had in view was marvelous. When, at the end of the three-months, he
called the first rehearsal, he read the play exactly as it was going to
be done on the first night. He knew exactly by that time what he
personally was going to do on the first night, and the company did well
to notice how he read his own part, for never again until the first
night, though he rehearsed with them, would he show his conception so
fully and completely.
These readings, which took place sometimes in the greenroom or Beefsteak
Room at the Lyceum, sometimes at his house in Grafton Street, were
wonderful. Never were the names of the characters said by the reader,
but never was there the slightest doubt as to which was speaking. Henry
Irving swiftly, surely, acted every part in the piece as he read. While
he read, he made notes as to the position of the characters and the
order of the crowds and processions. At the end of the first reading he
gave out the parts.
The next day there was the "comparing" of the parts. It generally took
place on the stage, and we sat down for it. Each person took his own
character, and took up the cues to make sure that no blunder had been
made in writing them out. Parts at the Lyceum were written, or printed,
not typed.
These first two rehearsals--the one devoted to the reading of the play,
and the other to the comparing of the parts, were generally arranged for
Thursday and Friday. Then there was two days' grace. On Monday came the
first stand-up rehearsal on the stage.
We then did one act straight through, and, after that, straight through
again, even if it took all day. There was no luncheon interval. People
took a bite when they could, or went without. Henry himself generally
went without. The second day exactly the same method was pursued with
the second act. All the time Henry gave the stage his personal
direction, gave it keenly, and gave it whole. He was the sole
superintendent of his rehearsals, with Mr. Loveday as his working
assistant, and Mr. Allen as his prompter. This despotism meant much less
wasted time than when actor-manager, "producer," literary adviser, stage
manager, and any one who likes to offer a suggestion are all competing
in giving orders and advice to a company.
Henry Irving never spent much time on the women in the company, except
in regard to position. Sometimes he would ask me to suggest things to
them, to do for them what he did for the men. The men were as much like
him when they tried to carry out his instructions as brass is like gold;
but he never grew weary of "coaching" them, down to the most minute
detail. Once during the rehearsals of "Hamlet" I saw him growing more
and more fatigued with his efforts to get the actors who opened the play
to perceive his meaning. He wanted the first voice to ring out like a
pistol shot.
"_Who's there?_"
"Do give it up," I said. "It's no better!"
"Yes, it's a little better," he answered quietly, "and so it's worth
doing."
From the first the scenery or substitute scenery was put upon the stage
for rehearsal, and the properties or substitute properties were to hand.
After each act had been gone through twice each day, it came to half an
act once in a whole day, because of the development of detail. There was
no detail too small for Henry Irving's notice. He never missed anything
that was cumulative--that would contribute something to the whole
effect.
The messenger who came in to announce something always needed a great
deal of rehearsal. There were processions, and half processions, quiet
bits when no word was spoken. There was _timing_. Nothing was left to
chance.
In the master carpenter, Arnott, we had a splendid man. He inspired
confidence at once through his strong, able personality, and, as time
went on, deserved it through all the knowledge he acquired and through
his excellence in never making a difficulty.
"You shall have it," was no bluff from Arnott. You _did_ "have it."
We could not find precisely the right material for one of my dresses in
"The Cup." At last, poking about myself in quest of it, I came across
the very thing at Liberty's--a saffron silk with a design woven into it
by hand with many-colored threads and little jewels. I brought a yard to
rehearsal. It was declared perfect, but I declared the price
prohibitive.
"It's twelve guineas a yard, and I shall want yards and yards!"
In these days I am afraid they would not only put such material on to
the leading lady, but on to the supers too! At the Lyceum _wanton_
extravagance was unknown.
"Where can I get anything at all like it?"
"You leave it to me," said Arnott. "I'll get it for you. That'll be all
right.
"But, Arnott, it's a hand-woven Indian material. How _can_ you get it?"
"You leave it to me," Arnott repeated in his slow, quiet, confident way.
"Do you mind letting me have this yard as a pattern?"
He went off with it, and before the dress rehearsal had produced about
twenty yards of silk, which on the stage looked better than the
twelve-guinea original.
"There's plenty more if you want it," he said dryly.
