Scene 9 disposes of the second of Portia's remaining suitors, and, being

comic in character, is inserted with good effect between two tragic

scenes. The keynote to its action is to be found in Portia's words: "O,

these _deliberate_ fools!" The Prince of Morocco was a warrior, heroic to

the tips of his fingers; the Prince of Arragon is a fop, an affected ass,

a man "full of wise saws and modern instances," and the audience should be

prepared for a highly amusing scene by the liveliness with which Nerissa

announces his approach. His mannerism is indicated to us in such

expressions as "Ha! let me see," and "Well, but to my choice." He should

walk deliberately, speak deliberately, pause deliberately, and when he

becomes sentimental, "pose." Highly conscious of his own superiority, and

unwilling to "jump with _common_ spirits" and "rank me with the

_barbarous_ multitudes," he assumes superiority, and gets his reward in

the shape of a portrait of a blinking idiot. In fact, the whims of this

Malvolio are intended to put everyone on and off the stage into high

spirits, and even Portia is carried away by the fun as she mimics the

retiring suitor in her exclamation to the servant. The scene ends with the

announcement that Bassanio, "Lord Love," is on his way to Belmont, and we

go on at once to Act III., Scene 1, which, I take it, is a continuation of

Act II., Scene 8, and which, therefore, should not form part of another

act.

The scene opens with Salarino and Solanio hurrying on the stage anxiously

questioning each other about Antonio's rumoured loss at sea. Shylock

follows almost immediately, to whom they at once turn in the hope of

hearing news. It is usual on the stage to omit the entrance of Antonio's

man, but apart from the dramatic effect produced by a follower of Antonio

coming on to the stage at that moment, his appearance puts an end to the

controversy, which otherwise would probably continue. Salarino and Solanio

leave the stage awed almost to breathlessness, and Tubal enters. Then

follows a piteous scene as we see Shylock's outbursts of grief, rage, and

despair over the loss of his gold; yet is his anguish aggravated by the

one from whom of all others he had a right to expect sympathy. But

Shylock, after Tubal's words, "But Antonio is certainly undone," mutters,

"Nay, that's true, that's very true," and takes from his purse a coin, and

with a countenance and gesture expressive of indomitable purpose,

continues: "_Go_, Tubal, fee me an officer; bespeak him a _fortnight_

before. I will have the _heart_ of him if he forfeit.... _Go_, Tubal, and

meet me at our synagogue. _Go_, good Tubal; at our synagogue, Tubal."

Shylock's misfortunes in this scene would arouse sympathy were it not for

the damning confession to Tubal of his motive for hating Antonio "for were

he out of Venice I can make what merchandise I will." Words that Jessica's

lines prove are not idle ones.

"When I was with him I have heard him swear

To Tubal and to Chus, his countrymen,

That he would rather have Antonio's flesh

Than twenty times the value of the sum

That he did owe him."

Act III., Scene 2, brings us to the last stage of the casket complication,

and here Shakespeare, to avoid sameness, directs that a song shall be sung

while Bassanio is occupied in deciding his fate; so that his long speech

is spoken after the choice has been made, the leaden casket being then in

his hands, and his words merely used to justify his decision. That

Bassanio must win Portia is realized from the first. Moreover, his

success, after Shylock's threats in the last scene, has become a dramatic

necessity, and is thus saved from an appearance of unreality, so that his

love adventure develops naturally. His good fortune is Gratiano's; then

news is brought of Antonio's bankruptcy and Bassanio is sent to his

friend's relief. Scene 3 does no more than show in action what was

previously narrated by Solanio in the preceding one, for the Elizabethan

dramatists, differing in their methods from the Greeks, rarely allowed

narration to take the place of action on the stage. Perhaps this was on

account of the mixed character of the audience, the "groundlings" being

too busy cracking nuts to take in an important situation merely from its

narration. To them Antonio's danger would not become a fact till they

actually saw the man in irons and the jailor by his side. In the fourth

scene we go back to Belmont to hear that Portia and Nerissa are to be

present at the trial, though with what object we are not told. We hear,

also, of Portia's admiration for Antonio, whose character she compares

with that of her husband. Scene 5 being comic, well serves its purpose as

a contrast to the tragic intensity displayed in the scene which follows.

Here, too, Portia and Bassanio win golden opinions from Jessica:

"It is very meet,

The Lord Bassanio live an upright life;

For having such a blessing in his lady,

He finds the joys of heaven here on earth; ...

Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match,

And on the wager lay two earthly women,

And Portia one, there must be something else

Pawn'd with the other, for the poor rude world

Hath not her fellow."

The trial scene is so well known that I shall not dwell upon it except to

mention that I think the dramatist intended the scene to be acted with

more vigour and earnestness on the part of all the characters than is

represented on the modern stage, and with more vehemence on the part of

Shylock. Conscious of his lawful right, he defies the duke and council in

language not at all respectful,

"What if my house be troubled with a rat,

And I be pleased to give _ten_ thousand ducats

To have it baned?"

When Shylock is worsted the traditional business is for him to leave the

stage with the air of a martyr going to his execution, and thus produce a

tragic climax where none is wanted. We seem to get an indication of what

should be Shylock's behaviour in his hour of adversity by reading the

Italian version of the story, with which Shakespeare was familiar.

"Everyone present was greatly pleased and deriding the Jew said: 'He who

laid traps for others, is caught himself.' The Jew seeing he could gain

nothing, tore in pieces the bond _in a great rage_." Indeed, Shylock's

words,

"Why, then the devil give him good of it!

I'll stay no longer question,"

are exactly suited to the action of tearing up the bond. Certain it is

that only by Shylock being "in a great rage," as he rushes off the stage,

can the audience be greatly pleased, and in a fit humour to be interested

in the further doings of Portia. Scene 2 of this act is generally omitted

on the stage, though it seems to me necessary in order to show how Nerissa

gets possession of Gratiano's ring; it also affords an opportunity for

some excellent business on the part of Nerissa, who walks off arm in arm

with her husband, unknown to him.

The last act is the shortest fifth act in the Globe edition, and if

deficient in action Shakespeare gives it another interest by the wealth

and music of its poetry, a device more than once made use of by him to

strengthen undramatic material. Shakespeare's knowledge of the value of

sound, in dramatic effect, is shown by Launcelot interrupting the

whispering of the lovers, and profaning the stillness of the night with

his halloas, which have a similar effect to the nurse's calls in the

balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet; it is also shown by the music, and in

the tucket sound; while the picture brought to the imagination, by

allusion to the light burning in Portia's hall, gives reality to the

scene.

ROMEO AND JULIET.[11]

The argument that Arthur Brooke affixes to his poem, "Romeus and Iuliet,"

runs as follows:

"Loue hath inflamed twayne by sodayn sight,

And both do graunt the thing that both desyre:

They wed in shrift, by counsell of a frier.

Yong Romeus clymes fayre Iuliets bower by night,

Three monthes he doth enjoy his cheefe delight.

By Tybalts rage, prouoked unto yre,

He payeth death to Tybalt for his hyre.

A banisht man, he scapes by secret flight,

New mariage is offred to his wyfe.

She drinkes a drinke that seemes to reue her breath,

They bury her, that sleping yet hath lyfe.

Her husband heares the tydinges of her death:

He drinkes his bane. And she with Romeus knyfe,

When she awakes, her selfe (alas) she sleath."

And the title of the same story in William Painter's "Palace of Pleasure,"

is on the same lines:

"The goodly Hystory of the true, and constant Loue betweene Rhomeo

and Iulietta, the one of whom died of Poyson, and the other of

sorrow, and heuinesse: wherein be comprysed many aduentures of Loue,

and other deuises touchinge the same."

Here is Shakespeare's Prologue to his adaptation of the story for the

stage:

"Two housholds, both alike in dignitie,

In faire Verona, where we lay our Scene,

From auncient grude breake to new mutinie

Where ciuill bloud makes ciuill hands uncleane.

From forth the fatall loynes of these two foes

A paire of starre-crost louers take their life;

Whose misaduentur'd pittious overthrowes

Doth, with their death, burie their Parents strife.

The fearfull passage of their death-markt loue,

And the continuance of their Parents rage,

Which, but their childrens end, nought could remoue,

Is now the two houres trafficque of our Stage;

The which, if you with patient eares attend,

What here shall misse, our toyle shall striue to mend."

Why the dramatist thought fit to choose a different motive for his tragedy

to the one shown in the poem and the novel, we shall never know. He may

have found the hatred of the two houses accentuated in an older play on

this subject, and his unerring dramatic instinct would prompt him to use

the parents' strife as a lurid background on which to portray with greater

vividness the "fearfull passage" of the "starre-crost louers"; or the

modification may have been due to his reflections upon the political and

religious strife of his day; or to his irritation at Brooke's

short-sightedness in upholding, as more deserving of censure, the passion

of improvident love than the evil of ready-made hatred. Whatever be the

reason, the fact remains that Shakespeare, who was not partial to

Prologues, has in this instance made use of one to indicate the lines that

guide the action of his play, and it is upon these lines that I propose

to-night to discuss the stage representation.

I divide the characters into three groups. Those who belong to the House

of Capulet, the House of Montague, and those who, as partisans of neither

of the houses, we may call the neutrals. These include Escalus, Mercutio,

Paris, Friar Laurence, Friar John, an apothecary, and all the citizens of

any position and standing, the Italian municipalities being ever anxious

to repress the feuds of nobles.

The play opens with a renewal of hostilities between the two houses, which

serves not only as a striking opening, but brings on to the stage many of

the chief actors without unnecessary delay. In less than thirty lines we

are introduced to seven persons, all of whom indicate their character by

the attitude they assume towards the quarrel. We are shown the

peace-loving Benvolio, the fiery Tybalt, the imperious and vigorous

Capulet, calling for his two-handed sword--

"What noyse is this? giue me my long sword, hoe!"--

his characterless wife, feebly echoing her husband's moodiness--

"A crowch, a crowch, why call you for a sword?"

and the calm dignity of Romeo's mother--

"Thou shalt not stir one foote to seeke a foe."

We are also shown the citizens hastily arming themselves to part the two

houses, and hear for the first time their ominous shout:

"Downe with the Capulets, downe with the Mountagues."

It is heard on two subsequent occasions during the play, and is the

death-knell of the lovers. The quarrel is abruptly terminated by the

entrance of the Prince, who speaks with a precision and decision which

throws every other character on the stage into insignificance, and stamps

him at once in our eyes as a central figure. After the belligerents

disperse, admonished by the Prince that death awaits the next offender

against the peace, a scene follows to prepare us for Romeo's entrance,

Shakespeare having wisely kept him out of the quarrel, that the audience

may see him indifferent to every other passion but the one of love. Romeo,

until he had been shot with Cupid's arrow, seems to have passed for a

pleasant companion, as we learn from Mercutio's words, spoken to him in

the third act:

"Why is not this better now, than groning for loue; now art thou

sociable, now art thou Romeo: now art thou what thou art, by art as

well as by nature."

Romeo's romantic temperament naturally leads him into a love affair of a

sufficiently compromising character to need being kept from the knowledge

of his parents. Brooke narrates Rosaline's reception of Romeo's passion:

"But she that from her youth was fostred euermore,

With vertues foode, and taught in schole of wisdomes skillful lore:

By aunswere did cutte of th' affections of his loue,

That he no more occasion had so vayne a sute to moue."

And Shakespeare gives to Romeo almost similar words:

"And in strong proofe of chastitie well armd,

From loues weak childish bow she liues uncharmd;

Shee will not stay the siege of louing tearmes,

Nor bide th' incounter of assailing eies,

Nor ope her lap to sainct seducing gold."

A note in the Irving stage-version, referring to Mercutio's words, "stabd

with a white wenches blacke eye," states that "a pale woman with black

eyes" is suggestive of a wanton nature. Is this Rosaline's character? If

we are to accept seriously Mercutio's words as being the poet's

description of Rosaline's personal appearance, we may also give a literal

interpretation to the following lines:

"I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes,

By her high forehead, and her Scarlet lip."

