"DAVID COPPERFIELD."
If it were a simple question of bulk, few authors would lend themselves
to the process of compression so well as CHARLES DICKENS; but the
scheme of _David Copperfield_ is too complex, and its interests too
many and competitive, to be packed into a three-hours' play, even
by Mr. LOUIS PARKER, master of the tabloid. Of the main themes--the
career of the hero himself, the machinations of _Uriah Heep_, the
tragedy of _Little Em'ly_--only the last was at all effective in
pillule form. The figure of _David Copperfield_--always pleasant if
rather colourless--served to hold the play together; but the central
experience of his life was treated with the extreme of haziness. We
were informed of his engagement to _Dora_, his marriage, her illness,
her death, all with the brevity of a French official _communiqué_;
but as for the child-wife herself we never so much as set eyes on
her. While again we gathered that the designs of _Uriah Heep_ were
ultimately confounded, nobody without the aid of memory or imagination
could possibly have penetrated their obscurity.
On the other hand--whether with or without the connivance of Sir
HERBERT TREE I dare not conjecture--the person of _Wilkins Micawber_
was given a prominence out of all proportion to his share in any one of
the plots. Unlike the something that was to make his fortune, he was
always "turning up," and, whenever he did, he practically had the stage
to himself.
I am far from quarrelling with this arrangement, for I have never seen
Sir HERBERT in better form. His humour was of the richest, yet full
of quiet subtleties, and merely to gaze upon his grotesque figure was
a pure delight. That he should have permitted himself, in a spirit of
creative irresponsibility, to deviate at times into the borderland of
farce, and become an hilarious blend of himself and Mr. HENRY JAMES (I
don't know why he suggested to me a burlesque of Mr. HENRY JAMES, for
I have never known that most distinguished of writers to lapse from
decorum) need not trouble anybody in a play where there was no pretence
of insisting upon the letter of DICKENS.
The transition from _Falstaff_ to _Micawber_, from a bibber of sack to
a bibber of punch, was an easy one for Sir HERBERT; but not so easy
were the constant changes from and into the part of _Dan'l Peggotty_.
Here he gave us a really admirable character-sketch--for _Peggotty_
belongs to the region of possibility, whereas _Micawber_ is always a
creature of incredible fancy--and I am not sure that his achievement as
the old salt was not, for him, the greater of the two. Certainly in the
scene where he tells of his search over the world for _Little Em'ly_ he
came nearer to simple pathos than I have ever known him to come. Even
the strong Somerset accent of this East Anglian tar could not conceal
his sincerity.
I shrink from the odious task of distinguishing between the merits of
a most admirable cast, but I must mention the delightfully piquant
drollery of Miss SYDNEY FAIRBROTHER as _Mrs. Micawber_, and the
too-brief excellence of Mr. ROY BYFORD as the _Waiter_ of the "Golden
Cross," and Mr. GAYER MACKAY as _Littimer_. Mr. QUARTERMAINE'S _Uriah
Heep_--a very careful study--seemed perhaps too obviously stamped
from the start with the hallmark of villany. Conversely the _Betsey
Trotwood_ of Miss AGNES THOMAS appeared to be lacking in austerity of
mien.
One shared Mr. NIGEL PLAYFAIR'S enjoyment of the futility of _Mr.
Dick_; but this freakish figure, so typical of DICKENS, seemed always a
little out of the picture.
Though _Mrs. Gummidge_, played with a sound restraint by Miss ADA KING,
insisted from time to time upon the fact that she was a "lone lorn
creetur'," we were spared a good many of the author's reiterated tags,
and I think it was not till his friends had guaranteed to lubricate his
passage to the New World that _Mr. Wilkins Micawber_ so much as alluded
to his habitual expectation of something "turning up."
The popularity of the production promises to be exceptional, and with
good reason, apart from the high quality of the performance. For with
its human tenderness, and the relief of its gaiety, it offers just the
right kind of distraction to the strain of public emotion in these
times. And, though its matter bears no relation to the subject which
absorbs our hearts, the very name of CHARLES DICKENS makes immediate
appeal to that national spirit which the War has reawakened.