[Speech of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton at a public dinner given to William
C. Macready, London, March 1, 1851, on the occasion of the tragedian's
withdrawal from the stage. Lord Lytton, in proposing the toast of the
evening, delivered the following speech.]
GENTLEMEN:--When I glance through this vast hall, and feel how
weak and indistinct is my voice, I feel that I must frankly throw myself
upon your indulgence, and entreat your most patient and courteous
attention while I approach that subject which unites to-day an assembly
so remarkable for the numbers and distinction of those who compose it.
We are met to do honor to an eminent man, who retires into private life
after those services to the public which are most felt at the moment we
are about to lose them. There are many among you far better qualified
than I am to speak critically of the merits of Mr. Macready as an actor,
but placed as I am in this chair, I feel that I should justly disappoint
you if I did not seek to give some utterance to those sentiments of
admiration of which you have made me the representative.
Gentlemen, this morning I read in one of the literary journals, some
qualifying remarks as to the degree of Mr. Macready's genius; and now,
as I recognize here many who are devoted to literature and art, I will
ask them if I am not right in this doctrine--that the true measure of
the genius of an artist is the degree of excellence to which he brings
the art that he cultivates. Judge of Mr. Macready by this test, and how
great is that genius that will delight us no more; for it is because it
has so achieved what I will call the symmetry of art that its height and
its breadth have been often forgotten. We know that it is the uneven
and irregular surface that strikes us as the largest, and the dimensions
of a genius, like those of a building, are lost in the justness of its
proportions; and therefore it is that in recalling the surpassing
excellence of our guest as an artistical performer, one is really at a
loss to say in what line of character he has excelled the most. The
Titanic grandeur of Lear, the human debasement of Werner, the frank
vivacity of Henry V, the gloomy and timorous guilt of King John, or
that--his last--personation of Macbeth, in which it seemed to me that he
conveyed a more correct notion of what Shakespeare designed than I can
recollect to have read in the most profound of the German critics; for I
take it, what Shakespeare meant to represent in Macbeth was the kind of
character which is most liable to be influenced by a belief in
supernatural agencies--a man who is acutely sensitive to all
impressions, who has a restless imagination more powerful than his will,
who sees daggers in the air and ghosts in the banquet-hall, who has
moral weakness and physical courage, and who--as our guest represented
him--alternates perpetually between terror and daring--a trembler when
oppressed by his conscience, and a warrior when defied by his foe. But
in this and in all that numberless crowd of characters which is too
fresh in your memories for me to enumerate, we don't so much say "How
well this was spoken," or "How finely that was acted," but we feel
within ourselves how true was the personation of the whole.
Gentlemen, there is a word that is often applied to artists and to
authors, and I think we always apply it improperly when we speak of a
superior intellect--I mean the word "versatile." Now, I think the proper
word is "comprehensive." The man of genius does not vary and change,
which is the meaning of the word versatile, but he has a mind
sufficiently expanded to comprehend variety and change. If I can succeed
in describing the circle, I can draw as many lines as I please from the
centre straight to the circumference, but it must be upon the
condition--for that is the mathematical law--that all these lines shall
be equal, one to the other, or it is not a circle that I describe. Now,
I do not say our guest is versatile; I say that he is comprehensive; and
the proof that he has mastered the most perfect form of the
comprehensive faculty is this--that all the lines he has created within
the range of his art are equal the one to the other. And this,
gentlemen, explains to us that originality which even his detractors
have conceded to him.
Every great actor has his manner as every great writer has his style.
But the originality of our guest does not consist in his manner alone,
but in his singular depth of thought. He has not only accomplished the
obvious and essential graces of the actor--the look, the gesture, the
intonation, the stage play--but he has placed his study far deeper. He
has sought to penetrate into the subtlest intentions of the poet, and
made poetry itself the golden key to the secrets of the human heart. He
was original because he never sought to be original but to be truthful;
because, in a word, he was as conscientious in his art as he is in his
actions. Gentlemen, there is one merit of our guest as an actor upon
which, if I were silent, I should be indeed ungrateful. Many a great
performer may attain to a high reputation if he restrains his talents to
acting Shakespeare and the great writers of the past; but it is
perfectly clear that in so doing he does not advance one inch the
literature of his time. It has been the merit of our guest to recognize
the truth that the actor has it in his power to assist in creating the
writer. He has identified himself with the living drama of his period,
and by so doing, he has half created it. Who does not recollect the
rough and manly vigor of Tell, the simple grandeur of Virginius or the
exquisite sweetness and dignity and pathos with which he invested the
self-sacrifice of Ion; and who does not feel that but for him, these
great plays might never have obtained their hold upon the stage, or
ranked among those masterpieces which this age will leave to posterity?
And what charm and what grace, not their own, he has given to the lesser
works of an inferior writer, it is not for me to say.