In Charlotte Bronte's opinion, a high forehead was an indication of

conscientiousness; she could get on, she would say, with anyone "who had a

lump at the top of the head." The reproaches of the Friar are, in my

opinion, levelled against Romeo, and not Rosaline. Romeo says:

"Thou chidst me oft for louing Rosaline."

And the Friar replies:

"For doting, not for louing, pupill mine."

Romeo could not openly woo one who was of the House of Capulet, and

Rosaline would not tolerate a clandestine courtship.

In Scene 2 allusion is made for the second time to the quarrel of the two

houses. We also hear of Juliet for the first time, and are shown Paris, no

less a person than the Prince's kinsman, as a suitor for her hand. The

assumed dignity and good breeding of Capulet in this scene are to be

noted. The Irving acting-version leaves out the whole of the servant's

very amusing speech about the shoemaker and his "yard." Why are virtuous

tragedians always anxious to rob the low comedians of their cakes and ale?

In Scene 3 we are introduced to our principal comic character, the Nurse,

brought into the play no doubt to supply "those unsavoury morsels of

unseemly sentences, which doth so content the hungry humours of the rude

multitude." We are shown Juliet, and hear again of Paris, whose high rank

and fine clothes have won the simple mother's heart, but Juliet's

independence of character is indicated in the line:

"He looke to like, if looking liking moue."

And a touch of subtlety is revealed to us in the words:

"But no more deepe will I endart mine eye,

Than your consent giues strength to make (it) flie."

In Scene 4 Mercutio is brought on to the stage; a character that figures

in many Elizabethan plays, and in the theatrical parlance of the poet's

time was known as the "braggart" soldier, and yet the part had never

received such brilliant treatment till Shakespeare took it in hand. Scene

5 is the hall in Capulet's house, where Romeo and Juliet see each other

for the first time, the audience now being fully aware of the conditions

under which the two meet. It has seen the hatred of the houses; the

purse-proud Capulet contracting a fashionable marriage for his daughter;

Romeo's melancholy; his longing for the love and sympathy of woman; and

Juliet's loneliness amid conventional and uncongenial surroundings. The

sight of a Montague within Capulet's house gives warning for a fresh

outbreak of hostilities--

"but this intrusion shall,

Now seeming sweet, conuert to bittrest gall"--

and Romeo's cry,

"Is _she_ a Capulet?

O deare account! my life is my foes debt"--

and Juliet's exclamation,

"Prodigious birth of loue it is to mee,

That I must loue a loathed _enemie_!"

foreshadow the doom prophesied by Romeo as about to begin "with this

night's reuels."

In the rebuke of Tybalt we get an indication of Capulet's character. A

note in the Irving-version states that Capulet is a meddlesome mollycoddle

not unlike Polonius. But the fussiness of Polonius proceeds from his

vanity, from his mental and physical impotence. Capulet's activity is the

outcome of a love for domineering that springs from his pride of birth,

and his consciousness of physical superiority. Tybalt, who is no child,

sinks into insignificance at the thunder of this man's voice:

"He shall be endured.

What goodman boy, I say he shall, go too.

Am I the master here, or you? go too,

Youle not endure him, god shall mend my soule, ...

You will set cock a hoope, youle be the man ...

You must contrarie _me_."

Capulet, I fear, would have annihilated the bloodless and decorous

Polonius with the breath of his nostrils. Women who marry men of this

overbearing character often lose their own individuality, and become mere

ciphers. So does Lady Capulet. She dare not call her soul her own; she

cannot be mistress even in the kitchen. It is Capulet's indignation at his

nephew's interference with his affairs that prepares us for his outburst

of passion, in the fourth act, when his daughter threatens opposition to

his will.

At the close of Scene 5 Shakespeare thinks it necessary to bring the

Chorus on to the stage in order to make known to the audience the

direction in which the future action of the play will turn, and to account

for the suppression of Rosaline, of whom, until the entrance of Juliet, so

much has been said. That the words were not printed in the first quarto, a

piratical version published from notes taken at a performance of the play,

seems to suggest that after the first representation the Chorus did not

appear on the stage, for the speech was found to be an unnecessary

interruption.

Presuming, therefore, that there is no delay in the progress of the

action, Romeo returns from the ball, and, giving his companions the slip,

hides himself in Capulet's orchard, where he hears their taunts about his

Rosaline. The value, to the poet, of the Rosaline episode is thus further

shown by the use he makes of it to conceal from Romeo's inquisitive

companions this second love intrigue, so fraught with danger. That David

Garrick, in his acting-version, should allow Mercutio to make open fun of

Romeo's love for the daughter and heiress of old Capulet proves how rarely

the actor is able to replace the author.

It is incomprehensible to me why our stage Juliets, in the "Balcony

Scene," go through their billing-and-cooing as deliberately as they do

their toilets, never for a moment thinking that the "place is death" to

Romeo, and that "loves sweet bait must be stolen from fearful hookes." In

Shakespeare's time this scene was acted in broad daylight, and the

dramatist is careful to stimulate the imagination of his audience with

appropriate imagery. The word "night" occurs ten times, and I suppose the

actor would be instructed to give a special emphasis to it. There are,

besides, several allusions to the moon and the stars, including that

descriptive couplet:

"Lady, by yonder blessed Moone I vow,

That tips with siluer all these frute tree tops."

When Shakespeare could give us in words so vivid a picture of moonlight,

Ben Jonson could well afford to have a fling at Inigo Jones's mechanical

scenery, and say:

"What poesy e'er was painted on a wall?"

Romeo goes direct from Capulet's orchard to Friar Lawrence's cell to make

confession of his "deare hap." He loves now in earnest, and love teaches

him to brave all dangers, and even to face matrimony; and his virtuous

mood wins for him the good-will of the Friar, who sees in the alliance of

the two houses their reconciliation. In the poem and novel both the lovers

avow a similar disinterested motive to justify their union, but the mind

of reason never enters the heart of love, and Shakespeare, in their case,

wisely omits this bit of sophistry. The advance of the love episode must

move side by side with the quarrel episode, so in the next scene we hear

of Romeo receiving a challenge from Tybalt. The Irving-version omits most

of the good-natured banter between Romeo and Mercutio, which is all

telling comedy if spoken lightly and quickly. The Nurse enters, and

Mercutio and Benvolio set off for Montague's house, where they propose

dining. The incident that follows must have been very irritating to the

Elizabethan Puritans, who complained of the corruption of morals begot in

"the chapel of Satan" by witnessing the carrying and recarrying of letters

by laundresses "to beguile fathers of their children." Here more excellent

comedy is omitted in the Irving-version, including the Nurse's allusion to

Paris as being "the properer man" of the two, and her naive question,

"Doth not Rosemarie and Romeo begin both with a letter?" The Nurse had

overheard Juliet talk about "Rosemarie and Romeo." Later on we see

rosemary strewed over the body of the apparently dead Juliet.

The scene in which Romeo and Juliet meet to be married at the Friar's Cell

ends on the stage the second act. But to drop the curtain here interrupts

the dramatic movement just as it is about to reach a climax in the death

of Tybalt, followed by the banishment of Romeo. These incidents require

action that is all hurry and excitement, and are therefore out of place at

the beginning of an act, unless it be the opening act of a play. Besides,

they are immediately connected with the scene in which allusion is made to

Tybalt having challenged Romeo. We are shown Mercutio and Benvolio

returning from Montague's house, where they proposed dining. And Mercutio

has, apparently, indulged too freely in his host's wine, for the prudent

Benvolio is anxious to get his friend out of the public streets as quickly

as possible. Benvolio's worst fears are realized by the entrance of the

quarrelsome Tybalt, whom Mercutio, as is the way with fuddled people, at

once offers to fight. But Tybalt hesitates to cross swords with a relative

of the Prince, and is glad of the excuse of Romeo's appearance to transfer

the quarrel to him. Romeo will not draw sword upon his wife's cousin, and

Mercutio, exasperated, takes up the challenge, is stabbed by Tybalt under

Romeo's arm, and dies cursing the two houses. This tragedy rouses Romeo to

action; he will now defend his own honour since he was Mercutio's dear

friend. Tybalt is challenged and killed. The citizens "are up," and for

the second time we hear their ominous shout:

"Downe with the Capulets, downe with the Montagues!"

They enter, followed by the Prince, with the heads of the two houses and

their wives. The Capulets call for Romeo's death. The Montagues protest

that Romeo in killing a man whose life was already forfeited has but taken

the law into his own hands. For that offence he is exiled by the Prince.

"I haue an interest in your hates proceeding:

My bloud for your rude brawles doth lie a bleeding.

But ile amerce you with so strong a fine,

That you shall all repent the losse of mine.

I will be deafe to pleading and excuses,

Nor teares, nor prayers, shall purchase out abuses.

Therefore use none, let Romeo hence in hast,

Else when he is found, that houre is his last."

The whole of the latter part of this scene is brilliant in the variety and

rapidity of its action, and should not, I consider, be omitted in

representation as is directed to be done in the Irving-version. To take

out the second renewal of hostilities between the two houses; not to show,

in action on the stage, the rage of the Capulets at the death of Tybalt,

and the grief of the Montagues at the banishment of Romeo, is to weaken

the tragic significance of the scenes that follow. Without it the audience

cannot vividly realize that the hatred of the two houses has reached its

acutest stage, and that all hope of reconciliation is at an end.

Mercutio at the commencement of this scene says to Benvolio: "Thou wilt

quarell with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because

thou hast hazel eyes." Did Shakespeare, who, according to tradition had

hazel eyes, act the part of Benvolio? I think he did. It is the only part

in the play I can fancy him able to act. A study of both the bust and the

Droeshout portrait of the poet-dramatist leads me to believe that he would

not have been able to disguise easily his identity on the stage. His

flexibility was essentially of a mental and not of a physical nature. The

face is entirely wanting in mobility, and the head is so large that no wig

could hide its unusual size. Shakespeare, moreover, became bald probably

early in life. The Droeshout portrait shows undoubtedly the likeness of a

youngish man, about thirty-five years old, while his baldness would still

justify the epithet of "grandsire" with which Mercutio dubs Benvolio; and

"grandsire" may have been a nickname of Shakespeare's suggested by his

baldness. "Come hither, goodman bald-pate"--words spoken by Lucio in

"Measure for Measure"--have been quoted as a reason for presuming that

Shakespeare played the Duke in that comedy. Sir William Davenant, who

liked to be thought a natural son of the poet, in an adaption of this play

altered the words to, "She has been advised by a bald dramatic poet of

the next cloister." If the audience recognized their "gentle Will" in the

part of the peace-loving Benvolio, we may imagine the laughter that would

arise at Mercutio's words: "Thy head is as full of quarelles, as an egg is

full of meate"--Shakespeare's head being egg-shaped. If my supposition be

correct, we may honour the self-abnegation, the entire absence of personal

vanity that enabled Shakespeare, like Moliere, to direct laughter against

himself. The scattered references to him which we find in the writings of

his contemporaries show us, says Professor Dowden, "the poet concealed and

sometimes forgotten in the man, and make it clear that he moved among his

fellows with no assuming of the bard or prophet, no air of authority as of

one divinely commissioned; that, on the contrary, he appeared as a

pleasant comrade, genial, gentle, full of civility in the large meaning of

the word, upright in dealing, ready and bright in wit, quick and sportive

in conversation." How aptly does this description fit the character of

Benvolio! One quality was especially common to the two men--tact. It was

the possession of tact that made Shakespeare so invaluable to his

fellow-actors as a manager. Benvolio's tact is shown in his conversation

with Romeo's parents, with Romeo himself, with Mercutio when hot-headed,

and with the Prince, Mercutio's relative. It is true that Benvolio

attributes Mercutio's death to Tybalt's interference, while in reality it

was due to Mercutio's indiscretion; but we have no pity for Tybalt, who,

as Brooke says, thirsting after the death of others, lost his life.

