Transcribed from the 1908 Methuen and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
REVIEWS
To Mrs. CAREW
The apparently endless difficulties against which I have contended, and
am contending, in the management of Oscar Wilde's literary and dramatic
property have brought me many valued friends; but only one friendship
which seemed as endless; one friend's kindness which seemed to annul the
disappointments of eight years. That is why I venture to place your name
on this volume with the assurance of the author himself who bequeathed to
me his works and something of his indiscretion.
ROBERT ROSS
May 12th, 1908.
INTRODUCTION
The editor of writings by any author not long deceased is censured sooner
or later for his errors of omission or commission. I have decided to err
on the side of commission and to include in the uniform edition of
Wilde's works everything that could be identified as genuine. Wilde's
literary reputation has survived so much that I think it proof against
any exhumation of articles which he or his admirers would have preferred
to forget. As a matter of fact, I believe this volume will prove of
unusual interest; some of the reviews are curiously prophetic; some are,
of course, biassed by prejudice hostile or friendly; others are conceived
in the author's wittiest and happiest vein; only a few are colourless.
And if, according to Lord Beaconsfield, the verdict of a continental
nation may be regarded as that of posterity, Wilde is a much greater
force in our literature than even friendly contemporaries ever supposed
he would become.
It should be remembered, however, that at the time when most of these
reviews were written Wilde had published scarcely any of the works by
which his name has become famous in Europe, though the protagonist of the
aesthetic movement was a well-known figure in Paris and London. Later he
was recognised--it would be truer to say he was ignored--as a young man
who had never fulfilled the high promise of a distinguished university
career although his volume of Poems had reached its fifth edition, an
unusual event in those days. He had alienated a great many of his Oxford
contemporaries by his extravagant manner of dress and his methods of
courting publicity. The great men of the previous generation, Wilde's
intellectual peers, with whom he was in artistic sympathy, looked on him
askance. Ruskin was disappointed with his former pupil, and Pater did
not hesitate to express disapprobation to private friends; while he
accepted incense from a disciple, he distrusted the thurifer.
From a large private correspondence in my possession I gather that it
was, oddly enough, in political and social centres that Wilde's amazing
powers were rightly appreciated and where he was welcomed as the most
brilliant of living talkers. Before he had published anything except his
Poems, the literary dovecots regarded him with dislike, and when he began
to publish essays and fairy stories, the attitude was not changed; it was
merely emphasised in the public press. His first dramatic success at the
St. James's Theatre gave Wilde, of course, a different position, and the
dislike became qualified with envy. Some of the younger men indeed were
dazzled, but with few exceptions their appreciation was expressed in an
unfortunate manner. It is a consolation or a misfortune that the wrong
kind of people are too often correct in their prognostications of the
future; the far-seeing are also the foolish.
From these reviews which illustrate the middle period of Wilde's meteoric
career, between the aesthetic period and the production of Lady
Windermere's Fan, we learn _his_ opinion of the contemporaries who
thought little enough of him. That he revised many of these opinions,
notably those that are harsh, I need scarcely say; and after his release
from prison he lost much of his admiration for certain writers. I would
draw special attention to those reviews of Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Wilfrid
Blunt, Mr. Alfred Austin, the Hon. John Collier, Mr. Brander Matthews and
Sir Edwin Arnold, Rossetti, Pater, Henley and Morris; they have more
permanent value than the others, and are in accord with the wiser
critical judgments of to-day.
For leave to republish the articles from the Pall Mall Gazette I am
indebted to Mr. William Waldorf Astor, the owner of the copyrights, by
arrangement with whom they are here reprinted. I have to thank most
cordially Messrs. Cassell and Company for permitting me to reproduce the
editorial articles and reviews contributed by Wilde to the Woman's World;
the editor and proprietor of the Nation for leave to include the two
articles from the Speaker; and the editor of the Saturday Review for a
similar courtesy. For identifying many of the anonymous articles I am
indebted to Mr. Arthur Humphreys, not the least of his kindnesses in
assisting the publication of this edition; for the trouble of editing,
arrangement, and collecting of material I am under obligations to Mr.
Stuart Mason for which this acknowledgment is totally inadequate.
ROBERT ROSS
REFORM CLUB,
May 12th, 1908
DINNERS AND DISHES
(Pall Mall Gazette, March 7, 1885.)
A man can live for three days without bread, but no man can live for one
day without poetry, was an aphorism of Baudelaire. You can live without
pictures and music but you cannot live without eating, says the author of
Dinners and Dishes; and this latter view is, no doubt, the more popular.
Who, indeed, in these degenerate days would hesitate between an ode and
an omelette, a sonnet and a salmis? Yet the position is not entirely
Philistine; cookery is an art; are not its principles the subject of
South Kensington lectures, and does not the Royal Academy give a banquet
once a year? Besides, as the coming democracy will, no doubt, insist on
feeding us all on penny dinners, it is well that the laws of cookery
should be explained: for were the national meal burned, or badly
seasoned, or served up with the wrong sauce a dreadful revolution might
follow.