He had had some raw silk dyed the exact saffron. He had had two blocks
made, one red and the other black, and the design had been printed, and
a few cheap spangles had been added to replace the real jewels. My toga
looked beautiful.
This was but one of the many emergencies to which Arnott rose with
talent and promptitude.
With the staff of the theater he was a bit of a bully--one of those men
not easily roused, but being vexed, "nasty in the extreme!" As a
craftsman he had wonderful taste, and could copy antique furniture so
that one could not tell the copy from the original.
The great aim at the Lyceum was to get everything "rotten perfect," as
the theatrical slang has it, before the dress rehearsal. Father's test
of being rotten perfect was not a bad one. "If you can get out of bed in
the middle of the night and do your part, you're perfect. If you can't,
you don't really know it!"
Henry Irving applied some such test to every one concerned in the
production. I cannot remember any play at the Lyceum which did not begin
punctually and end at the advertised time, except "Olivia," when some
unwise changes in the last act led to delay.
He never hesitated to discard scenery if it did not suit his purpose.
There was enough scenery rejected in "Faust" to have furnished three
productions, and what was finally used for the famous Brocken scene cost
next to nothing.
Even the best scene-painters sometimes think more of their pictures than
of scenic effects. Henry would never accept anything that was not right
_theatrically_ as well as pictorially beautiful. His instinct in this
was unerring and incomparable.
I remember that at one scene-rehearsal every one was fatuously pleased
with the scenery. Henry sat in the stalls talking about everything _but_
the scenery. It was hard to tell what he thought.
"Well, are you ready?" he asked at last.
"Yes, sir."
"My God! Is that what you think I am going to give the public?"
Never shall I forget the astonishment of stage manager, scene-painter,
and staff! It was never safe to indulge in too much self-satisfaction
beforehand with Henry. He was always liable to drop such bombs!
He believed very much in "front" scenes, seeing how necessary they were
to the swift progress of Shakespeare's diverging plots. These cloths
were sometimes so wonderfully painted and lighted that they constituted
scenes of remarkable beauty. The best of all were the Apothecary scene
in "Romeo and Juliet" and the exterior of Aufidius's house in
"Coriolanus."
We never had electricity installed at the Lyceum until Daly took the
theater. When I saw the effect on the faces of the electric footlights,
I entreated Henry to have the gas restored, and he did. We used gas
footlights and gas limes there until we left the theater for good in
1902.
To this I attribute much of the beauty of our lighting. I say "our"
because this was a branch of Henry's work in which I was always his
chief helper. Until electricity has been greatly improved and developed,
it can never be to the stage what gas was. The thick softness of
gaslight, with the lovely specks and motes in it, so like _natural_
light, gave illusion to many a scene which is now revealed in all its
naked trashiness by electricity.
The artificial is always noticed and recognized as art by the
superficial critic. I think this is what made some people think Irving
was at his best in such parts as Louis XI, Dubosc, and Richard III. He
could have played Louis XI three times a day "on his head," as the
saying is. In "The Lyons Mail," Dubosc the wicked man was easy
enough--strange that the unprofessional looker-on always admires the
actor's art when it is employed on easy things!--but Lesurques, the
_good_ man in the same play ("The Lyons Mail"), was difficult. Any
actor, skillful in the tricks of the business, can play the drunkard;
but to play a good man sincerely, as he did here, to show that double
thing, the look of guilt which an innocent man wears when accused of
crime, requires great acting, for "_the look_" is the outward and
visible sign of the inward and spiritual emotion--and this delicate
emotion can only be perfectly expressed when the actor's heart and mind
and soul and skill are in absolute accord.
In dual parts Irving depended little on make-up. Make-up was, indeed,
always his servant, not his master. He knew its uselessness when not
informed by the _spirit_. "The letter" (and in characterization
grease-paint is the letter) "killeth--the spirit giveth life." His
Lesurques was different from his Dubosc because of the way he held his
shoulders, because of his expression. He always took a deep interest in
crime (an interest which his sons have inherited), and often went to the
police-court to study the faces of the accused. He told me that the
innocent man generally looked guilty and hesitated when asked a
question, but that the round, wide-open eyes corrected the bad
impression. The result of this careful watching was seen in his
expression as Lesurques. He opened his eyes wide. As Dubosc he kept them
half closed.