Romeo's banishment brings us to the middle and "busy" part of the play,

where the Elizabethan actors were expected to thunder their loudest to

split the ears of the groundlings; and Shakespeare, not yet sufficiently

independent as a dramatist to dispense with the conventions of his stage,

follows suit on the same fiddle to the same tune; and after all the

ranting eloquence on the part of Romeo and Juliet, we are just where we

were before with regard to any advance made with the story. Act III.,

Scene 2, is often entirely omitted in representation, but the

Irving-version retains most of it. It is not till the middle of Act III.,

Scene 3, that the action advances again. But this, and the previous

scenes, if acted with animation and rapidly spoken by all the characters

concerned, would not take up much time, and could be declaimed with

effect. The stage fashion of making the Friar stolidly indifferent to the

unexpected complication that has arisen through Tybalt's death is not only

undramatic, but inconsistent with the text. A heavy responsibility lies on

him, and his position is full of difficulty and danger. The scene that

follows shows us Capulet fixing a day for the marriage of Juliet with

Paris, and the father's words--

"I thinke she will be rulde

In all respects by _me_: nay, more, I doubt it not,"

have a significance, and render the parting of the lovers in the next

scene highly dramatic. In the poem and novel, Juliet, before parting with

Romeo, proposes to accompany him disguised as his servant; about the best

thing she could do. After a good deal of arguing on both sides the idea is

abandoned as impracticable. Shakespeare prefers his lovers to discourse

about the nightingale. Romeo being gone, the mother enters to announce to

the wife her betrothal to Paris, and the early day of marriage. The news

is sprung upon her with terrible abruptness, though the audience have been

in the secret from the first, and Juliet has hardly time to protest

against "this sudden day of joy" before the father enters to complete her

discomfiture by his torrents of abuse. Capulet's varnish of good manners

entirely disappears in this scene, and his coarse nature is exposed in all

its ugliness. But in the emergency of this tragic moment, as Professor

Dowden points out, does Juliet leap into womanhood, and realize her

position and responsibilities as a wife, and in the following lines

Shakespeare touches the first note of highest tragedy in the play: that of

the mind's suffering as opposed to the mere tragedy of incident--

"O God, o Nurse, how shall this be preuented?

My husband is on earth, my faith in heauen;

How shall that faith returne againe to earth,

Unlesse that husband send it me from heauen

By leauing earth? comfort me, counsaile me."

I am curious to learn on what grounds these thrilling words are omitted in

the Irving-version. To me they are the climax of the scene and of the play

so far as it has progressed. They mark the turning-point in Juliet's moral

nature. They enable us to forgive her any indiscretions of which she may

previously have been guilty. From this point onwards all is calm in

Juliet's breast, because there is no infirmity of purpose,

"If all else faile, my self have power to die."

As the shadows fall across the path of the lovers, so do they over that of

the Friar.

"O _Iuliet_, I already know thy greefe,

It straines me past the compasse of my wits,"

is his greeting in the next scene. A "desperate preventive" to shame or

death is decided upon, and then follows what is perhaps the most dramatic

episode in the whole play. We are shown Capulet's household busy with the

preparations for the marriage-feast, and the father, now bent on having a

"great ado," hastily summoning "twenty cunning Cookes"--the consequence

possibly of Juliet's threatened opposition to his wishes. Juliet enters to

feign submission and beg forgiveness, which enables the father to indulge

in another despotic freak by hastening the day of marriage, heedless of

all the inconvenience it may cause. Juliet retires to her chamber, and

Capulet goes to prepare Paris against to-morrow. Then comes Juliet's

terrible ordeal, the undertaking "of a thing like death," which is all the

more terrible because it must be done alone. This scene is often overacted

on the stage. Our Juliets do far too much "stumping and frumping" about. I

once saw the "potion-scene" acted with dramatic intelligence by an actress

quite unknown to fame. When Juliet lays her dagger on the table, the

actress took up the vial, and, standing motionless in the centre of the

stage, spoke the lines in a hurried, low whisper, conveying the impression

of reflection as well as the need for discretion. At the words,

"O looke, me thinks I see my Cozins Ghost,"

she sank on one knee, and, raising the right arm with a quick movement,

pointed into space, the eye following the hand, a very simple but telling

gesture. The words, "Stay, _Tybalt_, stay!" were not given with a scream,

but in a tone of alarm and entreaty, followed immediately by the drinking

of the potion, as if to suggest Juliet's desire to come to Romeo's rescue.

The whole scene was acted in less than two minutes. The vision of Tybalt's

ghost pursuing Romeo for vengeance, an incident not to be found in the

originals, shows the touch of the master dramatist. We feel the need of

some immediate incentive to nerve Juliet to raise the vial to her lips;

and what more effectual than that of her overwrought imagination picturing

to herself the husband in danger.

While the poor child lies prostrate upon her bed in the likeness of death,

we are shown the dawn of the morning, the rousing and bustle of the

household; we hear the bridal march in the distance, the sound coming

nearer every moment; the Nurse knocking at Juliet's chamber-door; her

awful discovery; the entrance of the parents; the filling of the stage by

the bridal party, led by the Friar; the wailing, and wringing of the hands

as the first quarto directs; the changing of the sound of instruments to

that of melancholy bells, of solemn hymns to sullen dirges, of bridal

flowers to funeral wreaths. All this is thrilling in conception, and yet

the episode as conceived by Shakespeare is never represented on the stage.

Why are the Capulet scenes omitted, those which are dovetailed to the

"potion scene," and make it by contrast so terribly tragic? The

accentuation here of Capulet's tyranny, of his sensuality, his brutal

frankness, his indifference to every one's convenience but his own, his

delight in exacting a cringing obedience from all about him, are designed

by the dramatist to move us with deep pity for Juliet's sufferings, and by

emphasizing its necessity to save the "potion scene" from the danger of

appearing grotesque. But Shakespeare's method of dramatic composition,

that of uniting a series of short scenes with each other in one dramatic

movement, will not bear the elaboration of heavy stage sets, and with the

demand for carpentry comes the inducement for mutilation. At the

Shakespeare Reading Society's recital of this play, given recently under

my direction at the London Institution, these scenes were spoken without

delay or interruption, and with but one scene announced, and the interest

and breathless attention they aroused among the audience convinced me that

my conception as to the dramatic treatment of them was the right one.

Until these scenes are restored to the acting version, Shakespeare's

tragedy will not be seen on the stage as he conceived it; and when they

are restored, their dramatic power will electrify the house, and

twentieth-century dilettantism will lose its influence among playgoers.

The comic scene between Peter and the Musicians should also be restored.

It comes in as a welcome relief after the intensity of the previous

scenes, and is, besides, a connecting link with the comedy in the earlier

part of the play.

The last act can be briefly dealt with. We anticipate the final

catastrophe, though we do not know by what means it will be brought about.

It is carried out, as it should be, effectively but simply. The children

have loved and suffered, let them die easily and quickly. Romeo's costume

in exile is described in the poem as that of a merchant venturer, which is

certainly a more appropriate dress than the conventional black velvet of

the stage. After hearing the fatal news, which provokes the boy to mutter,

"Is it even so?" in the Lyceum version is inserted the stage-direction,

"_He pauses, overcome with grief_." But as there is no similar

stage-direction in the originals, the actor may, without violation to the

author's intentions, pause _before_ the words are spoken. The blow is too

sudden, too cruel, too overwhelming to allow of any immediate response in

words. The colour would fly from Romeo's face, his teeth grip his under

lip, his eyes gleam with a look of frenzy, _looks_ that "import some

misadventure," but there is no action and no sound for a while, and

afterwards only a muttering. The stillness of Romeo's desperation is very

dramatic. There is nothing, in my opinion, unnatural in Romeo's

description of the Apothecary's shop. All sorts of petty details float

before our mental vision when the nerves are over-wrought, but the actor

should be careful not to accentuate the description in any way; it is but

introductory to the dominant words of the speech,

"And if a man did need a poyson now."

As Juliet's openly acknowledged lover, Paris occupies too prominent a

place in the play to be lightly dismissed, and so he is involved in the

final catastrophe. In Brooke's poem, Romeo, before dying, prays to Heaven

for mercy and forgiveness, and the picture of the boy kneeling by his

wife's side, with her hand clasped in his, pleading to his Redeemer to--

"Take pity on my sinnefull and my poore afflicted mynde!"

would, on the stage, have been a supremely pathetic situation. But

Shakespeare's stern love of dramatic truth rejects it. In Romeo's

character he strikes but one note, love--and love as a passion. Love is

Romeo's divinity, physical beauty his deity. The assertion that--

"In nature there's no blemish but the mind,

None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind,"

would have sounded in Romeo's ears profanation. When he first sees Juliet

he will by touching hers make _blessed_ his rude hand, and when he dies he

will seal the doors of breath "with a _righteous_ kiss." To the Friar he

cries:

"Do thou but close our hands with holy words,

Then loue-deuouring death do what he dare.

It is inough I may but call her _mine_."

And "love-devouring death" accepts the challenge, but the agony of death

does not "countervail the exchange of joy" that one short minute gives him

in her presence. Here Shakespeare's treatment of the love-episode differs

from that of Brooke's in his tolerance for the children's love, though it

be carried out in defiance of the parents' wishes, and in his recognition

that love, so long as it be strong as death, has an ennobling and not a

debasing influence on character: we are made to feel that it is better for

Romeo to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. For the

hatred of the two houses Shakespeare shows no tolerance. Juliet's death

is carried out with the greatest simplicity, and within a few moments of

her awakening. There is neither time for reflection nor lamentation; the

watch has been roused, and is heard approaching. She has hardly kissed the

poison from her dead husband's lips before they enter the churchyard, and

nothing but the darkness of the night screens from them the sight of the

steel that Juliet plunges into her breast. It is the presence of the

watch, almost within touch of her, that goads her to lift the knife, just

as it is the vision of Tybalt's ghost pursuing Romeo that nerves her to

drink the potion. The dramatist's intention is clearly indicated in the

stage-directions of the two quartos and the folio, but the Irving-version

retains in this last scene the modern stage-directions.

Professor Dowden is of opinion "that it were presumptuous to say that had

Shakespeare been acquainted with the earlier form of the story (in which

Juliet wakes before Romeo dies), he would not have altered his ending."

But an ending of this kind is inartistic. It is bringing the axe down

twice instead of once. It is introducing a new complication and a new

movement at a moment when none is wanted. The catastrophe should be and

always is, by Shakespeare, carried out with simplicity and directness.

After Juliet's death other watchmen enter with the Friar in custody, while

from afar we hear for the third and last time the cries of the citizens:

"Downe with the Capulets, downe with the Mountagues!"

the only child of each of the two rival houses lying dead before the

spectators. Nature had done her best to effect a reconciliation, but man

thwarted her in her purpose. Then the Prince and the heads of the two

houses enter and learn for the first time that

"_Romeo_ there dead, was husband to that _Iuliet_,

And she there dead, that's _Romeo's_ faithfull wife."

Well may the Prince say--

"_Capulet, Montague_,

See what a scourge is laide upon your hate

That heauen finds means to kill your joyes with loue."

All this last scene is full of animation, and presents a fine opportunity

for the _regisseur_. I am obliged to use the French word, for we have no

similar functionary in this country. Our public is sufficiently

indifferent to the welfare of dramatic art to allow its leading actors to

be their own stage-managers and often their own authors. As a consequence

the public gets no English plays worthy of being called plays, and no

guarantee that a dead author's intentions shall be respected. Human nature

has its prejudices, and the actor is seldom to be found who can look at a

play from any other point of view than in relation to the prominence of

his own part in it. It is owing to the despotism of the actor on the

English stage, and consequently to the star system, that I attribute the

mutilation of Shakespeare's plays in their representation. The closing

scene of this play might be made very effective in action. The crowd

hurrying with "bated breath" to the spot; its horror at the sight of the

dead children, who for all it knows are murdered; its amazement at finding

they are man and wife; the Prince's stern rebuke; the bowed grief and

shame of Montague and Capulet; the reconciliation of the bereaved parents,

and joining of hands across the dead bodies. The Irving-version omits all

but the entrance of the citizens with Montague, Capulet, and the Prince,

who at once ends the play with the couplet--

"For neuer was a Storie of more wo

Than this of _Iuliet_ and her _Romeo_."

But if the Prince hears no story, he and those who enter with him cannot

be aware that Romeo and Juliet are man and wife, or that they died by

their own hands, and are not victims to an act of treachery. Then why open

your play with the quarrel of the two houses if you do not intend to show

them reconciled? Why not follow the Cumberland acting-version, and take

out the crowd scenes altogether? It is a more intelligible proceeding than

this compromise of the Irving-version.