Under these circumstances we strongly recommend Dinners and Dishes to
every one: it is brief and concise and makes no attempt at eloquence,
which is extremely fortunate. For even on ortolans who could endure
oratory? It also has the advantage of not being illustrated. The
subject of a work of art has, of course, nothing to do with its beauty,
but still there is always something depressing about the coloured
lithograph of a leg of mutton.
As regards the author's particular views, we entirely agree with him on
the important question of macaroni. 'Never,' he says, 'ask me to back a
bill for a man who has given me a macaroni pudding.' Macaroni is
essentially a savoury dish and may be served with cheese or tomatoes but
never with sugar and milk. There is also a useful description of how to
cook risotto--a delightful dish too rarely seen in England; an excellent
chapter on the different kinds of salads, which should be carefully
studied by those many hostesses whose imaginations never pass beyond
lettuce and beetroot; and actually a recipe for making Brussels sprouts
eatable. The last is, of course, a masterpiece.
The real difficulty that we all have to face in life is not so much the
science of cookery as the stupidity of cooks. And in this little
handbook to practical Epicureanism the tyrant of the English kitchen is
shown in her proper light. Her entire ignorance of herbs, her passion
for extracts and essences, her total inability to make a soup which is
anything more than a combination of pepper and gravy, her inveterate
habit of sending up bread poultices with pheasants,--all these sins and
many others are ruthlessly unmasked by the author. Ruthlessly and
rightly. For the British cook is a foolish woman who should be turned
for her iniquities into a pillar of salt which she never knows how to
use.
But our author is not local merely. He has been in many lands; he has
eaten back-hendl at Vienna and kulibatsch at St. Petersburg; he has had
the courage to face the buffalo veal of Roumania and to dine with a
German family at one o'clock; he has serious views on the right method of
cooking those famous white truffles of Turin of which Alexandre Dumas was
so fond; and, in the face of the Oriental Club, declares that Bombay
curry is better than the curry of Bengal. In fact he seems to have had
experience of almost every kind of meal except the 'square meal' of the
Americans. This he should study at once; there is a great field for the
philosophic epicure in the United States. Boston beans may be dismissed
at once as delusions, but soft-shell crabs, terrapin, canvas-back ducks,
blue fish and the pompono of New Orleans are all wonderful delicacies,
particularly when one gets them at Delmonico's. Indeed, the two most
remarkable bits of scenery in the States are undoubtedly Delmonico's and
the Yosemite Valley; and the former place has done more to promote a good
feeling between England and America than anything else has in this
century.
We hope the 'Wanderer' will go there soon and add a chapter to Dinners
and Dishes, and that his book will have in England the influence it
deserves. There are twenty ways of cooking a potato and three hundred
and sixty-five ways of cooking an egg, yet the British cook, up to the
present moment, knows only three methods of sending up either one or the
other.
Dinners and Dishes. By 'Wanderer.' (Simpkin and Marshall.)
A MODERN EPIC
(Pall Mall Gazette, March 13, 1885.)
In an age of hurry like ours the appearance of an epic poem more than
five thousand lines in length cannot but be regarded as remarkable.
Whether such a form of art is the one most suited to our century is a
question. Edgar Allan Poe insisted that no poem should take more than an
hour to read, the essence of a work of art being its unity of impression
and of effect. Still, it would be difficult to accept absolutely a canon
of art which would place the Divine Comedy on the shelf and deprive us of
the Bothwell of Mr. Swinburne. A work of art is to be estimated by its
beauty not by its size, and in Mr. Wills's Melchior there is beauty of a
rich and lofty character.
Remembering the various arts which have yielded up their secrets to Mr.
Wills, it is interesting to note in his poems, here the picturesque
vision of the painter, here the psychology of the novelist, and here the
playwright's sense of dramatic situation. Yet these things, which are
the elements of his work of art though we arbitrarily separate them in
criticism, are in the work itself blended and made one by the true
imaginative and informing power. For Melchior is not a piece of poetic
writing merely; it is that very rare thing, a poem.
It is dedicated to Mr. Robert Browning, not inappropriately, as it deals
with that problem of the possible expression of life through music, the
value of which as a motive in poetry Mr. Browning was the first to see.
The story is this. In one of the little Gothic towns of Northern Germany
lives Melchior, a dreamer and a musician. One night he rescues by chance
a girl from drowning and lodges her in a convent of holy women. He grows
to love her and to see in her the incarnation of that St. Cecily whom,
with mystic and almost mediaeval passion, he had before adored. But a
priest separates them, and Melchior goes mad. An old doctor, who makes a
study of insanity, determines to try and cure him, and induces the girl
to appear to him, disguised as St. Cecily herself, while he sits brooding
at the organ. Thinking her at first to be indeed the Saint he had
worshipped, Melchior falls in ecstasy at her feet, but soon discovering
the trick kills her in a sudden paroxysm of madness. The horror of the
act restores his reason; but, with the return of sanity, the dreams and
visions of the artist's nature begin to vanish; the musician sees the
world not through a glass but face to face, and he dies just as the world
is awakening to his music.