Our plays from 1878 to 1887 were "Hamlet," "The Lady of Lyons," "Eugene
Aram," "Charles I.," "The Merchant of Venice," "Iolanthe," "The Cup,"
"The Belle's Stratagem," "Othello," "Romeo and Juliet," "Much Ado About
Nothing," "Twelfth Night," "Olivia," "Faust," "Raising the Wind," and
"The Amber Heart." I give this list to keep myself straight. My mental
division of the years at the Lyceum is _before_ "Macbeth," and _after_.
I divide it up like this, perhaps, because "Macbeth" was the most
important of all our productions, if I judge it by the amount of
preparation and thought that it cost us and by the discussion which it
provoked.
Of the characters played by Henry Irving in the plays of the first
division--before "Macbeth," that is to say--I think every one knows that
I considered Hamlet to be his greatest triumph. Sometimes I think that
was so because it was the only part that was big enough for him. It was
more difficult, and he had more scope in it than in any other. If there
had been a finer part than Hamlet, that particular part would have been
his finest.
When one praises an actor in this way, one is always open to accusations
of prejudice, hyperbole, uncritical gush, unreasoned eulogy, and the
rest. Must a careful and deliberate opinion _always_ deny a great man
genius? If so, no careful and deliberate opinions from me!
I have no doubt in the world of Irving's genius--no doubt that he is
with David Garrick and Edmund Kean, rather than with other actors of
great talents and great achievements--actors who rightly won high
opinions from the multitude of their day, but who have not left behind
them an impression of that inexplicable thing which we call genius.
Since my great comrade died I have read many biographies of him, and
nearly all of them denied what I assert. "Now, who shall arbitrate?" I
find no contradiction of my testimony in the fact that he was not
appreciated for a long time, that some found him like olives, an
acquired taste, that others mocked and derided him.
My father, who worshiped Macready, put Irving above him because of
Irving's _originality_. The old school were not usually so generous.
Fanny Kemble thought it necessary to write as follows of one who had had
his share of misfortune and failure before he came into his kingdom and
made her jealous, I suppose, for the dead kings among her kindred:
"I have seen some of the accounts and critics of Mr. Irving's
acting, and rather elaborate ones of his Hamlet, which, however,
give me no very distinct idea of his performance, and a very hazy
one indeed of the part itself as seen from the point of view of his
critics. Edward Fitzgerald wrote me word that he looked like my
people, and sent me a photograph to prove it, which I thought much
more like Young than my father or uncle. _I have not seen a play of
Shakespeare's acted I do not know when. I think I should find such
an exhibition extremely curious as well as entertaining._"
Now, shall I put on record what Henry Irving thought of Fanny Kemble! If
there is a touch of malice in my doing so, surely the passage that I
have quoted gives me leave.
Having lived with Hamlet nearly all his life, studied the part when he
was a clerk, dreamed of a day when he might play it, the young Henry
Irving saw that Mrs. Butler, the famous Fanny Kemble, was going to give
a reading of the play. His heart throbbed high with anticipation, for in
those days TRADITION was everything--the name of Kemble a beacon and a
star.
The studious young clerk went to the reading.
An attendant came on to the platform, first, and made trivial and
apparently unnecessary alterations in the position of the reading desk.
A glass of water and a book were placed on it.
After a portentous wait, on swept a lady with an extraordinary flashing
eye, a masculine and muscular outside. Pounding the book with terrific
energy, as if she wished to knock the stuffing out of it, she announced
in thrilling tones:
"'HAM--A--LETTE.'
By
Will--y--am Shak--es--peare."
"I suppose this is all right," thought the young clerk, a little
dismayed at the fierce and sectional enunciation.
Then the reader came to Act I, Sc. 2, which the old actor (to leave the
Kemble reading for a minute), with but a hazy notion of the text, used
to begin:
"Although of Hamlet, our dear brother's death,
The memory be--memory be--(What _is_ the color?) _green_"....
When Fanny Kemble came to this scene the future Hamlet began to listen
more intently.
_Gertrude_: Let not thy mother lose _her_ prayers, _Ham--a--lette_.
_Hamlet_: I shall in all respects obey _you_, madam (obviously with
a fiery flashing eye of hate upon the King).