Criticized as classical tragedy, the play of "Romeo and Juliet" is a

veritable hotch-potch. It seems to defy the laws of criticism. The

characters at one moment talk in the highest poetical language, and at

another in the most commonplace colloquy. Nothing can well seem more

inconsistent than to put into the mouth of Capulet these words--

"Death lies on her like an untimely frost,

Upon the sweetest flower of all the field."

Bombast goes side by side with poetry; passion with pantomime. Yet, as

Lessing says, "Plays which do not observe the classical rules, must yet

observe rules of some kind if they are to please;" and Shakespeare sought

to establish rules in accordance with the national taste, his first aim

being the combination of the serious and the ludicrous. Vigorous

characterization, a vital and varied movement, and the skilful handling

of scenes well calculated to stir the emotions of an audience, make "Romeo

and Juliet" an acting play of enduring interest.

In conclusion, I hold that no stage-version of "Romeo and Juliet" is

consistent with Shakespeare's intentions which does not give prominence to

the hatred of the two houses and retain intact the three "crowd

scenes"--the one at the opening of the play, the second in the middle, and

the third at the end. To represent only the love episode is to make that

episode far less tragic, and therefore less dramatic.

"HAMLET."[12]

In comparing the acting-edition of "Hamlet" with the authorized text of

the Globe edition, I find that it is shorter by 1,191 lines, and omits the

characters of Voltemand, Cornelius, Reynaldo, a gentleman, and Fortinbras.

Such a modification should, perhaps, exclude the acting-editions from

being classed as the same play with either the folio or second quarto. It

is a question whether 1,200 lines can be taken out of any Shakespearian

play without defeating the poet's dramatic intentions; but if it is

necessary to shorten a play to this extent in order to make it suitable

for the stage, so important an alteration should not, surely, be left

entirely to the discretion of the actor, but should be the work of

Shakespearian scholars, assisted by the advice of the dramatic profession.

One would think that Shakespeare's world-famed greatness as a dramatist

should make all his plays so valued by his countrymen that any alteration

in their stage representation which had not been sanctioned by the highest

authorities would be repudiated. But, unfortunately, it is not so. That

the omission of some of the characters in the acting-edition of "Hamlet"

has not impaired Shakespeare's dramatic conception of the play is at least

a matter of doubt. In the second quarto we have a play constructed for the

purpose of showing us types of character contrasted one with the other.

Strong men, weak men, old men, fond women, all living and moving under the

influence of a destiny that is not of their own seeking. We have also a

Danish court in which a terrible crime has been committed, and over which

an avenging angel is hovering with drawn sword waiting to descend on the

head of the guilty one; and, because the influence of good in this court

is too weak to conquer the evil, the sword falls on the good as well as on

the evil, on the weak as well as on the strong. Something is rotten in the

State of Denmark; no one there is worthy to rule; the kingdom must be

taken away and given to a stranger. It is the play as an epitome of life

which is interesting the mind of Shakespeare, and not the career of one

individual, even though the whole play be influenced by the actions of

that individual. Look at the first quarto and we find a proof of this.

Mutilated as that version is, care has been taken to avoid confusing the

story of the play. Everything relating to Fortinbras is kept in the

quarto, because Fortinbras has to appear like Richmond in "Richard III.,"

as the hero who will restore peace and order to the distracted kingdom.

This much-abused quarto has 557 lines less than the modern acting

edition, of which 254 are not in that edition, although they are in the

second quarto (or rather have a meaning equivalent to lines in the second

quarto), showing clearly that it is possible to shorten the text in more

ways than one. The first quarto comes nearer to Shakespeare's dramatic

conception of the play than the modern stage version, because the latter,

by omitting some of the persons represented, and also many of the lines

which reveal the weaker side of Hamlet's character, have altered the story

of the play, and placed the part of Hamlet in a different aspect to the

one conceived by the author.

I will now compare French's acting-edition of "Hamlet," scene by scene,

with the Globe edition. The Globe edition contains all the lines of the

second quarto and the folio. It adheres to the text, but not to the

stage-directions. For reading purposes, perhaps, the alterations which

have been made in the latter may be justified to some extent as a

necessity, yet for the acting-edition it would have been better to copy

the originals. There are alterations made to the stage-directions in the

first scene. Horatio, Marcellus, and the Ghost are shown to enter a line

later in the Globe edition than is marked in the quarto or folio. But the

attention of an audience is better sustained if the entrances of

characters, especially of the Ghost, is not anticipated, and also if the

dialogue is not interrupted by pauses for entrances and exits.

In comparing the text, I find that lines 69 to 125 of the Globe edition

are omitted in the acting-edition. But these lines explain to the audience

why Marcellus, Bernardo, and Horatio are engaged in this same "strict and

most observant watch." Marcellus and Bernardo are not common sentries.

They are gentlemen and scholars, who are on duty as soldiers for this

particular occasion. Lines 140 to 142 I should also like to see inserted,

because they are needed to explain the words which follow--

"We do it wrong, being so majestical,

To offer it this show of violence."

On the stage these words are spoken, but no violence is shown towards the

Ghost. Besides, the business of striking at the Ghost is a fine invention

of the author to assist the imagination to realize it is a spirit. I am

sorry lines 157 to 165 are omitted, because not only are they beautiful in

themselves, but also appropriate, for they help to give solemnity to the

scene. The omission of the last four lines of the scene leaves it

unfinished. Altogether seventy-one lines have been cut out of the first

scene, but the first quarto retains most of them.

The stage-directions at the head of the second scene, both in the Globe

edition and folio, place Hamlet's name after the Queen's, to indicate the

order to be observed by the actors when they come on to the stage. In the

second quarto, however, Hamlet's name comes last. As he has an antipathy

to the King, and is displeased with his mother, it is not likely he would

be much in the company of either, not even on State occasions, for Hamlet

regards the King as a usurper. I would venture to suggest, then, that

Hamlet should enter last of all, from another doorway to that used by the

King and his train, having his hat and cloak in his hand, as if he had

come to take leave of the Court before starting for Wittenberg.

Passing on now to the fourth scene, I notice that in the acting-edition

the last five lines of the scene have been cut out, including that

expressive one--

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

I do not myself sympathize with this cutting out the end of scenes, as is

done so persistently in every acted play of Shakespeare's. It is

inartistic, because it is done to allow the principal actor to leave the

stage with applause. Besides, it creates a habit, with actors, of trying

to make points at the end of scenes, whether it is necessary or not, and

this distorts the play and delays its progress.

In the fifth scene the line--

"O horrible, horrible, most horrible"--

spoken by the Ghost, is marked in the acting-edition to be spoken by

Hamlet. Such an alteration is unwarranted by the text. The first quarto,

by making Hamlet exclaim "O God" after the Ghost has said "O horrible,"

gives indication that the words "O horrible" were spoken on the

Elizabethan stage by the Ghost.

An alteration has also been made in the Ghost's last line, which to some

may appear a trivial matter. The folio attaches the word "Hamlet" to the

"Adieu," and puts a colon between it and the words "Remember me," showing

thereby that a slight pause should be made before these two last words are

spoken, in order to make them more impressive; and the first quarto gives

the same reading. French's acting-version, however, tacks the name on to

the "Remember me." Cumberland's version gives the reading of the second

quarto, which I think the best--

"Adieu, adieu, adieu, Remember me."

The omission in all the stage-versions of Hamlet's lines addressed to the

Ghost, beginning "Ha, ha, boy!" "Hic et ubique?" "Well said, old Mole!"

is, I think, not judicious, because it causes some actors to misconceive

Shakespeare's intention in this scene. One can hardly read the authorized

text without feeling that Hamlet is here shown as a young man, or,

perhaps, a "boy," as his mother calls him, in the first quarto, thrown

into the intensest excitement. His delicate, nervous temperament has

undergone a terrible shock from the interview with the Ghost, yet, owing

to the absence of these lines, our Hamlets on the stage finish this scene

with the most dignified composure. From the first act 217 lines have been

omitted in French's acting-edition.

In the beginning of the second act the scene between Polonius and Reynaldo

is left out in all the acting-versions. It is a very amusing scene, and in

my opinion gives a better insight into the character of Polonius than any

of the others. If it were inserted I believe it would become popular with

the audience, and we find it retained in the first quarto. The second

scene is called "_A Room in the Castle_" both in the Globe and acting

editions. Might it not be an exterior scene? It is true that Polonius

remarks "Here in the lobby," but the line next to this in the first quarto

suggests that he is pointing to some place off the scene, for he adds

"There let Ophelia walk," and Ophelia is on the stage. An exterior scene

would, in my opinion, give more meaning to the words "Will you walk out of

the air, my lord?" and to Hamlet's speech, "This most excellent canopy

the air," etc. The scene of a palace garden or cloister could be well

introduced in a play so full of interiors. It would add to the interest of

the scene if Hamlet took advantage of the early entrance in the quarto and

in the folio. For Hamlet to catch sight of Polonius hurrying the King and

Queen off the scene would account for his suspicions and explain his

rudeness to Polonius. Lines 374 to 378, Globe edition, are omitted in the

acting-edition, but should surely be inserted, because they are needed to

explain why Hamlet's reception of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern when they

first enter, differs from that of the Players. I have always thought that

the Hamlets of our stage, not being familiar with the context, mistake

Shakespeare's intention. I gather from the omitted lines that Hamlet

should warmly welcome the players, and take them by the hand.

At line 381, in the Globe edition, Polonius is marked to enter and speak

on the stage the line "Well be with you, gentlemen." In the acting-edition

he is marked to speak this "_without_" (to whom? certainly not to the

players; Polonius would not have addressed them in such terms), and to

enter at a cue lower down the page. The alteration is an instance of what

I consider the wrong principle adopted in making stage-versions. The

actors have preferred thinking Shakespeare wrong to using a little

ingenuity to meet his stage-directions. They have said: "It will never do

to have Polonius stand still saying nothing while Hamlet is making fun of

him to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, so he must speak his line off the

stage." Would it not have shown more consideration for the author's text

to make Polonius enter where directed, and then find something for him to

do after he is on the stage? For instance, he might enter from a side

entrance, as if summoned by the sound of the trumpet, move hastily towards

the back of the stage, where the new-comers would arrive, and greet

Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, as he passes them, with the words,

"Well be with you, gentlemen."

The wording in the acting-version of the stage-direction, "_Enter four or

five_ Players _and two_ Actresses," is questionable. Perhaps it is not a

matter of great consequence, unless the period chosen for representation

be the Elizabethan one, and I would suggest that this is the most

appropriate period for the play, because to adopt an early Danish period

is contradictory to the text, and overloads the piece with material

foreign to the author's intentions. Shakespeare's thoughts were not in

Denmark when he wrote this play.

Hamlet's recitation of Priam's slaughter in the acting-version has been

cut down from thirteen to three lines, and I venture to think unwisely.

Hamlet has chosen these lines because they express in biting words his

contempt for the King, his uncle, and the audience should become aware of

this by the marked emphasis Hamlet lays on each epithet applied to

Pyrrhus.

I am sorry that Hamlet's line to the Player, "He's for a jig, or a tale of

bawdry, or else he sleeps," has been cut out. Besides being a fine hit at

Polonius, it is an instructive piece of sarcasm. Playgoers in the

twentieth century need as much to be told the truth as those in the

sixteenth.

In Cumberland's acting version the editor has inserted the

stage-direction--"_pointing to Hamlet_"--before Polonius speaks his line,

"Look whether he hath not changed colour," etc. I believe this is the

right reading, although it is not the one usually adopted on the stage. If

Polonius had been speaking the words to Hamlet with reference to the

player he surely would have inserted the words "my lord." Besides, these

manifestations of grief are more likely to arouse sympathy in Polonius

coming from the "mad" Hamlet than from the actor, whose business it was to

simulate emotion. By the way, the skill of this play-actor seems to have

been underrated on our stage. Actors are always considered at liberty to

rant the part, but from Hamlet's description of his performance he should

be an executant of considerable ability. It is curious that in Oxberry's

acting-edition the first half of Hamlet's closing soliloquy is omitted,

and he begins at the line, "I have heard that guilty creatures," etc.;

showing that even a great actor such as Edmund Kean could take some

unpardonable liberties with his author. Two hundred and thirty-eight lines

have been omitted from the second act of the stage-version.