But, gentlemen, all this, in which he has sought to rally round him the
dramatic writers of his time, brings me at once from the merits of the
actor to those of the manager. I recall, gentlemen, that brief but
glorious time when the drama of England appeared suddenly to revive and
to promise a future that should be worthy of its past; when by a union
of all kindred arts, and the exercise of a taste that was at once
gorgeous and severe, we saw the genius of Shakespeare properly embodied
upon our stage, though I maintain that the ornament was never superior
to the work. Just remember the manner in which the supernatural agency
of the weird sisters was made apparent to our eye, in which the magic
Isle of Prospero rose before us in its mysterious and haunted beauty,
and in which the knightly character of the hero of Agincourt received
its true interpretation from the pomp of the feudal age, and you will
own you could not strip the scene of these effects without stripping
Shakespeare himself of half the richness and depth of his conceptions.
But that was the least merit of that glorious management. Mr. Macready
not only enriched the scene, but he purified the audience; and for the
first time since the reign of Charles II, a father might have taken his
daughters to a public theatre with as much safety from all that could
shock decorum as if he had taken them to the house of a friend. And for
this reason the late lamented Bishop of Norwich made it a point to form
the personal acquaintance of Mr. Macready, that he might thank him, as a
prelate of the Church, for the good he had done to society.
Gentlemen, I cannot recall that period without a sharp pang of indignant
regret, for if that management had lasted some ten or twelve years, I
know that we would have established a permanent school for actors--a
fresh and enduring field for dramatic poetry and wit--while we should
have educated an audience up to feel that dramatic performances in their
highest point of excellence had become an intellectual want that could
no more be dispensed with than the newspaper or review. And all this to
be checked or put back for ages to come! Why? Because the public did not
appreciate the experiment! Mr. Macready has told us that the public
supported him nobly, and that his houses overflowed. Why then? Because
of the enormous rent and exactions, for a theatre which even in the most
prosperous seasons, make the exact difference between profit and loss.
Gentlemen, it is not now the occasion to speak of remedies for that
state of things. Remedies there are, but they are for legislation to
effect. They involve considerations with regard to those patents which
are secured to certain houses for the purpose of maintaining in this
metropolis the legitimate drama, and which I fear, have proved the main
obstacle to its success.
But these recollections belong to the past. The actor--the manager--are
no more. Whom have we with us to-day? Something grander than actor, or
manager: to-day we have with us the man. Gentlemen, to speak of those
virtues which adorn a home, and are only known in secret, has always
appeared to me to be out of place upon public occasions; but there are
some virtues which cannot be called private, which accompany a man
everywhere, which are the essential part of his public character, and of
these it becomes us to speak, for it is to these that we are met to do
homage. I mean integrity, devotion to pure ends, a high ambition, manly
independence, and honor that never knew a stain. Why should we disguise
from ourselves that there are great prejudices to the profession of an
actor? Who does not know that our noble guest has lived down every one
such prejudice, not falling into the old weakness of the actor, and for
which Garrick could not escape the sarcasm of Johnson, of hankering
after the society and patronage of the great? The great may have sought
in him the accomplished gentleman, but he has never stooped his bold
front as an Englishman to court any patronage meaner than the public, or
to sue for the smile with which fashion humiliates the genius it
condescends to flatter. And therefore it is that he has so lifted up
that profession to which he belongs into its proper rank amid the
liberal arts; and therefore it is, that in glancing over the list of our
stewards we find every element of that aristocracy upon which he has
never fawned uniting to render him its tribute of respect. The ministers
of foreign nations--men among the noblest of the peers of
England--veterans of those professions of which honor is the
lifespring--the chiefs of literature and science and art--ministers of
the Church, sensible of the benefits he has bestowed upon society in
banishing from the stage what had drawn upon it the censure of the
pulpit--all are here and all unite to enforce the truth, the great
truth, which he leaves to those who come after him--that let a man but
honor his calling, and the calling will soon be the honor of the man.
Gentlemen, I cannot better sum up all I would say than by the words
which the Roman orator applied to the actor of his day; and I ask you if
I may not say of our guest as Cicero said of Roscius--"He is a man who
unites yet more of virtues than of talents, yet more of truth than of
art, and who, having dignified the scene by the various portraitures of
human life, dignifies yet more this assembly by the example of his own."
Gentlemen, the toast I am about to propose to you is connected with many
sad associations but not to-day. Later and longer will be cherished
whatever may be sad of these mingled feelings that accompany this
farewell--later, when night after night we shall miss from the play-bill
the old familiar name, and feel that one source of elevated delight is
lost to us forever. To-day let us rejoice that he whom we prize and
admire is no worn-out veteran retiring to a rest he can no longer
enjoy--that he leaves us in the prime of his powers, with many years to
come, in the course of nature, of that dignified leisure for which every
public man must have sighed in the midst of his triumphs, and though we
cannot say of him that his "way of life is fall'n into the sere, the
yellow leaf," yet we can say that he has prematurely obtained "that
which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of
friends;" and postponing for this night all selfish regret, not thinking
of the darkness that is to follow, but of the brightness of the sun that
is to set, I call upon you to drink with full glasses and full hearts,
"Health, happiness and long life to William Macready."
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