When he heard this and more like it, Henry Irving exercised his
independence of opinion and refused to accept Fanny Kemble's view of the
gentle, melancholy, and well-bred Prince of Denmark.
He was a stickler for tradition, and always studied it, followed it,
sometimes to his own detriment, but he was not influenced by the Kemble
Hamlet, except that for some time he wore the absurd John Philip
feather, which he would have been much better without!
Let me pray that I, representing the old school, may never look on the
new school with the patronizing airs of "Old Fitz"[1] and Fanny Kemble.
I wish that I could _see_ the new school of acting in Shakespeare.
Shakespeare must be kept up, or we shall become a third-rate nation!
[Footnote 1: Edward FitzGerald.]
Henry told me this story of Fanny Kemble's reading without a spark of
ill-nature, but with many a gleam of humor. He told me at the same time
of the wonderful effect that Adelaide Kemble (Mrs. Sartoris) used to
make when she recited Shelley's lines, beginning:
"Good-night--Ah, no, the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite.
Let us remain together still--
Then it will be _good-night_!"
I have already said that I never could cope with Pauline Deschapelles,
and why Henry wanted to play Melnotte was a mystery. Claude Melnotte
after Hamlet! Oddly enough, Henry was always attracted by fustian. He
simply reveled in the big speeches. The play was beautifully staged; the
garden scene alone probably cost as much as the whole of "Hamlet." The
march past the window of the apparently unending army--that good old
trick which sends the supers flying round the back-cloth to cross the
stage again and again--created a superb effect. The curtain used to go
up and down as often as we liked and chose to keep the army marching!
The play ran some time, I suppose because even at our worst the public
found _something_ in our acting to like.
As Ruth Meadowes I had very little to do, but what there was, was worth
doing. The last act of "Eugene Aram," like the last act of "Ravenswood,"
gave me opportunity. It was staged with a great appreciation of grim and
poetic effect. Henry always thought that the dark, overhanging branch of
the cedar was like the cruel outstretched hand of Fate. He called it the
Fate Tree, and used it in "Hamlet," in "Eugene Aram," and in "Romeo and
Juliet."
In "Eugene Aram," the Fate Tree drooped low over the graves in the
churchyard. On one of them Henry used to be lying in a black cloak as
the curtain went up on the last act. Not until a moonbeam struck the
dark mass did you see that it was a man.
He played all such parts well. Melancholy and the horrors had a peculiar
fascination for him--especially in these early days. But his recitation
of the poem "Eugene Aram" was finer than anything in the
play--especially when he did it in a frock-coat. No one ever looked so
well in a frock-coat! He was always ready to recite it--used to do it
after supper, anywhere. We had a talk about it once, and I told him that
it was _too much_ for a room. No man was ever more willing to listen to
suggestion or less obstinate about taking advice. He immediately
moderated his methods when reciting in _a room_, making it all the less
theatrical. The play was a good rŽpertoire play, and we did it later on
in America with success. There the part of Houseman was played by
Terriss, who was quite splendid in it, and at Chicago my little boy
Teddy made his second appearance on any stage as Joey, a gardener's boy.
He had, when still a mere baby, come on to the stage at the Court in
"Olivia," and this must be counted his _first_ appearance, although the
chroniclers, ignoring both that and Joey in "Eugene Aram," _say_ he
never appeared at all until he played an important part in "The Dead
Heart."
It is because of Teddy that "Eugene Aram" is associated in my mind with
one of the most beautiful sights upon the stage that I ever saw in my
life. He was about ten or eleven at the time, and as he tied up the
stage roses, his cheeks, untouched by rouge, put the reddest of them to
shame! He was so graceful and natural; he spoke his lines with ease, and
smiled all over his face! "A born actor!" I said, although Joey was my
son. Whenever I think of him in that stage garden, I weep for pride, and
for sorrow, too, because before he was thirty my son had left the
stage--he who had it all in him. I have good reason to be proud of what
he has done since, but I regret the lost actor _always_.
Henry Irving could not at first keep away from melancholy pieces.