The first scene in the third act is called in French's acting-edition, "_A

Room in the Castle as prepared for the Play_," and in Cumberland's, "_A

Hall in the Palace, Theatre in the Background_." But the interview between

Ophelia and Hamlet should take place in the lobby spoken of by Polonius,

the play being acted later in the day. It would add to the interest of the

scene if the actor impersonating Hamlet availed himself of the position

marked in the second quarto for his entrance, and actually saw the King

and Polonius concealing themselves. Was not this Shakespeare's intention?

I notice, in Hamlet's soliloquy, that the folio has the expression, "the

_poor_ man's contumely." As the Globe edition, and, indeed, all the modern

editions, retain the expression "proud," used in the second quarto, I

suppose that the "poor man's contumely" is not considered a legitimate

expression. It is curious, however, that the first quarto has an

expression somewhat similar in meaning, "The rich man cursed of the poor."

In "Twelfth Night," also, a play written not long before "Hamlet," Olivia

says: "O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!"

In the scene with Ophelia and Hamlet, both in French's and Cumberland's

acting-version, Hamlet is marked to exit after the word "Farewell," and to

re-enter again directly afterwards, thus conveying the impression that he

returns in order to give more force to his reproaches. These

stage-directions are not to be found in either of the quartos or yet in

the folio, and I can find no foundation for them in the text. They seem to

me to be an unnecessary interruption in a solemn scene, and to interfere

with its impressiveness. Hamlet is dismissing Ophelia to a nunnery, and

the word "Farewell" is added to impress her with the necessity of her

going. She must leave him, not he her. It is, indeed, a subtle touch of

Shakespeare's that Ophelia here should think Hamlet's intense feeling and

earnestness was madness, for the Prince was "hoist with his own petard,"

having previously assumed madness for the purpose of breaking off his

engagement with her, "made in honourable fashion, with almost all the

holy vows of heaven." After the exit of Polonius and the King, the

stage-direction in the acting version is: "_Enter_ Hamlet _and_ First

Player." The Globe edition makes this the beginning of another scene, and

where changes of scene take place in a theatre it would be correct to make

an alteration, for the scene in the text is a banqueting hall and the time

night. The stage-direction of the second quarto gives, "_Enter_ Hamlet

_and three of the_ Players," and that of the folio, "_Enter_ Hamlet _and

two or three of the_ Players." Hamlet, therefore, should not enter, as he

does now, with only one player.

I should like to make a remark in passing on Hamlet's expression,

"trippingly on the tongue." If Burbage's company spoke Shakespeare's lines

in this way, I believe the longer plays could be acted in three hours. The

late Mr. Brandram's recitals showed how much more effective Shakespeare's

lines can be made when spoken "trippingly on the tongue," and that the

enjoyment of the public depends more upon the appropriate rendering of the

text than upon the scenic accessories.

The stage-direction in the folio for the entrance of the court to see the

play reads: "_Enter_ King, _etc., with his guard carrying torches_." It is

a pity, I think, that these directions are not inserted in our acting

versions. It would make a pretty picture for the stage to be darkened, and

to have the mimic play acted by torchlight.

The "_dumb-show_" is omitted in all the stage-versions, and is not

represented on the stage, but I think the play-scene is imperfectly

realized by leaving it out. The Queen's reply to Hamlet's question,

"Madame, how like you the play?" and the King's inquiry, "Have you heard

the argument? Is there no offence in it?" would have a deeper significance

with it represented; for evidently the poisoning in the "_dumb show_" has

made no impression on the Queen, but a very marked one on the King, and

Hamlet's reply, "poison in jest," assumes quite a different meaning.

Besides, Hamlet's words, "The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge,"

shows that he already has become convinced of the King's guilt before the

appearance of Lucianus--and how, except by means of the "_dumb show_"? I

believe, too, that if it were represented, then the mistake many actors

fall into of making a climax at the lines, "He poisons him in the garden,"

etc., and speaking them to the King, and not to his courtiers, would be

corrected. There seems no justification for Hamlet making a climax of

these lines. It is anticipating the King's exit, which is the last thing

Hamlet would wish for. He tells the court that it shall see "_anon_" how

the murderer will marry the wife of Gonzago, and the King defeats his

nephew's purpose by stopping the play. Hamlet's most dramatic line in this

scene, one at which a point might be legitimately made, is cut out in the

acting-version. Ophelia says, "The King rises." Then Hamlet exclaims,

"What! frighted with _false_ fire!" Also the Queen's remark to her

husband, "How fares my lord?" has been omitted. The words have some value

as evidence of the Queen's ignorance of the King's crime. If she knew of

it the question was unnecessary.

"_Exit Horatio_" is the stage-direction in the acting-edition, after

Hamlet's words, "Come, some music;" but there is no similar

stage-direction in either the second quarto or folio. Later on, in the

acting-edition, comes the direction: "_Enter_ Horatio _with_ Recorders."

In the second quarto it is, "_Enter the Players with recorders_," and in

the folio, "_Enter one with a recorder_." It seems just possible that

Hamlet's lines--

"Ah! ha! come, some music; come, the recorders.

For if the King like not the tragedy,

Why, then, belike he likes it not, perdy"--

may not be said to Horatio at all, but to one of the players who may be

hanging about the stage waiting for instructions after the sudden

interruption of the performance. He would then retire, and send some of

his fellows with recorders. In French's acting-edition the words, "To

withdraw with you," are altered to "So withdraw with you," after which

comes the rather curious stage-direction, "_Exeunt_ Horatio _and_

Recorders." There are no such directions in the quartos or folio. A

recorder is not a person, but a musical instrument. From indications in

the first quarto, Horatio should remain on the stage until the end of the

scene, for Hamlet says, "Good-night, Horatio," to which Horatio replies,

"Good-night unto your lordship."

The third scene in the Globe edition is the second scene in the

acting-version. French's edition contains the King's long soliloquy, and

omits Hamlet's entrance. Cumberland's edition omits both. I think that to

omit Hamlet's entrance in this scene is to interfere with Shakespeare's

dramatic construction. Its omission breaks an important link between the

closet scene and the play scene, and prevents the audience fully realizing

the consequences of Hamlet's clemency. Shakespeare shows us Hamlet

wishing to take the King's life at three different periods during the

play, but the King's craft and Hamlet's conscience stand in the way; for

the Ghost's word must first be challenged; then the mother's wishes must

be respected; while the King's prayers must not be interrupted; and when

the next opportunity occurs the wrong man is killed. This is the sequence

of the story, and it should not be broken; even the compiler of the first

quarto knew this, for all three incidents are made prominent in his text.

But our stage Hamlets try to tone down the inconsistencies and

imperfections of the character; they exploit his sentiments, but do not

show his inclinations. Hamlet wants to kill the King, notwithstanding that

his sensitive nature instinctively rebels against the deed. A student, a

controversialist, and a moralist, what has he to do with revenge or

murder? But Hamlet, regardless of his own temperament, thinks only of his

duty to his father.

Passing now to the third scene, which is the fourth in the Globe edition,

I find that after the exit of the Ghost no less than 52 lines have been

cut out, and their omission has caused actors to introduce stage-business

which is contradictory to the text. Many Hamlets show an emotional

tenderness towards the Queen which would be quite out of place if all the

text were spoken. Look at the fierce satire expressed in lines 190

onwards! Hamlet in his self-constituted office "as scourge and minister"

cannot caress his mother or hold her in his arms as is now done by actors.

However much she may solicit his sympathy, his reply is: "I must be cruel

only to be kind." I should like to see inserted in the acting-edition the

fine lines of Hamlet to the Queen--

"Forgive me this my virtue,

For in the fatness of these pursy times

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,

Yea, curb and woo, for leave to do him good."

From the third act 216 lines have been omitted.

The fourth act on the stage sometimes begins with the fifth scene, Globe

edition, but very often the first and the third scenes are acted. These

scenes seem to belong to the third act. They take place the same night,

and are a continuation of the closet scene, for in the first quarto and

folio the Queen is not marked to go off, but the King to enter after

Hamlet's exit. Between the fourth and fifth scenes a pause can well take

place to allow of Laertes' return from France. This addition to the third

act would make it very long, unless the Hamlet and Ophelia scene were made

part of the second act, bringing down the curtain on the words, "Madness

in great ones must not unwatched go." Two objections to this suggestion,

however, can be urged owing to the lapse of a day between the second and

third acts, and the bringing together of Hamlet's two long soliloquies.

But an interval is only needed to show that time has been allowed to

prepare the play, and, therefore, can come as well after the scene with

Ophelia as before; and a good actor would surmount the difficulty of the

two soliloquies by varying the delivery of each. This revision of

act-intervals would make the construction of the play resemble more that

of the first quarto, which, for acting purposes, is certainly the better

version of the two. Moreover, in the folio there appear no divisions

beyond the second act, nor any indications in the text to show where

Shakespeare may have wished another pause to come in the representation.

In the first scene of the fourth act, Globe edition, the Queen, speaking

of Hamlet, says:

"To draw apart the body he hath killed,

O'er whom his very madness, like some ore

Among a mineral of metals base,

Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done."

These lines are omitted in the acting-versions. Perhaps, if they were

inserted, many actors might consider it necessary to show more concern for

the death of Polonius than has hitherto been the stage practice.

The fifth scene, Globe edition, is the second scene in French's, and the

fourth in Cumberland's. I think it would add to the dignity of Horatio's

character if, as directed in the second quarto, the Queen and Horatio

entered with "a gentleman," who brings news of Ophelia's mental

derangement. Horatio is not a servant, nor even a gentleman-in-waiting;

but a visitor from Wittenberg. The Queen, having lost her son, would

naturally seek the society of his bosom friend. The stage-direction in the

first quarto for Ophelia's entrance should be noticed; I should like to

see it inserted in the acting-edition: "_Enter_ Ophelia _playing on a

lute, with her hair hanging down, singing_." This, no doubt, is how she

appeared on Burbage's stage. I can imagine Ophelia entering as if she were

wandering about the corridors of the palace singing and muttering to

herself unconscious of what she was saying, where she was going, or to

whom she was speaking; the imbecility of a pretty young girl who had

been, at one time, fond of her songs as of her sewing. In the

acting-edition the stage-direction for the second entrance describes her

as being "_fantastically dressed with straws and flowers_," but there is

no similar direction in the quartos or folio. Ophelia has very little time

allowed her to go anywhere, and certainly not beyond the palace precincts,

where she might not find straws or daisies. Shakespeare may have intended

the flowers to be imaginary ones to which she refers that the audience may

anticipate her ramble beyond the palace to make garlands in the meadows.

Songs were rarely sung on the stage unaccompanied, and it must be

remembered that Ophelia was a court lady, more accustomed to handle the

lute than to pick wildflowers. The third scene of the fourth act, being

the fifth scene in the Globe edition, I have never seen acted on the

stage. The omission is, perhaps, not important, except that the spectators

are left ignorant as to the cause of Hamlet's return. From the fourth act

303 lines have been omitted in the acting-version.

Coming now to the fifth act, the stage-direction for Ophelia's burial,

both in the Globe and acting-editions, is as follows: "_Enter_ Priests,

_etc., in Procession, the corpse of_ Ophelia, Laertes, _and_ Mourners

_following_, King, Queen, _their Trains, etc._" This direction is hardly

consistent with Hamlet's description, "Such maimed rites." I should prefer

the direction in the first quarto: "_Enter_ King _and_ Queen, Laertes _and

other_ Lords, _with a_ Priest _after the coffin_." The absence of

religious ceremony should attract the attention of the audience as much

as it does Hamlet's. I should like to see only _one_ Priest present, and

the coffin borne by soldiers or villagers, not by monks or nuns. It is

often the stage practice for the Priest to stand over the grave with a

book in his hand and intone his lines (replies to Laertes' questions) as

if they were part of the burial service. A rather erroneous conception of

Shakespeare's churlish Priest, who objects to the funeral taking place on

sacred ground, and refuses even to approach the grave.

