Except when HENRY IRVING impersonated the hapless victim of false
imprisonment in the Bastille, whence he issued forth after twenty
years of durance, never has he been so curiously and wonderfully
made-up as now, when he represents _Lear_, monarch of all he surveys.
Bless thee, HENRY, how art thou transformed!
[Illustration: Rather mixed. Mr. Irving as "Ophe-Lear."]
Sure such a _King Lear_ was never seen on any stage, so perfect in
appearance, so entirely the ideal of SHAKSPEARE'S ancient King.
It must have been a vision of IRVING in this character that the
divinely-inspired poet and dramatist saw when he had a _Lear_ in his
eye. For a moment, too, he reminded me of BOOTH--the "General," not
the "particular" American tragedian,--and when he appeared in thunder,
lightning, hail, and rain, he suggested an embodiment of the "_Moses_"
of MICHAEL ANGELO.
A strange weird play; much for an audience, and more for an actor, all
on his own shoulders, to bear. A one-part play it is too, for of the
sweet _Cordelia_,--and sweet did ELLEN TERRY look and so tenderly did
she play!--little is seen or heard. With _Goneril_ and _Regan_, the
two proud and wicked sisters,--associated in the mind of the modernest
British Public with Messrs. HERBERT CAMPBELL and HARRY NICHOLLS, as is
also _Cordelia_ associated either with _Cinderella_ or with _Beauty_
in the story of _Beauty and the Beast_--we have two fine commanding
figures; and well are these parts played by Miss ADA DYAS and Miss
MAUD MILTON. The audience can have no sympathy with the two wicked
Princesses, and except in _Goneril's_ brief Lady-Macbethian scene with
her husband, neither of the Misses LEAR has much dramatic chance. Pity
that Mrs. LEAR--his Queen and their mother, wasn't alive! Let us hope
she resembled her youngest daughter _Cordelia_, otherwise poor _Lear_
must have had a hard life of it as a married man.
Why should not Mr. IRVING give the first part of this play
reconsideration? Why not just once a week try him as a different sort
of _Lear_? For instance, suppose, to begin with, that he had had a bad
time of it with his wife, that for many years as a widower he had been
seeking for the opportunity of disposing of his daughters, handing
over to them and to their husbands the lease and goodwill of "The
Crown and Sceptre," while he would be, as King, "retired from
business," and going out for a lark generally. Thus jovially would he
commence the play, a rollicking, gay, old dog, ready for anything, up
to anything, and, like old Anchises, when he jumped on to the back of
Æneas, "a wonderful man for his years." In fact, _Lear_ might begin
like an old King Cole, "a merry old soul," a "jolly old cock!" And
then--"Oh, what a difference in the morning!"--when all his plans
for a gay career had been shipwrecked by _Cordelia's_ capricious and
unnatural affectation.
[Illustration: Mr. Terriss as the Good Fairy.]
Then must commence his senility; then he would begin to break up. A
struggle, to show that there was life in the old dog yet, could be
seen when the old dog had been out hunting, in Act II., and had shot
some strange animal, something between a stag and a dromedary, which
no doubt was a native of Britain in those good old sporting days.
However, more of this anon. Suffice it to say now, that our HENRY
IRVING'S _Lear_ is a triumph in every respect, and that the audience
only wanted a little more of _Cordelia_, which is the fault of the
immortal and unequal Bard.
To those unacquainted with this play, Mr. TERRISS'S sudden appearance
in somewhat anti-Lord-Chamberlain attire, as he bounded on, with a
wand, and struck an attitude, was suggestive of the Good Fairy in
the pantomime; and his subsequent proceedings, when he didn't change
anybody into Harlequin, Clown, and so forth, puzzled the unlearned
spectators considerably. But Mr. TERRISS came out all right, and
acquitted himself (being his own judge and jury) to the satisfaction
of the public. His speech about Dover Cliff, generally supposed to
convey some allusion to the Channel Tunnel, was excellently delivered,
and certainly after _Lear_, "on the spear side," Mr. TERRISS must take
the Goodeley Cake.
Next to him in order of merit comes Mr. FRANK COOPER, as the
wicked _Edmund_, on whom the good EDMUND, "Edmundus Mundi," smiled
benignantly from a private box. There was on the first night a great
reception given to HOWE--the veteran actor, not the wreck, and very
far from it--who took the small part of an old Evicted Tenant of the
_Earl of Glo'ster_, a character very carefully played by Mr. ALFRED
BISHOP, _Floreat Henricus!_ "Our HENRY" has his work cut out for him
in this "Titanic work," as in his before-curtain and after-play speech
he termed it. This particular "Titanic work" is (or certainly was that
night) in favour with "the gods," who "very much applauded what he'd
done." But the gods of old were not quite so favourable to "Titanic
work" generally, and punished eternally Titanic workmen. To-night gods
and groundlings applaud to the echo, and then everyone goes home as
best he can in about as beautiful a specimen of a November fog as ever
delighted a Jack-o'-Lantern or disgusted