After the retirement of Edwin Booth, Lawrence Barrett and John
McCullough there was an opening for an ambitious actor to win
recognition as their worthy successor; and this was an altitude to
which Goodwin could have aspired, if he had not been deficient in
that intangible and indefinable quality which we call character and
which for success in life is really more important than ability.
Ability he had in abundance but he did not husband it. He did not
take life seriously enough; and therefore his art suffered and
failed to mature as it might have done. He dissipated his ardor and
wasted his strength in default of the implacable ambition which
compels self-control. Nature had bestowed on him a richer gift
than on Lawrence Barrett, who had made himself what he was by stern
determination, whereby he overcame his disadvantages. Goodwin had
more intensity, more power, more resources; and he might have carved
a name for himself as Shylock, Richard III and Iago.
But it was not to be; and he made shipwreck of his career. I failed
to see him when he attempted Shylock, for which he ought to have had
the fire and the passion, but for which he lacked the training he
might easily have attained, if he had forced himself to acquire it. I
did see him in the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’; and altho my memories
of George L. Fox and of James Lewis as Bottom are still vivid, they
are not as gratifying as my recollection of Goodwin in the same part.
This revival of Shakspere’s most fanciful and most humorous comedy
failed to attract the public, and the blame was currently laid upon
Goodwin. To my mind this was unjust, since his rendering of the
part seemed to me excellent, firmer in outline and richer in color
than that of either Fox or Lewis. I can never forget the delicious
self-sufficiency of his performance in ‘Pyramus and Thisbe,’ his
exuberant vanity, his adroit suggestion of the eternal complacency of
the self-satisfied amateur.
I may be wrong, of course; I may be crediting Goodwin with more than
he possessed, as I am certainly ascribing to him more than he ever
displayed. But I think he had it in him to do finer and stronger
things than he ever aimed at. “The pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!”
V
It would be difficult to find two careers in sharper contrast than
those of Nat Goodwin in the United States and of Beerbohm Tree in
Great Britain. As there was a vacancy at the head of the procession
in America after the withdrawal of Booth and Barrett and McCullough,
so there was one in England after the decline and disappearance of
Henry Irving. Goodwin was unable to seize the occasion, even if he
saw it; Tree saw it and seized it. Altho nature had been niggardly
to Tree where she had been bountiful to Goodwin, Tree had the
inestimable advantage of a resolute will and of the innate power
which impels a man to master the many difficulties besetting our
paths in life. It was by sheer force of ambition rather than by
assured skill as an actor that Tree forged to the front and took his
place as the leader of the profession in the British Isles, catching
the mantle of Irving as it fell and wearing it as best he could.
When I first knew Tree he had recently graduated from comic opera
to farce, making his earliest hit in the ‘Private Secretary’ and
replacing Arthur Cecil in the ‘Magistrate.’ From farce he turned to
melodrama and advanced his reputation as an actor by the versatility
he displayed in ‘Called Back’ and in the ‘Red Lamp.’ For two reasons
this versatility was more apparent than real; in the first place
because the methods of farce and of melodrama are closely akin, and
in the second place because the differentiation of the parts Tree was
then playing was largely external, being mainly a matter of make-up,
which incompletely disguised his own rather thin and brittle manner.
In time he assumed the management of the Haymarket theater; and
still later he was able to build the spacious and sumptuous His
Majesty’s. At the Haymarket he produced more than one interesting
modern comedy and he made more than one interesting revival, notably
of W. S. Gilbert’s ever-delightful ‘Engaged.’ At His Majesty’s he
was soon forced—somewhat to his surprise, so his half-brother, Max
Beerbohm once told me—to abandon the more refined types of comedy
and farce, simply because the house was too large for any form of
drama demanding delicacy. He found himself compelled to rely on more
strenuous plays, which permitted elaborate spectacular adornment.