The character of Melchior, who inherits his music from his father, and
from his mother his mysticism, is extremely fascinating as a
psychological study. Mr. Wills has made a most artistic use of that
scientific law of heredity which has already strongly influenced the
literature of this century, and to which we owe Dr. Holmes's fantastic
Elsie Venner, Daniel Deronda--that dullest of masterpieces--and the
dreadful Rougon-Macquart family with whose misdeeds M. Zola is never
weary of troubling us.
Blanca, the girl, is a somewhat slight sketch, but then, like Ophelia,
she is merely the occasion of a tragedy and not its heroine. The rest of
the characters are most powerfully drawn and create themselves simply and
swiftly before us as the story proceeds, the method of the practised
dramatist being here of great value.
As regards the style, we notice some accidental assonances of rhyme which
in an unrhymed poem are never pleasing; and the unfinished short line of
five or six syllables, however legitimate on the stage where the actor
himself can make the requisite musical pause, is not a beauty in a blank
verse poem, and is employed by Mr. Wills far too frequently. Still,
taken as a whole, the style has the distinction of noble melody.
There are many passages which, did space permit us, we would like to
quote, but we must content ourselves with saying that in Melchior we find
not merely pretty gems of rich imagery and delicate fancy, but a fine
imaginative treatment of many of the most important modern problems,
notably of the relation of life to art. It is a pleasure to herald a
poem which combines so many elements of strength and beauty.
Melchior. By W. G. Wills, author of Charles I., Olivia, etc., and writer
of Claudian. (Macmillan and Co.)
SHAKESPEARE ON SCENERY
(Dramatic Review, March 14, 1885.)
I have often heard people wonder what Shakespeare would say, could he see
Mr. Irving's production of his Much Ado About Nothing, or Mr. Wilson
Barrett's setting of his Hamlet. Would he take pleasure in the glory of
the scenery and the marvel of the colour? Would he be interested in the
Cathedral of Messina, and the battlements of Elsinore? Or would he be
indifferent, and say the play, and the play only, is the thing?
Speculations like these are always pleasurable, and in the present case
happen to be profitable also. For it is not difficult to see what
Shakespeare's attitude would be; not difficult, that is to say, if one
reads Shakespeare himself, instead of reading merely what is written
about him.
Speaking, for instance, directly, as the manager of a London theatre,
through the lips of the chorus in Henry V., he complains of the smallness
of the stage on which he has to produce the pageant of a big historical
play, and of the want of scenery which obliges him to cut out many of its
most picturesque incidents, apologises for the scanty number of supers
who had to play the soldiers, and for the shabbiness of the properties,
and, finally, expresses his regret at being unable to bring on real
horses.
In the Midsummer Night's Dream, again, he gives us a most amusing picture
of the straits to which theatrical managers of his day were reduced by
the want of proper scenery. In fact, it is impossible to read him
without seeing that he is constantly protesting against the two special
limitations of the Elizabethan stage--the lack of suitable scenery, and
the fashion of men playing women's parts, just as he protests against
other difficulties with which managers of theatres have still to contend,
such as actors who do not understand their words; actors who miss their
cues; actors who overact their parts; actors who mouth; actors who gag;
actors who play to the gallery, and amateur actors.
And, indeed, a great dramatist, as he was, could not but have felt very
much hampered at being obliged continually to interrupt the progress of a
play in order to send on some one to explain to the audience that the
scene was to be changed to a particular place on the entrance of a
particular character, and after his exit to somewhere else; that the
stage was to represent the deck of a ship in a storm, or the interior of
a Greek temple, or the streets of a certain town, to all of which
inartistic devices Shakespeare is reduced, and for which he always amply
apologises. Besides this clumsy method, Shakespeare had two other
substitutes for scenery--the hanging out of a placard, and his
descriptions. The first of these could hardly have satisfied his passion
for picturesqueness and his feeling for beauty, and certainly did not
satisfy the dramatic critic of his day. But as regards the description,
to those of us who look on Shakespeare not merely as a playwright but as
a poet, and who enjoy reading him at home just as much as we enjoy seeing
him acted, it may be a matter of congratulation that he had not at his
command such skilled machinists as are in use now at the Princess's and
at the Lyceum. For had Cleopatra's barge, for instance, been a structure
of canvas and Dutch metal, it would probably have been painted over or
broken up after the withdrawal of the piece, and, even had it survived to
our own day, would, I am afraid, have become extremely shabby by this
time. Whereas now the beaten gold of its poop is still bright, and the
purple of its sails still beautiful; its silver oars are not tired of
keeping time to the music of the flutes they follow, nor the Nereid's
flower-soft hands of touching its silken tackle; the mermaid still lies
at its helm, and still on its deck stand the boys with their coloured
fans. Yet lovely as all Shakespeare's descriptive passages are, a
description is in its essence undramatic. Theatrical audiences are far
more impressed by what they look at than by what they listen to; and the
modern dramatist, in having the surroundings of his play visibly
presented to the audience when the curtain rises, enjoys an advantage for
which Shakespeare often expresses his desire. It is true that
Shakespeare's descriptions are not what descriptions are in modern
plays--accounts of what the audience can observe for themselves; they are
the imaginative method by which he creates in the mind of the spectators
the image of that which he desires them to see. Still, the quality of
the drama is action. It is always dangerous to pause for
picturesqueness. And the introduction of self-explanatory scenery
enables the modern method to be far more direct, while the loveliness of
form and colour which it gives us, seems to me often to create an
artistic temperament in the audience, and to produce that joy in beauty
for beauty's sake, without which the great masterpieces of art can never
be understood, to which, and to which only, are they ever revealed.
