In the sunshine of
art the national merges into the universal, and the mists of prejudice
die away upon the horizon of the world.