He brought out the ‘Herod’ of Stephen Phillips and he imported the
‘Darling of the Gods’ of Belasco and Long. Thus it was that both this
necessity and his lofty ambition led him to a series of elaborately
pictorial revivals of Shakspere’s tragedies, histories and comedies.
As a producer he continued the tradition of Irving, bestowing upon
Shakspere’s plays superb settings, rivaling Irving’s in their
splendor, their expensiveness and their taste. For ‘Twelfth Night,’
for example, he designed an Italian garden, rising terrace upon
terrace to the very back of the stage, a scene so exquisitely
beautiful in itself, so completely satisfying to the eye, that—so Sir
Martin Conway told me—some spectators felt it to be an intrusion when
the actors entered and distracted attention from the lovely vision.
Tree displayed his scenic dexterity and his artistic invention in
a dozen or a score of other Shaksperian plays, notably ‘Antony and
Cleopatra,’ produced while Queen Victoria was still upon the throne.
There is an anecdote which is doubtless familiar to many, but which I
feel I have no right to omit here, to the effect that as the amorous
adventures of the serpent of old Nile were unrolled before the
entranced audience, one British matron whispered to another British
matron, “How different to the happy home life of our dear Queen!”
Of course, Tree reserved for himself all the great Shaksperian
characters, tragic and comic, Mark Antony, Macbeth and Hamlet,
Falstaff and Malvolio. For the loftier tragic parts he lacked the
physique and the temperament. He had not the beauty of person,
the grace of gesture, the princely bearing, the appealing voice,
which the performer of Hamlet ought to possess. He had not the
power, the passion, the largeness needed for Macbeth. He had not
the elocutionary skill required for the proper impersonation of
Mark Antony in ‘Julius Cæsar.’ But he was intelligent, untiring,
strong-willed and self-willed; and he was able to get the British
public to accept him in these unsuitable parts, perhaps in some
measure because there was then no actor on the British stage who
could contest its chieftainship with him.
It is reported that Gilbert said to him after seeing his Hamlet,
“Very good, Tree, very good indeed. You were funny without being
vulgar.” And when Gilbert went around to Tree’s dressing room
after his exhausting performance of another of Shakspere’s tragic
characters, a performance which had left the actor weakened and
perspiring, the pitiless wit remarked, “Tree, how well your skin
acts.” Altho Tree took himself seriously he had a keen sense of
humor; and even if he winced under the satiric lash of Gilbert, he
could take the joke without offense.
In fact, his sense of humor often came to his rescue, as another
anecdote testifies. He was once acting Hamlet in the provinces when
his friend, John Hare, happened to be in the same town. He sent Hare
a box; and the unwilling Hare felt that as a fellow-manager he could
not refuse this unwelcome invitation. Hare sat in the box in solitary
state; and after the curtain fell, he was about to escape when Tree’s
secretary caught him at the door with the request that he should
come to supper. Again the kindly Hare felt that courtesy demanded
his acceptance. At table Hare did not mention ‘Hamlet’ nor did Tree.
As soon as he could, Hare bade Tree good night. Tree saw him to the
door, and they parted without a word about the performance. Before
Hare had gone half-a-dozen paces, Tree called him back. As Hare
returned sadly, Tree said with a smile, “I say, Johnny, it is a good
_play_, isn’t it?”
We may be sure that Tree appreciated the merry jest of his
half-brother when at last he attained the honor of knighthood,
the final reward of every British actor-manager. As usual the
announcement preceded by several days the actual ceremony; and in the
interval a friend asked Max Beerbohm as to the actor’s exact status
during this awkward intermission: “Is your brother a knight now, or
isn’t he?” And Max answered that he supposed his brother in the eye
of the law was still Mr. Tree,—“but he is Sir Herbert in the sight of
God!”