In the first quarto, at the words "What's he that conjures so," is written

the stage-direction, "Hamlet _leaps in after_ Laertes," and I find that

Oxberry's edition has the same direction, only inserted a little lower

down. I presume, therefore, that the elder Kean did actually leap into the

grave. Our modern Hamlets would object to this business as undignified,

and perhaps it is; but, at the same time, Hamlet's public apology to

Laertes in the last scene requires some marked movement of his in this

scene. He owns himself that he was in a towering passion. Laertes may

handle Hamlet roughly, but not till Hamlet has interfered with him.

None of our stage Hamlets appear in the churchyard in any change of

costume. From the familiar way in which the clown talks to Hamlet, and

Hamlet's declaration, "Behold, 'tis I, Hamlet, the Dane," I imagine that

Shakespeare intended Hamlet to be dressed in some disguise in this scene.

When Hamlet, writing to the King, says, "Naked and alone," he may not only

mean unarmed, but stripped of his fine clothes, so that it would not be

inappropriate for him to appear at the grave in some common sailor's

dress. In the second scene in this act Hamlet says, "With my sea-gown

scarf'd about me," a line that also would furnish some excuse for change

of costume. Both in the first quarto and the folio the lines, "This is

mere madness," etc., are spoken by the King. The acting-edition follows

the second quarto, and gives the lines to the Queen. The King had good

reason to impress upon others the belief that Hamlet is mad; and when the

villagers hear the taunt they should shun the lunatic.

The second scene is divided in the stage-version; and now that it has

become the custom to lower the curtain for each change of scene, I would

suggest that the churchyard-scene be changed at once to the hall where the

duel takes place. The forcing of this duel upon Hamlet by the King would

be better shown by the King and all the court coming down to Hamlet than

Hamlet's going to them. It is the difference between his going to meet

death and death coming to him.

In this second scene of the acting-edition there is a line of the King's

omitted, which, perhaps, if it were inserted, would cause an alteration in

the stage-business connected with it. The King says: "Give me the cups,"

showing that more than one cup is brought to the King, one of them,

probably, containing the poison. In this cup the King places his jewel, to

insure Hamlet's drinking out of it. On the stage it is the common practice

to use only one cup, and to imagine that the pearl contains the poison.

I have before expressed my regret that the play should end at Hamlet's

death. Shakespeare would have considered the play unfinished, and even the

partisans of stage effect would lose nothing by the introduction of

Fortinbras. The distant sound of the drum, the tramp of soldiers, the

gradual filling of the stage with them, the shouts of the crowd outside,

the chieftain's entrance fresh from his victories, and the tender,

melancholy young prince, dead in the arms of his beloved friend, are

material for a fine picture, a strong dramatic contrast. Life in the midst

of death! Was not this Shakespeare's conception? From the last act 219

lines have been omitted.

* * * * *

The acting-editions of Shakespeare's plays are worth examining by students

in order to ascertain how far they are consistent with the author's

intention. Since the chronological order of the plays has been fixed with

more or less certainty, the study of Shakespeare has become much easier,

and his dramatic and poetical conceptions are more accurately realized

than they ever were before. The time has now come when our acting-editions

could be profitably revised. Eminent actors may prefer, perhaps, arranging

versions from their own study of the text, but there must always exist a

standard version for general use in the profession. I should like to see

existing a playbook of "Hamlet" which has been altered and shortened by a

joint board of actors and scholars. It should have a carefully written

introduction describing minutely the play as it is believed the author

conceived it. There should also be a short sketch of the persons

represented, with hints to the actor where to look in omitted passages for

glimpses of character; besides notes on obscure passages, unfamiliar

expressions, and different readings; and a description of costume and

scenery most appropriate to the play. Such a book might be the beginning

of a new era for the Shakespearian drama on our stage, and, by stimulating

actors to study their parts from an artistic point of view, and less from

a theatrical one, it would enable the public to appreciate Shakespeare in

the only place where he can be properly understood, and that is the

theatre.

"KING LEAR."[13]

When I opened the newspapers to read the criticisms on a recent

performance of "King Lear," and found that the first comments made were in

praise of the costumes, the scenery, and the music, then I knew that once

more Shakespeare and tragedy had failed to assert themselves in the

English Theatre. Charlotte Bronte, the novelist, who was educated in

Brussels, and saw Rachel in one of her greatest impersonations, once

astounded a London dinner-party by saying that the English knew nothing

about tragedy. In her diary she writes: "I have twice seen Macready act,

once in 'Macbeth' and once in 'Othello.' It is the fashion to rave about

his splendid acting; anything more false and artificial, less genuinely

impressive than his whole style, I could scarcely have imagined. The fact

is the stage system is altogether hollow nonsense. They act farces well

enough; the actors comprehend their parts and do justice to them. They

comprehend nothing about tragedy or Shakespeare, and it is a failure. I

said so, and by so saying produced a blank silence, a mute

consternation." Unfortunately, Charlotte Bronte's reproach still remains

true. Perhaps, had she continued to protest, the public would then have

recognized the truth of her remarks. As it was, she never again referred

to the subject. Like most of our literary men and women, then and now, she

preferred to remain discreetly silent upon all matters connected with

Shakespeare and the stage.

Last night, in a London theatre, Charlotte Bronte's words were forcibly

brought back to my mind. I have once seen a great rendering of the part of

Lear, but it was given by an Italian, Signor Rossi. I have seen the whole

play correctly rendered, with every character a vivid realization of the

poet's conception, but this was at a performance in the Court Theatre at

Munich. For thirty years I have been a constant playgoer, and seen the

best art this country can produce, but never can I say that I have seen

English tragedy on the English stage. The cause is not far to seek. We

have actors in abundance, and some of them creative artists; yet we have

no tragic actors, because we have no school in which to develop them.

Until we can set apart a theatre for the exclusive use of classical drama

and its interpreters, we cannot hope to have tragedy finely acted. A

tragedy in verse is the severest test of the artist's powers, of his

physical flexibility in voice and face, of his training and sensibility.

When, therefore, I heard who was going to essay the greatest tragic role

that has ever been written, the result was a foregone conclusion: exit

Shakespeare and enter the Producer.

Yes! He is the hero of the moment, as all our newspapers have told us,

only it is unfortunate, in the interests of art, that to the praise there

should have been added no discernment. Macaulay has said that the sure

sign of the general decline of an art is the frequent occurrence, not of

deformity, but of misplaced beauty, and whatever beauty has been put into

the production is undoubtedly misplaced. We can accept accuracy in scenery

and costume when the play itself is historically accurate--that is to say,

when it has been written to show the difference between two periods as

that of British and Norman, or when it defines some distinctive

characteristic of race relating to its morals or manners. But what is

there in "King Lear" that suggests such a remote period as 800 B.C.? We

are told in the programme that Shakespeare purposely removes the story

from Christian times to give the tragedy its proper setting in "a remote

age of barbarism, when man in wanton violence was at war with Nature." The

story, however, belongs to one of the popular fables of European

literature. Like "Cinderella," it was in all probability transplanted into

our country from a foreign source. In its application it is universal, and

marks no special epoch or nationality, nor is there in the story or its

characters anything out of keeping with a Christian age. Have there been

no ungrateful daughters, no adulterers, no bastards, no tyrants, no

jealous lovers since the years B.C.? The motive for crime remains pretty

much the same to-day as it did before the Christian era, and will continue

to remain the same until the economic conditions of human existence are

readjusted. It is contrary to history and experience to suppose that in

Shakespeare's time dramatists deliberately aimed at illustrating not only

the customs but also the morals of a barbaric age. If we do not to-day

tear out the eyes of our enemy, it is because we have discovered some less

clumsy way of revenging our injuries. But because our manners are more

refined, it does not follow that our morals are purer. The story of "King

Lear," as Shakespeare has set it forth, is one that may happen to-day in

any kingdom and any home. This is what the producer has failed to grasp,

and why his scenes and costumes do not illustrate his play.

Throughout the performance the spectators' eyes are at variance with the

spoken words. Did the early Britons have stocks? Were there such persons

as marshals, heralds, knights, drums, and colours? Did beldames walk the

villages, and were there wakes and fairs in market-towns? Why was fish

eaten on Fridays? Had "Bessy" crossed the bourn? How did the ballads

become known a thousand years before they were written? Needlessly is the

attention distracted by these anachronisms which upset the spectator's

equanimity in a play that is pulsating with ever-living human emotion.

Then, again, costume is an essential adjunct in drama, as an indication of

character. We know at a glance a man's rank, his wealth, and his taste, by

the aid of his clothes, provided always that we are familiar with the

period in which the apparel was worn. But put the men into bath-sheets or

into night-shirts, and we cannot tell the master from the servant. As a

fact the producer has put all his characters into dressing-gowns--showy

ones, doubtless--while the hair of the men is as long as that of the

women. In vain do we seek among these sexless creatures for our familiar

characters, to know who is who. Where is the king, the earl, the peasant,

the knave, the soldier, the civilian? There are slight distinctions in the

costumes worn by these characters, but to the uninitiated they are

meaningless. Infinite variety in character and situation is created by the

author, and none shown by the producer owing to the choice of an archaic

period. How the spectator longs for sight of the fool's cap, bells and

bauble, of the herald's tabard, and the knight's armour; to see a girl as

a girl, and a man as a man, and to know which is the lady and which the

queen!

* * * * *

A country squire, whose hobby was horses, once told me that although at

twenty he thought himself a good judge of a thoroughbred, after fifty more

years of experience he hesitated a long while in determining a nag's good

points. It is the same with the student of Shakespeare; the oftener he has

read one of the poet's plays, and the more study he has given to it, the

longer he hesitates to criticize. The art of the dramatist is too thorough

and too subtle to be lightly discussed. To all stage-managers who wish to

mend or improve Shakespeare I say: "Hands off! Produce this play as it is

written or leave it alone. Don't take liberties with it; the man who does

that does not understand his own limitations!" Let us uphold that there is

but one rule to be followed when it becomes necessary to shorten one of

the poet's plays; and that is to omit lines, but never an entire scene.

Shakespeare, of all his contemporaries, unless it be Ford, gave to his

dramas--especially to his later ones--unity of design; so that each scene

has a relation to the whole play. But in the preparation of this

stage-version of "King Lear" it must be admitted that no rule, no method,

no love, nor respect has been shown; and, what is the least pardonable

fault, no knowledge is apparent. Scenes and passages have been torn out of

the play, just as children might tear up bank-notes, regardless of the

value of the parts to the whole. No matter if the story to modern minds is

unintelligible, the characters incoherent, and the ethics of the play

unconvincing, the management presumes that, as everything in "King Lear"

took place among the early Britons, eight hundred years before Christ,

only the costumes and scenery of the producer can be expected to elucidate

the barbarities of the play or its people.

Stowed away in an odd corner of the drama, Shakespeare generally

introduces some words to indicate his point of view, and, in regard to

"King Lear," his view is thus expressed:

"EDMUND: This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we

are sick in fortune [often the surfeit of our own behaviour], we make

guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were

villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion ... and all that

we are evil in, by divine thrusting on" (Act I., Scene 2).

And Shakespeare repeats the warning in "Coriolanus":

"The gods be good unto us!... No, in such a case the gods will not be

good unto us," etc. (Act V., Scene 4).

Now, unfortunately, Edmund's speech is omitted from the stage-version, so

that the playgoer who does not know his Shakespeare misses the irony of

the terrible tragedy he is called upon to witness. The poet wishes us to

understand that if a community leaves to the care of the gods man's

responsibility to his fellow-men, instead of taking that responsibility

upon itself, then life will go on to-day--and does go on--just as it did

in the age of Elizabeth. All through the play Shakespeare denies

omnipotence to man's self-made gods. Edmund has good looks, intelligence,

and good intentions (Act I., Scene 2). The community, however, in which he

lives decides that because he is an illegitimate child these gifts shall

not be profitably employed for the good of the State or for the benefit of

the individual who possesses them. Edmund therefore becomes embittered,

and revenges himself upon that community. Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall,

being vicious in mind and self-seeking, make use of Edmund's abilities to

serve their own ends, by which means the catastrophe in the death of

Cordelia and Lear is brought about, together with the deaths of the

plotters. But Kent, Albany, Gloucester, and Edgar believe that all their

misfortunes are brought about by the gods. Well, perhaps they are, if we

admit that by the gods is meant society's instinct for self-preservation,

which compels it to rebel against bad laws and bad conventions.