To talk of the passion of a play being hidden by the paint, and of
sentiment being killed by scenery, is mere emptiness and folly of words.
A noble play, nobly mounted, gives us double artistic pleasure. The eye
as well as the ear is gratified, and the whole nature is made exquisitely
receptive of the influence of imaginative work. And as regards a bad
play, have we not all seen large audiences lured by the loveliness of
scenic effect into listening to rhetoric posing as poetry, and to
vulgarity doing duty for realism? Whether this be good or evil for the
public I will not here discuss, but it is evident that the playwright, at
any rate, never suffers.
Indeed, the artist who really has suffered through the modern mounting of
plays is not the dramatist at all, but the scene-painter proper. He is
rapidly being displaced by the stage-carpenter. Now and then, at Drury
Lane, I have seen beautiful old front cloths let down, as perfect as
pictures some of them, and pure painter's work, and there are many which
we all remember at other theatres, in front of which some dialogue was
reduced to graceful dumb-show through the hammer and tin-tacks behind.
But as a rule the stage is overcrowded with enormous properties, which
are not merely far more expensive and cumbersome than scene-paintings,
but far less beautiful, and far less true. Properties kill perspective.
A painted door is more like a real door than a real door is itself, for
the proper conditions of light and shade can be given to it; and the
excessive use of built up structures always makes the stage too glaring,
for as they have to be lit from behind, as well as from the front, the
gas-jets become the absolute light of the scene instead of the means
merely by which we perceive the conditions of light and shadow which the
painter has desired to show us.
So, instead of bemoaning the position of the playwright, it were better
for the critics to exert whatever influence they may possess towards
restoring the scene-painter to his proper position as an artist, and not
allowing him to be built over by the property man, or hammered to death
by the carpenter. I have never seen any reason myself why such artists
as Mr. Beverley, Mr. Walter Hann, and Mr. Telbin should not be entitled
to become Academicians. They have certainly as good a claim as have many
of those R.A.'s whose total inability to paint we can see every May for a
shilling.
And lastly, let those critics who hold up for our admiration the
simplicity of the Elizabethan Stage, remember that they are lauding a
condition of things against which Shakespeare himself, in the spirit of a
true artist, always strongly protested.
A BEVY OF POETS
(Pall Mall Gazette, March 27, 1885.)
This spring the little singers are out before the little sparrows and
have already begun chirruping. Here are four volumes already, and who
knows how many more will be given to us before the laburnums blossom? The
best-bound volume must, of course, have precedence. It is called Echoes
of Memory, by Atherton Furlong, and is cased in creamy vellum and tied
with ribbons of yellow silk. Mr. Furlong's charm is the unsullied
sweetness of his simplicity. Indeed, we can strongly recommend to the
School-Board the Lines on the Old Town Pump as eminently suitable for
recitation by children. Such a verse, for instance, as:
I hear the little children say
(For the tale will never die)
How the old pump flowed both night and day
When the brooks and the wells ran dry,
has all the ring of Macaulay in it, and is a form of poetry which cannot
possibly harm anybody, even if translated into French. Any inaccurate
ideas of the laws of nature which the children might get from the passage
in question could easily be corrected afterwards by a lecture on
Hydrostatics. The poem, however, which gives us most pleasure is the one
called The Dear Old Knocker on the Door. It is appropriately illustrated
by Mr. Tristram Ellis. We quote the concluding verses of the first and
last stanzas:
Blithe voices then so dear
Send up their shouts once more,
Then sounds again on mem'ry's ear
The dear old knocker on the door.
. . . . .
When mem'ry turns the key
Where time has placed my score,
Encased 'mid treasured thoughts must be
The dear old knocker on the door.
The cynic may mock at the subject of these verses, but we do not. Why
not an ode on a knocker? Does not Victor Hugo's tragedy of Lucrece
Borgia turn on the defacement of a doorplate? Mr. Furlong must not be
discouraged. Perhaps he will write poetry some day. If he does we would
earnestly appeal to him to give up calling a cock 'proud chanticleer.'
Few synonyms are so depressing.
Having been lured by the Circe of a white vellum binding into the region
of the pump and doormat, we turn to a modest little volume by Mr. Bowling
of St. John's College, Cambridge, entitled Sagittulae. And they are
indeed delicate little arrows, for they are winged with the lightness of
the lyric and barbed daintily with satire. AEsthesis and Athletes is a
sweet idyll, and nothing can be more pathetic than the Tragedy of the
XIX. Century, which tells of a luckless examiner condemned in his public
capacity to pluck for her Little-go the girl graduate whom he privately
adores. Girton seems to be having an important influence on the
Cambridge school of poetry. We are not surprised. The Graces are the
Graces always, even when they wear spectacles.