Tree’s disqualifications for the mighty characters in Shakspere’s
tragic plays were obvious, but his histrionic limitations were
less apparent in the chief characters of the comedies. I did not
see him in ‘Twelfth Night’ but I should conjecture that he gave a
not unsatisfactory interpretation of Malvolio, altho it probably
lacked the gentle dignity and the melancholy humor which Irving
bestowed upon the part. I did see his Falstaff in the ‘Merry Wives of
Windsor’ and it seemed to me altogether the best of his Shaksperian
experiments. After all, the ‘Merry Wives’ is only farce, brisk and
bustling; and Tree was experienced and skillful in farce, with no
objection to getting all the laughs that the lively situations might
authorize. Yet, as I watched his dextrous efforts, I was conscious
always that Tree’s Falstaff was not really fat; he might be padded
out to his proper proportions, but he did not move like a creature
of portly figure; and his humor was devoid of unction. He disclosed
himself as a clever thin man trying to pass himself off as a humorous
fat man.
And in his latter performances of Falstaff he yielded more and
more to his besetting temptation to overdecorate a character with
petty ingenuities and with finicky details, which came in time to
detract from its broad outlines. He had an inventive mind and he was
continually in search of novelties of gesture and of business. Even
in his tragic parts he was prone to obtrusive pettinesses. Often at
the end of the run of a play, and sometimes even at the beginning, he
seemed to act outside the character rather than inside it.
Yet, when all is said, it remains that Tree deserved well of the
playgoing public of London; and this public could not well help being
grateful for the many opportunities he had provided for it to behold
Shakspere’s plays, always beautifully and tastefully mounted. It had
become accustomed to his mannerisms and it knew what to expect when
it flocked to His Majesty’s Theater. But in the United States, Tree
was never able to establish a position comparable with that which
he held in Great Britain. On our side of the Atlantic he was only a
wandering star; he was not the manager of the foremost theater with
the credit of a score of Shaksperian revivals; and we Americans had
not become habituated to his defects, and therefore we could not be
expected to be as tolerant of them as were his British followers. He
was well aware of this atmosphere of indifference, so to speak, in
America, an atmosphere he could never dispel. When I saw him last in
London, ten or fifteen years ago, he told me that he was thinking of
crossing over again. “But you don’t like my acting in New York,” he
added sadly; and I could not honestly contradict him, as perhaps he
hoped that I should.
VI
Where the performances of Shakspere’s plays at His Majesty’s were
sometimes insufficient was in the acting; and this was not Tree’s
fault, for he was always eager to strengthen his cast by the
engagement of the best actors available. At more than one of his
revivals of the ‘Merry Wives’ he persuaded Ellen Terry and Mrs.
Kendal to emerge from retirement to disport themselves as the joyous
dames who delight in befooling Falstaff. The fault lay in the fact
that fine performers were not to be had. Actors who were good in
Shaksperian parts have always been scarce, and they are now steadily
becoming scarcer.
Even fifty years ago, when Edwin Booth opened the stately theater
he had built for himself, there arose a loud outcry against the
mediocrity of his company, an outcry which rankled in Booth’s memory
and which led him a score of years later to explain to me that he
thought the complaint, even if justified, was unjust to him, since
he had secured as well equipt a company as it was then possible to
collect, with Edwin Adams and Mark Smith at the head of it. This
came back to my memory when Henry Irving a little later spoke to me
about the difficulty he had had in getting fit performers for Laertes
and Mercutio and the other important parts of youthful buoyancy. “I
engaged Forbes-Robertson and George Alexander and William Terriss,
one after another, and I tried to tempt them to stay with me,” so
Irving said to me. “But they preferred to set up for themselves. I
don’t blame them, of course; but it is now almost impossible for me
to find anybody whom I can trust with these important parts.”
