[Illustration: The Magnetic Lady.]
"I once did manage to make a cast correctly," writes ANDREW LANG, in
his charming book anent the sport and pastime of fishing, and if ever
HENRY IRVING made a cast to catch the public, it is now, when he uses
as his bait SHAKSPEARE's _Henry the Eighth_, got up in a style which
emphatically "beats the record," so utterly "regardless of expense" is
it, with well-tried, responsible actors, in what may be called minor
parts, though the majority of the _dramatis personæ_ are on a fair
dramatic equality, and with Our ELLEN TERRY, as _Queen Katharine_, and
himself as the great Lord Cardinal.
[Illustration: "Go to," Norfolk and Suffolk!]
The first difficulty that HENRY IRVING had to face--literally to
face--was that by no sort of art could he make up his features to
be an exact portrait of CARDINAL WOLSEY. Personally, I prefer Mr.
IRVING's picture of WOLSEY to the extant portraits, which concur in
representing him as a heavy, jowly-faced man, who might be taken as
a model for one of GUSTAVE DORÉ'S eccentric-looking ecclesiastics in
the _Contes Drolatiques_, rather than as the living presentment of the
great Chancellor, Statesman, and Churchman who ruled a cruel, crafty,
sensual tyrant, and successfully guided the policy of England at home
and abroad. HENRY IRVING's _Cardinal_ is a grand figure, courtly,
though somewhat too cringing withal, evidently despising the various
means he uses to further the end he has in view, and looking upon the
Lords, Courtiers and all around him as merely puppets, whose strings
he holds to work them as he will.
[Illustration: The Cardinal's _Train de Luxe_.]
Then, after seeing him as Sole Adviser of the Crown, after seeing him
as Highest Judge in the Ecclesiastical Divorce Court in such splendid
state as our Judge JEUNE may eye with envy, after seeing him in his
own Palace, most courteous as Grand Master and liberal Provider of
Right Royal Revels, he is exhibited to us in the deserted Hall, a
spectacle for gods and men (that is, shown to the Gallery and the rest
of the audience), the single figure of the Great Cardinal, fallen from
his high estate; and to him, in place of all his princely retinue,
comes his one faithful servant, CROMWELL, supporting his dying master,
for dying he is, as he staggers feebly from the Palace at Bridewell.
It is difficult to call to mind any situation in any play more
genuinely affecting in its simplicity than this. The audience is
held spell-bound,--yet, for my part, I should have welcomed a greater
variety in tone and action.
[Illustration: Ellen Terry as Kate.]
Miss ELLEN TERRY's _Queen Katharine_ is a "very woman." You can see
how she has caught the King, and how she still holds him. She loves
him, actually loves him, to the last to respect him is impossible, but
she respects herself; and it is just this love for him, for what he
was, not what he is, and her respect for herself, which Miss ELLEN
TERRY marks so forcibly. _Katharine_ is a foreigner, therefore is
her bearing, though stately, less stolid than that of the typical
English Tragedy Queen. The note of her dying scene, so striking by
its simplicity, is its perfect tranquillity. Who's _Griffith_? Why
the veteran HOWE (ah, Howe, When and Where did I first see you,
Sir? Wasn't it in the days when good old Mortonian farces were the
attraction at the Haymarket?) is "_the_ safe man," and excellently
well did he deliver his epitaph on _Wolsey_. But all are good, not
forgetting our old friend the sterling, that is the ARTHUR STIRLING
actor as _Cranmer_, and the youthful GILLIE FARQUHAR, unrecognisable
as _Lord Sands_, looking as ancient as if he were The Sands of Time.
This revival is bound to have a long--it may be an unprecedentedly
long--run. All of us dearly love a show. Moreover, 'tis educational;
and the School Board should issue an Examination-paper on the history
of HENRY THE EIGHTH and his times as exemplified by Mr. IRVING & CO.
at the Lyceum.