Then comes Tuberose and Meadowsweet, by Mr. Mark Andre Raffalovich. This
is really a remarkable little volume, and contains many strange and
beautiful poems. To say of these poems that they are unhealthy and bring
with them the heavy odours of the hothouse is to point out neither their
defect nor their merit, but their quality merely. And though Mr.
Raffalovich is not a wonderful poet, still he is a subtle artist in
poetry. Indeed, in his way he is a boyish master of curious music and of
fantastic rhyme, and can strike on the lute of language so many lovely
chords that it seems a pity he does not know how to pronounce the title
of his book and the theme of his songs. For he insists on making
'tuberose' a trisyllable always, as if it were a potato blossom and not a
flower shaped like a tiny trumpet of ivory. However, for the sake of his
meadowsweet and his spring-green binding this must be forgiven him. And
though he cannot pronounce 'tuberose' aright, at least he can sing of it
exquisitely.
Finally we come to Sturm und Drang, the work of an anonymous writer.
Opening the volume at hazard we come across these graceful lines:
How sweet to spend in this blue bay
The close of life's disastrous day,
To watch the morn break faintly free
Across the greyness of the sea,
What time Memnonian music fills
The shadows of the dewy hills.
Well, here is the touch of a poet, and we pluck up heart and read on. The
book is a curious but not inartistic combination of the mental attitude
of Mr. Matthew Arnold with the style of Lord Tennyson. Sometimes, as in
The Sicilian Hermit, we get merely the metre of Locksley Hall without its
music, merely its fine madness and not its fine magic. Still, elsewhere
there is good work, and Caliban in East London has a great deal of power
in it, though we do not like the adjective 'knockery' even in a poem on
Whitechapel.
On the whole, to those who watch the culture of the age, the most
interesting thing in young poets is not so much what they invent as what
masters they follow. A few years ago it was all Mr. Swinburne. That era
has happily passed away. The mimicry of passion is the most intolerable
of all poses. Now, it is all Lord Tennyson, and that is better. For a
young writer can gain more from the study of a literary poet than from
the study of a lyrist. He may become the pupil of the one, but he can
never be anything but the slave of the other. And so we are glad to see
in this volume direct and noble praise of him
* * * * *
Who plucked in English meadows flowers fair
As any that in unforgotten stave
Vied with the orient gold of Venus' hair
Or fringed the murmur of the AEgean wave,
which are the fine words in which this anonymous poet pays his tribute to
the Laureate.
(1) Echoes of Memory. By Atherton Furlong. (Field and Tuer.)
(2) Sagittulae. By E. W. Bowling. (Longmans, Green and Co.)
(3) Tuberose and Meadowsweet. By Mark Andre Raffalovich. (David Bogue.)
(4) Sturm und Drang. (Elliot Stock.)
In reply to the review A Bevy of Poets the following letter was published
in the Pall Mall Gazette on March 30, 1885, under the title of
THE ROOT OF THE MATTER
SIR,--I am sorry not to be able to accept the graceful etymology of your
reviewer who calls me to task for not knowing how to pronounce the title
of my book Tuberose and Meadowsweet. I insist, he fancifully says, 'on
making "tuberose" a trisyllable always, as if it were a potato blossom
and not a flower shaped like a tiny trumpet of ivory.' Alas! tuberose is
a trisyllable if properly derived from the Latin tuberosus, the lumpy
flower, having nothing to do with roses or with trumpets of ivory in name
any more than in nature. I am reminded by a great living poet that
another correctly wrote:
Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness--as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
Like clouds above the flower from which they rose.
In justice to Shelley, whose lines I quote, your readers will admit that
I have good authority for making a trisyllable of tuberose.--I am, Sir,
your obedient servant,
ANDRE RAFFALOVICH.
March 28.
PARNASSUS VERSUS PHILOLOGY
(Pall Mall Gazette, April 1, 1885.)
To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.
SIR,--I am deeply distressed to hear that tuberose is so called from its
being a 'lumpy flower.' It is not at all lumpy, and, even if it were, no
poet should be heartless enough to say so. Henceforth, there really must
be two derivations for every word, one for the poet and one for the
scientist. And in the present case the poet will dwell on the tiny
trumpets of ivory into which the white flower breaks, and leave to the
man of science horrid allusions to its supposed lumpiness and indiscreet
revelations of its private life below ground. In fact, 'tuber' as a
derivation is disgraceful. On the roots of verbs Philology may be
allowed to speak, but on the roots of flowers she must keep silence. We
cannot allow her to dig up Parnassus. And, as regards the word being a
trisyllable, I am reminded by a great living poet that another correctly
wrote:
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every clime
Grew in that garden in perfect prime.
In justice to Shelley, whose lines I quote, your readers will admit that
I have good authority for making a dissyllable of tuberose.--I am, Sir,
your obedient servant,
THE CRITIC,
WHO HAD TO READ FOUR VOLUMES OF MODERN POETRY.
March 30.
HAMLET AT THE LYCEUM
(Dramatic Review, May 9, 1885.)