It was sometimes meanly suggested that Booth and Irving were each of
them unwilling, and perhaps even afraid, to surround themselves with
first class actors. The suggestion is as absurd as it is unworthy;
and it is plainly contradicted by the record. In the sixties of
the last century, when Booth was consolidating his reputation by
the earliest hundred night run of ‘Hamlet’ that any actor had ever
achieved, Bogumil Davison came to New York; and the young American
promptly invited the German tragedian to play Othello to his own
Iago. More than a score of years later Booth again appeared as Iago
to the Othello of Salvini. At one time or another he joined forces
with Charlotte Cushman and with Modjeska. Henry Irving was equally
free from petty jealousy; he always treated Ellen Terry as a co-star;
and when he engaged Mrs. Sterling for the Nurse in ‘Romeo and Juliet’
he advertized her name as prominently as his own. No actor ever
displayed more generosity to a friendly rival than Irving did when he
invited Booth to come for a fortnight to the Lyceum to alternate Iago
and Othello.
It was never difficult for Jefferson to find competent actors to
support him as Rip Van Winkle; and he always rehearsed the piece
carefully to make sure of the needful unity of tone. But it was
very hard indeed to find performers of presence, of authority and
of the sweep of style required by the boldly contrasted and highly
colored characters of a rich old comedy like the ‘Rivals.’ At one
time or another Jefferson secured the companionship of Mrs. Drew,
of John Gilbert, and of W. J. Florence, gladly sharing his glory
with them. He was delighted with the brief tour of the ‘Rivals,’
when a galaxy of stars deserted their orbits to twinkle by the side
of his Bob Acres. Mrs. Drew was Mrs. Malaprop, Julia Marlowe was
Lydia Languish, Robert Taber was Captain Absolute, Nat Goodwin was
Sir Lucius O’Trigger, Francis Wilson was Fag and William H. Crane
was Sir Anthony Absolute. Here was truly an all-star cast; and
the combination was triumphantly prosperous. I saw it at the sole
performance in New York, a matinee at that; and it was perhaps the
best all around rendering of the ‘Rivals’ that I have ever seen,
altho several of those who took part in it, accustomed to the more
modern methods of our latter-day dramatists, were not quite at ease
in their efforts to catch the tone of artificial comedy.
It is true, alas! that there are actors, and some of them are expert
and accomplished performers, who when they rise to be stars not only
seek to grasp all the good things for themselves and to monopolize
the spot-light, but who even go so far as to begrudge any laughter or
any applause which may be evoked by the members of their companies.
Forty years ago one of the most prominent comedians on our stage
had this pitiable characteristic. At the first performance of a
play specially written for him, this star was standing in the wings
waiting his turn to go on. Suddenly there was a roar of laughter
and a round of applause. “Who’s that?” cried the star, “What did he
say?” And at the second performance the line which had been so well
received was cut out. And twenty years ago there was an American
comic actress of robust force and wide popularity who slowly lost
the favor of the public because she insisted on producing plays in
which she never left the stage and for which she engaged actors and
actresses who were feeble and colorless.
It is not only natural, it is also wise, for a star to see to it that
his part is interesting and that it holds its interest from the first
act to the last. He cannot help knowing that he is the lodestone
which attracts the audiences. They pay their money to see him; and
they are not getting their money’s worth if they do not see enough
of him. But the spectators are best pleased with the star himself,
they are most likely to hold him in delighted remembrance and to
want to see him when next he comes to town, if he has given them a
well-balanced play, in which every part is filled by a performer
who can get out of it all it is worth. There are some stars who
are almost self-effacing, and who do not even care whether or not
they have their full share of the emphatic situations upon which
the curtain falls. It was pointed out by not a few of those who saw
‘Leah Kleschna,’ when Mrs. Fiske produced it with a brilliant and
well-balanced cast,—John Mason, George Arliss, Charles Cartwright,
William B. Mack,—that the star let Mack have the curtain of the third
act.