Unfortunately, however, history shows that a community can live too much

in awe of its self-imposed gods, who overrule natural instinct, and

encourage ignorance and folly, when a nation soon perishes, and is wiped

out of existence.

It has been said that the putting out of Gloucester's eyes is an artistic

mistake on Shakespeare's part. I hold that it is a necessary incident in

the play, and that the dramatist has shown the reason for it. Cordelia

has set foot in the country with her French soldiers, determined to regain

the kingdom for her father, and Gloucester, whom Cornwall regards as

belonging to his own faction, is conniving with Cordelia. Now had

Gloucester been a common soldier, Cornwall could have put him to death as

a traitor (Act III., Scene 7); but the offender being an earl, Cornwall

dare not do this, so he puts out the old man's eyes to prevent him reading

Cordelia's despatches. He is blinded, moreover, in sight of the audience,

that Cornwall may be seen receiving his death-wound. And even the fact

that Regan and Goneril were capable of acting so inhumanly towards

Gloucester makes Lear's plight more desperate, and therefore more

pathetic. Yet Shakespeare never makes his characters suffer without giving

them compensations, and the meeting and reconciliation between the blind

Gloucester and his son is one of the most touching incidents in the play.

That this reconciliation was omitted in representation suggests that the

ugly incident of putting out Gloucester's eyes was retained merely as a

piece of sensationalism, and, if so, it merits severe condemnation.

Shakespeare has often been blamed for being intolerant to democracy, and

this is in part a well-founded reproach, but it was a fault of the age and

not of the man. Still, in "King Lear" the dramatist abundantly proves his

sympathy with the hard lot of the poor. For this reason the play preaches

no pessimism. Lear, Gloucester, and Edgar are the happier for the troubles

they experience. Such hardships as they endure are brought upon

themselves by their own shortcomings; but these hardships are mitigated

by the gain to their moral natures of a fellow-sympathy for the sufferings

of those who have done no wrong, and by an appreciation of the injustice

done towards those whose miseries are created through the selfishness of

the rich. Lear, who has ruled a country as a despot for half a century,

discovers for the first time in his life that--

"Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns

hide all."

Having exposed himself to feel what wretches feel, he knows, as he has

never known before, how the heart of a desolate father can crave for the

love of a gentle daughter. To prison he can cheerfully go with her,

"To pray and sing and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies,"

because now he is no longer himself in the wrong, but the one who is

wronged. And the blind Gloucester, also, is happy in his misery, because

for the first time he can say:

"Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man;--

that will not see

Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly;

So distribution should undo excess,

And each man have enough."

This is Shakespeare's message to the aristocracy to-day, and yet all this

is cut out by the actor-manager who seems to imagine that these sentiments

are barbaric, and only represent the opinions of men who lived some three

thousand years ago.

The omissions in this stage-version are in a great measure due to

carelessness in the study of the play. The right point of view from which

to present this colossal tragedy on the stage has been missed, and the

stage-manager having allowed his actors to take up half the evening in

drawling out the words of the first two acts, the blue pencil has been

used for the remaining three with a freedom and ignorance which never

should have been sanctioned.

* * * * *

"_Matinees_ every Wednesday and Saturday." These words appear on all

printed bills announcing the performance of "King Lear." They go far to

explain why the play fails to represent tragedy either in its emotion or

terror, and why it sends playgoers back to their homes as cold and

indifferent to human suffering as it left them. What is offered to the

public is a kinematograph show; walking figures who gesticulate and utter

human sounds; puppets who mechanically move through their parts conscious

that the business must be done all over again within a few hours. Does an

actor honestly think that he can impersonate Lear's hysterical passion,

madness, and death, twice in a day, and day by day, and that he can do

this efficiently together with all his other duties of management? That he

may wish to do so is intelligible, but that the public should sanction it

and the critics tolerate it is strange indeed. That the exigencies of

modern theatrical management impose these conditions is beside the

question. A less exacting play might have been chosen instead of

distorting one of Shakespeare's masterpieces. Salvini, whose reputation as

a tragedian is universally acknowledged, refused to act Othello more than

three times in a week, and never on two consecutive days; and those who

saw his moving performance must admit that it was a physical impossibility

for him to do otherwise. A man does not suffer the tortures of jealousy

without physical and mental prostration; and the actor endures a very

heavy strain when he seeks to simulate an emotion which has not been

aroused in a natural way.

The actor, however, not only fails to reproduce the emotions of Lear, he

never even shows us the outside of the man. We look in vain about the

stage to find the King; instead we see a decrepit, commonplace old man,

though Lear is neither the one nor the other. He should resemble an

English hunting "squarson," a man overflowing with vitality, who is as

hale and active at eighty as he was at forty; a large-hearted,

good-natured giant, with a face as red as a lobster. He is one of the

spoilt children of nature, spoilt by reason of his favoured position in

life. Responsible to no one, he thinks himself omnipotent. No one but Lear

must be "fiery," no one but him unreasonable or contrary. In the crushing

of this strong, unyielding, but lovable personality lies the drama of the

play: this is what an Elizabethan audience went to the Globe Playhouse to

see. But how can the story be told when a Lear comes on the stage, who at

his _first_ appearance is broken-down and half-witted? Where is the

purpose or the art in showing us such a helpless creature being

ill-treated by his own kindred? Yet Lear boasts of his physical strength;

and how skilfully the dramatist has planned the entrance, so as to

accentuate the virility of the man! The play opens with prose, and the

first line of verse is spoken by the King, so that the change of rhythm

may the better call attention to his entrance. Those who saw Signor Rossi,

in the part, dart on to the stage, and with a voice of commanding

authority utter the words--

"_Attend_ the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloster"--

recognized the Lear of Shakespeare. This single line, as by a flash of

lightning, revealed the impetuosity and imperious disposition of the King,

and prepared us for the volcanic disturbance that followed the thwarting

of his will. Another thing, overlooked by all our English actors, is the

necessity for Lear to come on the stage with Cordelia. On her first

appearance she should be seen with her father in affectionate

companionship, so as to balance with the last scene, where she is carried

on in his devoted arms. Lear's division of his kingdom among his three

daughters is not so eccentric a proceeding as the critics would make out.

The King needs an excuse for giving the largest portion to his youngest

child, and he thinks the most plausible reason is a public acknowledgment

of the bond of affection between them. But Cordelia's sense of modesty and

self-respect have not been taken into account, and Lear, who never

tolerates a rebuff, in a moment of temper upsets all his pre-arranged

plans, with disastrous consequence to himself and others. All this

animated drama is omitted in the present performance, because Lear, on his

first entrance, fails to give the keynote to the character or to the

tragedy. Lear, in fact, is never seen on the stage, but only a Piccadilly

actor who assumes the part, divested of frock coat and top hat.

The title-role, unfortunately, is not the only part which has been

wrongly cast. With the exception of Goneril and Regan, every character has

been falsified and distorted. This is not due to want of ability in the

actors, but to their physical limitations and to deficiency in training.

Their reputations have been won in modern plays, and they seem quite

unable to give expression to character when the medium of speech is verse.

To those who think more about the actor than about the character he

represents this is perhaps not a matter of much moment, but it is one of

considerable importance to the play, since with all great dramatists the

incidents are evolved by the characters; and if the men and women we see

on the stage are not those that Shakespeare drew, his incidents are apt to

appear ill-timed and ridiculous. After the title-role the most serious

misconception of character is in the part of Edmund, the man whose wits

control the movement of the drama. He is an offspring of the Italian

Renaissance, a portrait of Machiavel's Prince, whose merit consists in his

mental and physical fitness. He should be the handsomest man in the play,

the most alert, the most able; he is a victim neither to sentimentality

nor to self-deception, and he is fully capable of turning the weakness of

others to his own advantage. It is impossible to hate the well-bred young

schemer, because he is too clever, and his dupes are too silly.

Unfortunately, the actor who is cast for this important part is quite

unsuited for it. Another brilliant part which has suffered badly at the

hands of its interpreter is Edgar, a character in which the Elizabethans

delighted, because of its variety and the scope it allows for effective

character-impersonation. The actor has to assume four parts--Edgar, an

imbecile beggar, a peasant, and a knight-errant, and each of these

characters should be a distinct creation; but the actor gave us nothing

but a modern young man making himself unintelligibly ridiculous. Even more

disastrous was the casting of the part of the fool, that gentle, frail lad

who perishes from exposure to the storm, a child with the wisdom of a

child, which is often the profoundest wisdom. Then a lady with a majestic

figure cannot represent the little Cordelia, and she should not have been

given the part. Of course the obvious retort to this kind of criticism is

that the play must be cast from a company selected for repertory work,

most of which, perhaps, will be modern. London managers, also, impose

actors on the public because they have a London reputation, and this

creates a monopoly which becomes a tyranny upon art. Whether the artist is

suited or not for the part, he must be put into it, for box-office

considerations.

To sum up. For the first time in the history of our stage the theatre is

put under the management of a literary director, presumably with a view to

bringing scholarly intelligence to bear upon the exponents of drama; but

the result to the public, in so far as "King Lear" is concerned, is that

it gets quite the most chaotic interpretation of the poet's work that it

has ever been my misfortune to see represented on the stage. What is the

reason? Has the director, like the fly, walked into the spider's parlour,

or, in other words, into the network of theatrical commercialism, to find

his artistic soul silenced and himself bound? Time perhaps will show us!

IV

THE NATIONAL THEATRE

THE REPERTORY THEATRE.

THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE SOCIETY.

SHAKESPEARE AT EARL'S COURT.

THE STUDENTS' THEATRE.

THE MEMORIAL SCHEME.

IV

A NATIONAL THEATRE

THE REPERTORY THEATRE.[14]

The anxiety of dramatic critics to explain "the scant success" of Mr.

Frohman's Repertory Theatre has created a large amount of paper argument,

of more or less doubtful value, and now Mr. William Archer has added his

view to that of others, and concludes his remarks with some practical

advice to those who, in his opinion, are entitled to be regarded as "some

of our ablest dramatists." The nature of this advice, however, is not only

curious, but startling, when we recall the reception that was given to

Ibsen's plays on their first appearance in this country, and remember that

Mr. Archer was their warmest defender. Regardless of this defence, he now

contends that "it is a grave misfortune for any writer, but it is a

disaster for the dramatist, to get into the habit of despising popular

taste and thinking that he has only himself to please in his

writings."[15] But those who take their dramatic art seriously, and who

wish their plays to have more than an ephemeral existence, cannot possibly

accept this advice. They will recognize that the highest aim of a

dramatist is to create a work valuable for all time, and that the most

intimate knowledge of the moods and vagaries of playgoers cannot outweigh

the smallest fault in the art of dramatic construction or character

drawing. The conscientious artist repudiates the interference of public

opinion with the expression of his art; he does not try to follow popular

taste, but seeks to control and direct it. "The public," says George Sand,

"is no artist; I will not tell you that we must please it, but we must win

it. It winces, but gets over it." This is the advice Mr. Archer should

have tendered to English playwrights, and let us hope it is the advice he

meant to tender them. Nature has nowhere resigned her prerogative to the

demands of popular taste, nor should the artist abandon his privileges.