It sometimes happens that at a premiere in London the least enjoyable
part of the performance is the play. I have seen many audiences more
interesting than the actors, and have often heard better dialogue in the
foyer than I have on the stage. At the Lyceum, however, this is rarely
the case, and when the play is a play of Shakespeare's, and among its
exponents are Mr. Irving and Miss Ellen Terry, we turn from the gods in
the gallery and from the goddesses in the stalls, to enjoy the charm of
the production, and to take delight in the art. The lions are behind the
footlights and not in front of them when we have a noble tragedy nobly
acted. And I have rarely witnessed such enthusiasm as that which greeted
on last Saturday night the two artists I have mentioned. I would like,
in fact, to use the word ovation, but a pedantic professor has recently
informed us, with the Batavian buoyancy of misapplied learning, that this
expression is not to be employed except when a sheep has been sacrificed.
At the Lyceum last week I need hardly say nothing so dreadful occurred.
The only inartistic incident of the evening was the hurling of a bouquet
from a box at Mr. Irving while he was engaged in pourtraying the agony of
Hamlet's death, and the pathos of his parting with Horatio. The Dramatic
College might take up the education of spectators as well as that of
players, and teach people that there is a proper moment for the throwing
of flowers as well as a proper method.
As regards Mr. Irving's own performance, it has been already so
elaborately criticised and described, from his business with the supposed
pictures in the closet scene down to his use of 'peacock' for 'paddock,'
that little remains to be said; nor, indeed, does a Lyceum audience
require the interposition of the dramatic critic in order to understand
or to appreciate the Hamlet of this great actor. I call him a great
actor because he brings to the interpretation of a work of art the two
qualities which we in this century so much desire, the qualities of
personality and of perfection. A few years ago it seemed to many, and
perhaps rightly, that the personality overshadowed the art. No such
criticism would be fair now. The somewhat harsh angularity of movement
and faulty pronunciation have been replaced by exquisite grace of gesture
and clear precision of word, where such precision is necessary. For
delightful as good elocution is, few things are so depressing as to hear
a passionate passage recited instead of being acted. The quality of a
fine performance is its life more than its learning, and every word in a
play has a musical as well as an intellectual value, and must be made
expressive of a certain emotion. So it does not seem to me that in all
parts of a play perfect pronunciation is necessarily dramatic. When the
words are 'wild and whirling,' the expression of them must be wild and
whirling also. Mr. Irving, I think, manages his voice with singular art;
it was impossible to discern a false note or wrong intonation in his
dialogue or his soliloquies, and his strong dramatic power, his realistic
power as an actor, is as effective as ever. A great critic at the
beginning of this century said that Hamlet is the most difficult part to
personate on the stage, that it is like the attempt to 'embody a shadow.'
I cannot say that I agree with this idea. Hamlet seems to me essentially
a good acting part, and in Mr. Irving's performance of it there is that
combination of poetic grace with absolute reality which is so eternally
delightful. Indeed, if the words easy and difficult have any meaning at
all in matters of art, I would be inclined to say that Ophelia is the
more difficult part. She has, I mean, less material by which to produce
her effects. She is the occasion of the tragedy, but she is neither its
heroine nor its chief victim. She is swept away by circumstances, and
gives the opportunity for situation, of which she is not herself the
climax, and which she does not herself command. And of all the parts
which Miss Terry has acted in her brilliant career, there is none in
which her infinite powers of pathos and her imaginative and creative
faculty are more shown than in her Ophelia. Miss Terry is one of those
rare artists who needs for her dramatic effect no elaborate dialogue, and
for whom the simplest words are sufficient. 'I love you not,' says
Hamlet, and all that Ophelia answers is, 'I was the more deceived.' These
are not very grand words to read, but as Miss Terry gave them in acting
they seemed to be the highest possible expression of Ophelia's character.
Beautiful, too, was the quick remorse she conveyed by her face and
gesture the moment she had lied to Hamlet and told him her father was at
home. This I thought a masterpiece of good acting, and her mad scene was
wonderful beyond all description. The secrets of Melpomene are known to
Miss Terry as well as the secrets of Thalia. As regards the rest of the
company there is always a high standard at the Lyceum, but some
particular mention should be made of Mr. Alexander's brilliant
performance of Laertes. Mr. Alexander has a most effective presence, a
charming voice, and a capacity for wearing lovely costumes with ease and
elegance. Indeed, in the latter respect his only rival was Mr. Norman
Forbes, who played either Guildenstern or Rosencrantz very gracefully. I
believe one of our budding Hazlitts is preparing a volume to be entitled
'Great Guildensterns and Remarkable Rosencrantzes,' but I have never been
able myself to discern any difference between these two characters. They
are, I think, the only characters Shakespeare has not cared to
individualise. Whichever of the two, however, Mr. Forbes acted, he acted
it well. Only one point in Mr. Alexander's performance seemed to me open
to question, that was his kneeling during the whole of Polonius's speech.
For this I see no necessity at all, and it makes the scene look less
natural than it should--gives it, I mean, too formal an air. However,
the performance was most spirited and gave great pleasure to every one.
Mr. Alexander is an artist from whom much will be expected, and I have no
doubt he will give us much that is fine and noble. He seems to have all
the qualifications for a good actor.