VII
If it was difficult for Booth fifty years ago and for Irving thirty
years ago to find well-graced and well-trained actors to sustain the
secondary characters in Shakspere’s comedies and tragedies, it is
far more difficult to-day, when our dramatists, even when they are
poets, are rarely tempted to write plays in five acts and in blank
verse. Our modern drama is composed in pedestrian prose; and the men
and women of our theaters have little or no occasion to speak the
language of the gods. They are used to a dialog which aims at an
apparent reproduction of the speech of everyday life; and therefore
they have not been called upon to acquire the art of delivering
the rhythmic utterance of tragic heroes and heroines. They are all
striving to be “natural,” as befits a stage whereon the scenery and
the furnishings are as far as may be those of real life. They are
likely to have a distaste for blank verse, which cannot but seem to
them artificial, stilted, “unnatural.”
Of course, no stage-dialog can be natural, strictly speaking. It must
be compact and significant; it must flow unbroken in the shortest
distance between two points. But to-day actors and audiences alike
are so accustomed to the picked and polished prose of Barrie and
Pinero, of Clyde Fitch and Augustus Thomas, that this appears
“natural” to them, because they do not note its divergence from the
average talk that falls on their ears outside the theater, whereas
they cannot help feeling that the steady march of ten-syllabled
iambics is a violent departure from our habitual manner of
communicating information and of expressing emotion. In other words,
even if our stage-dialog to-day is “unnatural,” as stage-dialog
always has been and always will be, it is far less obviously
“unnatural” than blank verse. A long and severe self-training is
necessary before a performer can feel at home in blank verse, and
before he can impart colloquial ease to it.
Yet it is a fact that we who speak English have a tendency toward the
iambic rhythm when we seek to move an audience. This rhythm may be
unconscious and it may be irregular; but it is unmistakable in the
death-bed scenes of Dickens, for example, where he was insisting on
the pathetic, and in the orations of Ingersoll, where he was making
his most powerful appeal. The Kembles were so subdued to what they
worked in on the stage that they were prone to drop into blank verse
on occasions when it was not appropriate. Mrs. Siddons is said to
have startled the salesman who was showing her a piece of goods by
asking, “And will it wash?” The first time she met Washington Irving
after he had published the ‘Sketch-Book,’ she said to him, “Young
man, you’ve made me weep”; and when she next met him after he had
published another book, she said “Young man, you’ve made me weep
again!”
Her brother, John Philip Kemble, was a great friend of Sir Walter
Scott; and once when they were crossing a field together, they
were chased by a bull. “Sheriff,” said the actor to the author,
“methinks I’ll get me up into a tree.” Fanny Kemble, whose reading of
Shakspere’s plays Longfellow commemorated in a noble sonnet, was the
daughter of Charles, another brother of Mrs. Siddons. Once when she
went on the platform to read, she found that a cane-bottomed chair
had been provided for her. She turned majestically to the gentleman
who was escorting her and inquired, “And would you give my velvet
gown the small-pox?” When her remote kinswoman, the fragile amateur,
who called herself Mrs. Scott-Siddons, came to Fanny Kemble for
professional guidance, she begged for advice about making points; and
she was not a little frightened by the force of the swift retort:
“Points, girl? I never was a point actress!”
This, all this, was long, long ago; and a great deal of water has
gone under the bridge since those distant days. I have to confess
that I never caught Edwin Booth or Henry Irving lapsing into blank
verse off the stage.
(1920)
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added,
when a predominant preference was found in the original book.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg 46: ‘were also accusaable’ replaced by ‘were also accusable’.
Pg 59: ‘Racine, immitagably’ replaced by ‘Racine, immitigably’.
Pg 78: ‘had helpt to’ replaced by ‘had helped to’.
Pg 133: ‘two diferent tongues’ replaced by ‘two different tongues’.
Pg 141: ‘first apparance as’ replaced by ‘first appearance as’.
Pg 142: “Flore et Zephyr” replaced by ‘Flore et Zephyr’.
Pg 144: ‘qualties of the’ replaced by ‘qualities of the’.
Pg 152: ‘if may be recorded’ replaced by ‘it may be recorded’.
Pg 217: ‘unpublisht, and I’ replaced by ‘unpublished, and I’.
Pg 269: ‘or less Shakespere’ replaced by ‘or less Shakspere’.