There is no record of a poet or musician having created a masterpiece

through pandering to the "groundlings." Mozart, on completing an opera,

would say: "I shall gain but little by this, but I have pleased myself,

and that must be my recompense." It was Schiller who wrote: "My submission

to the public convenience does not extend so far that I can allow any

holes in my work and mutilate the characters of men." And Goethe

exclaimed: "Nothing is more abhorrent to a reasonable man than an appeal

to the majority." Lessing has said: "I have no objection to criticism

condemning an artist, but it must not contaminate him. He must continue

his work knowing that he is happier than his detractors." And Lessing

points the moral in adding: "Genius is condemned to utter only absurdities

when it is unfaithful to its mission." Bernard Shaw and Granville Barker,

two of the able dramatists to whom Mr. Archer tenders his advice, have won

"the ear of their contemporaries" equally with the more popular writers,

Barrie and Maugham, and this they have done by the production of one or

two plays which did not reach their hundredth performance. Euripides was

none the less famous, as a dramatist, because the Athenian playgoers

disliked his opinions and banished him from their midst. In fact, a

dramatist is only great when he is able to dispense with the requirements

of popular taste; nor will he be satisfied with the knowledge that his

play leaves some definite impression upon an audience unless it be that

particular impression which belongs to tragedy, or comedy, or history, or

pastoral drama, or conversational comedy.

Let it be, then, frankly admitted that a dramatist cannot both live in

advance of the opinions of his audience and also reflect them. It is very

well for Mr. Archer to talk about the vessel which does not float, but his

illustration is surely less obvious than he imagines. A Noah's Ark will

float on the ocean to-day as easily as it did in the days of the Flood,

but no modern shipbuilder now would risk his reputation in constructing

such a boat on the plea that it remains above water. Will the vessel

weather the storms? Will it outlive its competitors? These are the vital

questions in the art of both shipbuilding and playwriting.

Mr. Archer seems to forget that there is a prejudice among audiences as

well as among individuals, and that every period of life has its own

peculiar notions. Sometimes playgoers will receive an author's brightest

comedy with coldness. The burden of Charles Lamb's reflections was--that

the audience of his day came to the theatre to be complimented on its

goodness. "The Stranger," "The Castle Spectre," and "George Barnwell," are

specimens of the dramatic bill of fare which then found favour. On the

other hand, the comic dramatists tried to disparage purity in men and

women, and the sparkle of their comedies is unwholesome. In the opinion of

many sober minds the dramatic literature of the Restoration is a blot upon

our national history, while the gloomy productions that delighted the

sentimental contemporaries of Charles Lamb are offences against dramatic

art. At neither period was the drama national, in so far as it was

representative of the tastes of all classes. Congreve and Wycherly wrote

for the fashionable, while the admirers of Lillo's and Lewis's moral

dramas were chiefly respectable shopkeepers. It was in Shakespeare's day

that the nobility and groundlings together resorted to the playhouse,

constituting themselves at once the patrons and pupils of the drama. The

Elizabethan playgoer had no desire to bias the judgment of the dramatist.

It left him free to represent life vividly and truly. It even encouraged

him to be studious of the playgoer's profit as well as of his pleasure.

But the playgoers of the Restoration, and of the period that immediately

succeeded it, were intolerant of all views but their own. They regarded

with disfavour plays which did not uphold their notions of amusement and

morality. They called upon the dramatist to accept the opinion of his

public, in these matters, as being superior to his own. As a consequence,

the drama suffered in the attempt made to reconcile principles that are

in themselves inconsistent, and the judgment of the audience was in no

sense a criterion of merit in a play. This explains why some good plays

have been coldly received on their first appearance. "She Stoops to

Conquer" would have failed but for the presence in the theatre of Dr.

Johnson and his friends; Sheridan's "Rivals," an even more brilliant

comedy, did not secure a fair hearing on its first performance. Of

Diderot's comedy, the "Pere de Famille," its author gives us the following

information:

"And why did this piece, which nowadays fills the house before

half-past four, and which the players always put up when they want a

thousand crowns, have so lukewarm a welcome at first?"

"... If I did not succeed at first it was because the style was new

to the audience and actors; because there was a strong prejudice,

still existing, against what people call tearful comedy; because I

had a crowd of enemies at court, in town, among magistrates, among

Churchmen, among men of letters."

"And how did you incur so much enmity?"

"Upon my word, I don't know, for I have not written satires on great

or small, and I have crossed no man on the path of fortune and

dignities. It is true that I was one of the people called

Philosophers, who were then viewed as dangerous citizens, and on whom

the Government let loose two or three subalterns without virtue,

without insight, and, what is worse, without talent....

"To say nothing of the fact that these philosophers had made things

more difficult for poets and men of letters in general, and that it

was no longer possible to make oneself distinguished by knowing how

to turn out a madrigal or a nasty couplet."[16]

This argument applies as forcibly to what goes on in the theatre in London

to-day as it did in Paris nearly two hundred years ago. Perhaps, however,

enough has been said to discount the suggestion that popular opinion is

in any way responsible for the making of a good play.

M. Claretie once expressed a doubt if Englishmen quite understood the

limitations of the French National Theatre; because when the Comedie

Francaise visited London in 1893, the Press (including Mr. Archer)

ridiculed the intention of the director to give a more classical programme

than English taste demanded, presumably forgetting that the selection of

plays should be judged by an academic standard. The Comedie Francaise

visited the Metropolis with a repertory apparently designed to illustrate

the whole range of French dramatic literature, and yet, at the bidding of

an exacting and ignorant public, it was called upon, without a protest

from the critics, to withdraw the masterpieces of Moliere and Racine in

favour of the modern drama; nor was it to the dignity of the Theatre

Francaise that its members consented to humour the caprices of playgoers,

and condescended to bid for popularity when popularity meant bad taste and

a craving for "stars." But the director, having entered into an

arrangement with commercial gentlemen for commercial purposes,

unexpectedly found himself compelled to forfeit his academic position, and

to place his theatre on a level with a commercial playhouse. Fortunately

the surrender did not serve its purpose. General dissatisfaction was

expressed with the visit of the Comedie Francaise. The speculator lost his

money, the playgoer did not see his "star," and the student heard no

masterpieces.

Now, presumably, there is this difference between a National Theatre and a

Repertory Theatre, that the object of the former is to keep before the

public the best plays of the country, and those of other countries, and

to give occasional performances of new plays of rare excellence and

dignity. The Repertory Theatre, on the other hand, as we understand it in

England, has for its task the exploiting of the new school of dramatists;

of those men who have advanced ideas about their art and of the purpose it

should serve. It is essentially, therefore, a theatre of experiment. If

this is the case, and a manager such as Mr. Frohman cares to finance the

undertaking, he can hardly be credited with considering the scheme in the

light of a business speculation, nor would those dramatists who were

invited to provide plays for this Repertory Theatre be expected to supply

Mr. Frohman with the same class of work that they would submit to the

ordinary theatrical manager. Here, evidently, is the opportunity, and the

only opportunity a dramatist can get in this country, of providing a bill

of fare capable of nourishing the weak intellects and the weaker

susceptibilities of an audience. Looked at from this standpoint, it may be

contended that no new play was produced under the Frohman Repertory

management which did not advance the cause of dramatic art by adding to

the knowledge of its author, to the experience of its actors, and to the

education of the audience. "Misalliance" was a brilliant satire on modern

society, one of the ripest conversational plays that Mr. Shaw's genius has

yet produced; one in which the dramatist's observation probes deeper, and

his wisdom and philosophy, as revealed in the play of character, are as

subtle and less personal than anything Mr. Shaw, perhaps, has achieved

hitherto in domestic drama. Why, then, are we now told that this play

failed to attract, and with whom does the fault rest--is it with the

author or his public? There was no insufficiency of "go," of wit, of

raillery, of originality, or novelty; but there was, none the less, one

thing wanting that to a modern audience is an unpardonable omission, and

that is flattery. Society, as it lives to-day, under the maternal wing of

the old lady in Stable Yard, expects to be humoured at the theatre, and to

be complimented, not on its goodness, but on its vices. "Paint us as black

as the devil," it says to the dramatist, "but don't dare to admit that we

are a penny the worse because we are black!" And this menace is equivalent

to demanding that an author shall take men and women at their own

valuation, and ignore the hidden motives and forces which control human

conduct. A very few strokes of the pen, a little falsification in

character-drawing, and "Misalliance" could have been made an acceptable

play; but there was a writer holding the pen who was inexorable. Mr. Shaw

drew life as he saw it, and left the public to approve or not as it liked.

But if London rejected "Misalliance," this did not kill the play; it is no

more dead than Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" is dead because on its first

appearance Vienna sneered at the work of one whose talent outshone that of

its own musicians. The Viennese winced and got over their dislike; in the

same way Londoners will come to think well of "Misalliance." It is true

that we are indebted to its author for at least one popular success, which

future historians of the stage will declare was an epoch-making play,

being the first of its kind to arrest the attention of the

man-in-the-street, and bring him into the theatre to listen to nothing

more exciting than a "talk." But the success of "John Bull's Other

Island," so far as the public was concerned, had less to do with the

merits of the play than the demerits of the audience. The City man woke up

one morning to find himself famous, as he thought, and hugely enjoyed his

notoriety. What did it matter if a company promoter was silly and cunning

so long as he was always amusing and successful! This, as they thought,

was the profound wisdom that Mr. Shaw meant to preach to the world! What a

strange instance of egotistical vanity! And when the same play was

performed in Dublin, the enjoyment of the audience was no less marked, but

with this difference--that the laughter was all against Broadbent and not

with him. Whether the Englishman was successful or not, he was a

"fathead," because no Irishman was silly enough to put his pocket before

his politics or to prefer his neighbour's omniscience to his own. Yet this

play is not the less virile and wholesome because company-promoters think

themselves flattered by it. It is not Mr. Shaw pandering to his audience,

but vanity looking at itself in the looking-glass.

Of that other "failure," "The Madras House," Mr. Archer admits that he

found a good deal in the play to interest him, and it is difficult to

believe that the author of "The Voysey Inheritance" had not something

fresh and inspiring to tell his audience. There are some subjects which do

not admit of being treated in drama in a way to enlist general favour. No

thinker would argue that "Troilus and Cressida" was written by Shakespeare

with a view to its surpassing the popularity of "Hamlet." It is

sufficient if the author has treated his subject in a way consistent with

the laws of nature and probability. For the critics to assume, as they do,

that the author is not conscious of the dramatic limitations imposed upon

him by the choice of his subject is an impertinence. As Voltaire once said

in defence of a play: "We cannot do all that our friends advise. There are

such things as necessary faults. To cure a humpbacked man of his hump we

should have to take his life. My child is humpbacked, but otherwise it is

quite well." Indeed, Mr. Barker's time will be better employed in

educating his critics than in re-writing his play. Nor must it be

forgotten that Mr. Barker was hardly out of his teens when he wrote "The

Marrying of Ann Leete," a comedy that has not yet received the attention

it deserves. Fortunately it has been printed and published, and will

undoubtedly again be seen on the stage; for the play has unusual

possibilities for a stage-manager with constructive imagination and poetic

sensibility, and there is not now wanting in London an audience capable of

appreciating a work of the kind in the spirit in which it is conceived.

This comedy was undoubtedly inspired by the art of Maeterlinck at the time

when the Belgian dramatist was writing such plays as "The Interlude." But

where Maeterlinck fails Mr. Barker succeeds. With the poet the disjointed

dialogue and constant repetition of the monosyllable becomes a mannerism,

and is never convincing. Mr. Barker's method is a nearer approach to

reality. He has chosen his characters with more care to give point to

their abrupt method of speech, and with no little art. In a country house

remote from the world, among people who are well bred if not well read,

who give more time to sport and cards than to books, and who have little

power to express themselves except in unfinished sentences, is unfolded a

domestic tragedy of wonderful power and sadness. And in this lies the

weirdness and fascination of the play--that no word of the story is

related by the characters, and only from fragments of conversation,

apparently trivial and unimportant, does the spectator gradually bit by

bit piece together and arrange for himself the puzzle of these people's

existence. This comedy, then, is an experiment to try and show the inner

life of a family exactly as it might be learnt by a neighbour who was not

personally known to any of its members, and it is a very remarkable

achievement.

To sum up. Let us be honest with ourselves and to others over this

question of the Repertory Theatre, and drop the business side of the

matter, which is not the vital one. Let us admit that we can easier spare

from the ranks of our dramatists men like Barrie and Maugham than Shaw and

Barker; for while the former seek to amuse us (for which we are grateful),

the latter hold forth a hand to help us out of the ditch. Nor is it better

for us to laugh with Messrs. Barrie and Maugham than to accept the

proffered hand, leap out, and walk forward with the preachers.

THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE SOCIETY.