There is just one other character I should like to notice. The First
Player seemed to me to act far too well. He should act very badly. The
First Player, besides his position in the dramatic evolution of the
tragedy, is Shakespeare's caricature of the ranting actor of his day,
just as the passage he recites is Shakespeare's own parody on the dull
plays of some of his rivals. The whole point of Hamlet's advice to the
players seems to me to be lost unless the Player himself has been guilty
of the fault which Hamlet reprehends, unless he has sawn the air with his
hand, mouthed his lines, torn his passion to tatters, and out-Heroded
Herod. The very sensibility which Hamlet notices in the actor, such as
his real tears and the like, is not the quality of a good artist. The
part should be played after the manner of a provincial tragedian. It is
meant to be a satire, and to play it well is to play it badly. The
scenery and costumes were excellent with the exception of the King's
dress, which was coarse in colour and tawdry in effect. And the Player
Queen should have come in boy's attire to Elsinore.
However, last Saturday night was not a night for criticism. The theatre
was filled with those who desired to welcome Mr. Irving back to his own
theatre, and we were all delighted at his re-appearance among us. I hope
that some time will elapse before he and Miss Terry cross again that
disappointing Atlantic Ocean.
TWO NEW NOVELS
(Pall Mall Gazette, May 15, 1885.)
The clever authoress of In the Golden Days has chosen for the scene of
her story the England of two centuries ago, as a relief, she tells us in
her preface, 'from perpetual nineteenth-centuryism.' Upon the other
hand, she makes a pathetic appeal to her readers not to regard her book
as an 'historical novel,' on the ground that such a title strikes terror
into the public. This seems to us rather a curious position to take up.
Esmond and Notre Dame are historical novels, both of them, and both of
them popular successes. John Inglesant and Romola have gone through many
editions, and even Salammbo has its enthusiasts. We think that the
public is very fond of historical novels, and as for perpetual
'nineteenth-centuryism'--a vile phrase, by the way--we only wish that
more of our English novelists studied our age and its society than do so
at present. However, In the Golden Days must not be judged by its
foolish preface. It is really a very charming book, and though Dryden,
Betterton, and Wills's Coffee-House are dragged in rather a propos de
bottes, still the picture of the time is well painted. Joyce, the little
Puritan maiden, is an exquisite creation, and Hugo Wharncliffe, her
lover, makes a fine hero. The sketch of Algernon Sidney is rather
colourless, but Charles II. is well drawn. It seems to be a novel with a
high purpose and a noble meaning. Yet it is never dull.
Mrs. Macquoid's Louisa is modern and the scene is in Italy. Italy, we
fear, has been a good deal overdone in fiction. A little more Piccadilly
and a little less Perugia would be a relief. However, the story is
interesting. A young English girl marries an Italian nobleman and, after
some time, being bored with picturesqueness, falls in love with an
Englishman. The story is told with a great deal of power and ends
properly and pleasantly. It can safely be recommended to young persons.
(1) In the Golden Days. By Edna Lyall, Author of We Two, Donovan, etc.
(Hurst and Blackett.)
(2) Louisa. By Katherine S. Macquoid. (Bentley and Son.)
HENRY THE FOURTH AT OXFORD
(Dramatic Review, May 23, 1885.)
I have been told that the ambition of every Dramatic Club is to act Henry
IV. I am not surprised. The spirit of comedy is as fervent in this play
as is the spirit of chivalry; it is an heroic pageant as well as an
heroic poem, and like most of Shakespeare's historical dramas it contains
an extraordinary number of thoroughly good acting parts, each of which is
absolutely individual in character, and each of which contributes to the
evolution of the plot.
Rumour, from time to time, has brought in tidings of a proposed
production by the banks of the Cam, but it seems at the last moment Box
and Cox has always had to be substituted in the bill.
To Oxford belongs the honour of having been the first to present on the
stage this noble play, and the production which I saw last week was in
every way worthy of that lovely town, that mother of sweetness and of
light. For, in spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and
the screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisector, in spite of
Keble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still
remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life
and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one. Indeed, in most
other towns art has often to present herself in the form of a reaction
against the sordid ugliness of ignoble lives, but at Oxford she comes to
us as an exquisite flower born of the beauty of life and expressive of
life's joy. She finds her home by the Isis as once she did by the
Ilissus; the Magdalen walks and the Magdalen cloisters are as dear to her
as were ever the silver olives of Colonus and the golden gateway of the
house of Pallas: she covers with fanlike tracery the vaulted entrance to
Christ Church Hall, and looks out from the windows of Merton; her feet
have stirred the Cumnor cowslips, and she gathers fritillaries in the
river-fields. To her the clamour of the schools and the dulness of the
lecture-room are a weariness and a vexation of spirit; she seeks not to
define virtue, and cares little for the categories; she smiles on the
swift athlete whose plastic grace has pleased her, and rejoices in the
young Barbarians at their games; she watches the rowers from the reedy
bank and gives myrtle to her lovers, and laurel to her poets, and rue to
those who talk wisely in the street; she makes the earth lovely to all
who dream with Keats; she opens high heaven to all who soar with Shelley;
and turning away her head from pedant, proctor and Philistine, she has
welcomed to her shrine a band of youthful actors, knowing that they have
sought with much ardour for the stern secret of Melpomene, and caught
with much gladness the sweet laughter of Thalia. And to me this ardour
and this gladness were the two most fascinating qualities of the Oxford
performance, as indeed they are qualities which are necessary to any fine
dramatic production. For without quick and imaginative observation of
life the most beautiful play becomes dull in presentation, and what is
not conceived in delight by the actor can give no delight at all to
others.