Henrietta Maria was another sad part for me--but I used to play it well,
except when I cried too much in the last act. The play had been one of
the Bateman productions, and I had seen Miss Isabel Bateman as Henrietta
Maria and liked her, although I could not find it possible to follow her
example and play the part with a French accent! I constantly catch
myself saying of Henry Irving, "That is by far the best thing that he
ever did." I could say it of some things in "Charles I."--of the way he
gave up his sword to Cromwell, of the way he came into the room in the
last act and shut the door behind him. It was not a man coming on to a
stage to meet some one. It was a king going to the scaffold, quietly,
unobtrusively, and courageously. However often I played that scene with
him, I knew that when he first came on he was not aware of my presence
nor of any _earthly_ presence: he seemed to be already in heaven.
Much has been said of his "make-up" as Charles I. Edwin Long painted him
a triptych of Vandyck heads, which he always had in his dressing-room,
and which is now in my possession. He used to come on to the stage
looking precisely like the Vandyck portraits, but not because he had
been busy building up his face with wig-paste and similar atrocities.
His make-up in this, as in other parts, was the process of _assisting
subtly and surely the expression from within_. It was elastic, and never
hampered him. It changed with the expression. As Charles, he was
assisted by Nature, who had given him the most beautiful Stuart hands,
but his clothes most actors would have consigned to the dust-bin! Before
we had done with Charles I.--we played it together for the last time in
1902--these clothes were really threadbare. Yet he looked in them every
inch a king.
His care of detail may be judged from the fact that in the last act his
wig was not only grayer, but had far less hair in it. I should hardly
think it necessary to mention this if I had not noticed how many actors
seem to think that age may be procured by the simple expedient of
dipping their heads, covered with mats of flourishing hair, into a
flour-barrel!
Unlike most stage kings, he never seemed to be _assuming_ dignity. He
was very, very simple.
Wills has been much blamed for making Cromwell out to be such a
wretch--a mean blackguard, not even a great bad man. But in plays the
villain must not compete for sympathy with the hero, or both fall to the
ground! I think that Wills showed himself a true poet in his play, and
in the last act a great playwright. He gave us both wonderful
opportunities, yet very few words were spoken.
Some people thought me best in the camp scene in the third act, where I
had even fewer lines to speak. I was proud of it myself when I found
that it had inspired Oscar Wilde to write me this lovely sonnet:
In the lone tent, waiting for victory,
She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain,
Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain;
The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky,
War's ruin, and the wreck of chivalry
To her proud soul no common fear can bring;
Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord, the King,
Her soul aflame with passionate ecstasy.
O, hair of gold! O, crimson lips! O, face
Made for the luring and the love of man!
With thee I do forget the toil and stress,
The loveless road that knows no resting place,
Time's straitened pulse, the soul's dread weariness,
My freedom, and my life republican!
That phrase "wan lily" represented perfectly what I had tried to convey,
not only in this part but in Ophelia. I hope I thanked Oscar enough at
the time. Now he is dead, and I cannot thank him any more.... I had so
much _bad_ poetry written to me that these lovely sonnets from a real
poet should have given me the greater pleasure. "He often has the poet's
heart, who never felt the poet's fire." There is more good _heart_ and
kind feeling in most of the verses written to me than real poetry.
"One must discriminate," even if it sounds unkind. At the time that
Whistler was having one of his most undignified "rows" with a sitter
over a portrait and wrangling over the price, another artist was
painting frescoes in a cathedral for nothing. "It is sad that it should
be so," a friend said to me, "but _one must discriminate_. The man
haggling over the sixpence is the great artist!"
How splendid it is that _in time_ this is recognized. The immortal soul
of the artist is in his work, the transient and mortal one is in his
conduct.
Another sonnet from Oscar Wilde--to Portia this time--is the first
document that I find in connection with "The Merchant," as the play was
always called by the theater staff.
"I marvel not Bassanio was so bold
To peril all he had upon the lead,
Or that proud Aragon bent low his head,
Or that Morocco's fiery heart grew cold;
For in that gorgeous dress of beaten gold,
Which is more golden than the golden sun,
No woman Veronese looked upon
Was half so fair as thou whom I behold.
Yet fairer when with wisdom as your shield
The sober-suited lawyer's gown you donned,
And would not let the laws of Venice yield
Antonio's heart to that accursed Jew--
O, Portia! take my heart; it is thy due:
I think I will not quarrel with the Bond."