I know that there are many who consider that Shakespeare is more for the
study than for the stage. With this view I do not for a moment agree.
Shakespeare wrote the plays to be acted, and we have no right to alter
the form which he himself selected for the full expression of his work.
Indeed, many of the beauties of that work can be adequately conveyed to
us only through the actor's art. As I sat in the Town Hall of Oxford the
other night, the majesty of the mighty lines of the play seemed to me to
gain new music from the clear young voices that uttered them, and the
ideal grandeur of the heroism to be made more real to the spectators by
the chivalrous bearing, the noble gesture and the fine passion of its
exponents. Even the dresses had their dramatic value. Their
archaeological accuracy gave us, immediately on the rise of the curtain,
a perfect picture of the time. As the knights and nobles moved across
the stage in the flowing robes of peace and in the burnished steel of
battle, we needed no dreary chorus to tell us in what age or land the
play's action was passing, for the fifteenth century in all the dignity
and grace of its apparel was living actually before us, and the delicate
harmonies of colour struck from the first a dominant note of beauty which
added to the intellectual realism of archaeology the sensuous charm of
art.
As for individual actors, Mr. Mackinnon's Prince Hal was a most gay and
graceful performance, lit here and there with charming touches of
princely dignity and of noble feeling. Mr. Coleridge's Falstaff was full
of delightful humour, though perhaps at times he did not take us
sufficiently into his confidence. An audience looks at a tragedian, but
a comedian looks at his audience. However, he gave much pleasure to
every one, and Mr. Bourchier's Hotspur was really most remarkable. Mr.
Bourchier has a fine stage presence, a beautiful voice, and produces his
effects by a method as dramatically impressive as it is artistically
right. Once or twice he seemed to me to spoil his last line by walking
through it. The part of Harry Percy is one full of climaxes which must
not be let slip. But still there was always a freedom and spirit in his
style which was very pleasing, and his delivery of the colloquial
passages I thought excellent, notably of that in the first act:
What d' ye call the place?
A plague upon't--it is in Gloucestershire;
'Twas where the madcap duke his uncle kept,
His uncle York;
lines by the way in which Kemble made a great effect. Mr. Bourchier has
the opportunity of a fine career on the English stage, and I hope he will
take advantage of it. Among the minor parts in the play Glendower,
Mortimer and Sir Richard Vernon were capitally acted, Worcester was a
performance of some subtlety, Mrs. Woods was a charming Lady Percy, and
Lady Edward Spencer Churchill, as Mortimer's wife, made us all believe
that we understood Welsh. Her dialogue and her song were most pleasing
bits of artistic realism which fully accounted for the Celtic chair at
Oxford.
But though I have mentioned particular actors, the real value of the
whole representation was to be found in its absolute unity, in its
delicate sense of proportion, and in that breadth of effect which is to
be got only by the most careful elaboration of detail. I have rarely
seen a production better stage-managed. Indeed, I hope that the
University will take some official notice of this delightful work of art.
Why should not degrees be granted for good acting? Are they not given to
those who misunderstand Plato and who mistranslate Aristotle? And should
the artist be passed over? No. To Prince Hal, Hotspur and Falstaff,
D.C.L.'s should be gracefully offered. I feel sure they would be
gracefully accepted. To the rest of the company the crimson or the sheep-
skin hood might be assigned honoris causa to the eternal confusion of the
Philistine, and the rage of the industrious and the dull. Thus would
Oxford confer honour on herself, and the artist be placed in his proper
position. However, whether or not Convocation recognises the claims of
culture, I hope that the Oxford Dramatic Society will produce every
summer for us some noble play like Henry IV. For, in plays of this kind,
plays which deal with bygone times, there is always this peculiar charm,
that they combine in one exquisite presentation the passions that are
living with the picturesqueness that is dead. And when we have the
modern spirit given to us in an antique form, the very remoteness of that
form can be made a method of increased realism. This was Shakespeare's
own attitude towards the ancient world, this is the attitude we in this
century should adopt towards his plays, and with a feeling akin to this
it seemed to me that these brilliant young Oxonians were working. If it
was so, their aim is the right one. For while we look to the dramatist
to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to
romance.
MODERN GREEK POETRY
(Pall Mall Gazette, May 27, 1885.)
Odysseus, not Achilles, is the type of the modern Greek. Merchandise has
taken precedence of the Muses and politics are preferred to Parnassus.
Yet by the Illissus there are sweet singers; the nightingales are not
silent in Colonus; and from the garden of Greek nineteenth-century poetry
Miss Edmonds has made a very pleasing anthology; and in pouring the wine
from the golden into the silver cup she has still kept much of the beauty
of the original. Even when translated into English, modern Greek lyrics
are preferable to modern Greek loans.