"_Terriss!_"
"Yes. I don't doubt Irving's intellectuality, you know. As Romeo he
reminds me of a pig who has been taught to play the fiddle. He does it
cleverly, but he would be better employed in squealing. He cannot shine
in the part like the fiddler. Terriss in this case is the fiddler."
I was furious. "I am sorry you don't realize," I said, "that the worst
thing Henry Irving could do would be better than the best of any one
else."
When dear Terris did play Romeo at the Lyceum two or three years later
to the Juliet of Mary Anderson, he attacked the part with a good deal of
fire. He was young, truly, and stamped his foot a great deal, was
vehement and passionate. But it was so obvious that there was no
intelligence behind his reading. He did not know what the part was
about, and all the finer shades of meaning in it he missed. Yet the
majority, with my political friend, would always prefer a Terriss as
Romeo to a Henry Irving.
I am not going to say that Henry's Romeo was good. What I do say is that
some bits of it were as good as anything he ever did. In the big
emotional scene (in the Friar's cell), he came to grief precisely as he
had done in Othello. He screamed, grew slower and slower, and looked
older and older. When I begin to think it over I see that he often
failed in such scenes through his very genius for impersonation. An
actor of commoner mould takes such scenes rhetorically--recites them,
and gets through them with some success. But the actor who impersonates,
feels, and lives such anguish or passion or tempestuous grief, does for
the moment in imagination nearly die. Imagination impeded Henry Irving
in what are known as "strong" scenes.
He was a perfect Hamlet, a perfect Richard III., a perfect Shylock,
except in the scene with Tubal, where I think his voice failed him. He
was an imperfect Romeo; yet, as I have said, he did things in the part
which were equal to the best of his perfect Hamlet.
His whole attitude before he met Juliet was beautiful. He came on from
the very back of the stage and walked over a little bridge with a book
in his hand, sighing and dying for Rosaline. In Iago he had been
Italian. Then it was the Italy of Venice. As Romeo it was the Italy of
Tuscany. His clothes were as Florentine as his bearing. He ignored the
silly tradition that Romeo must wear a feather in his cap. In the course
of his study of the part he had found that the youthful fops and
gallants of the period put in their hats anything that they had been
given--some souvenir "dallying with the innocence of love." And he wore
in his hat a sprig of crimson oleander.
It is not usual, I think, to make much of the Rosaline episode. Henry
Irving chose with great care a tall dark girl to represent Rosaline at
the ball. Can I ever forget his face when suddenly in pursuit of _her_
he saw _me_.... Once more I reflect that a _face_ is the chiefest
equipment of the actor.
I know they said he looked too old--was too old for Romeo. In some
scenes he looked aged as only a very young man can look. He was not
boyish; but ought Romeo to be boyish?
I am not supporting the idea of an elderly Romeo. When it came to the
scenes where Romeo "poses" and is poetical but insincere, Henry _did_
seem elderly. He couldn't catch the youthful pose of melancholy with its
extravagant expression. It was in the repressed scenes, where the
melancholy was sincere, the feeling deeper, and the expression slighter,
that he was at his best.
"He may be good, but he isn't Romeo," is a favorite type of criticism.
But I have seen Duse and Bernhardt in "La Dame aux CamŽlias," and cannot
say which is Marguerite Gauthier. Each has her own view of the
character, and each _is_ it _according to her imagination_.
According to his imagination, Henry Irving was Romeo.
Again in this play he used his favorite "fate" tree. It gloomed over the
street along which Romeo went to the ball. It was in the scene with the
Apothecary. Henry thought that it symbolized the destiny hanging over
the lovers.
It is usual for Romeo to go in to the dead body of Juliet lying in
Capulet's monument through a gate on the _level_, as if the Capulets
were buried but a few feet from the road. At rehearsals Henry Irving
kept on saying: "I must go _down_ to the vault." After a great deal of
consideration he had an inspiration. He had the exterior of the vault in
one scene, the entrance to it down a flight of steps. Then the scene
changed to the interior of the vault, and the steps now led from a
height above the stage. At the close of the scene, when the Friar and
the crowd came rushing down into the tomb, these steps were thronged
with people, each one holding a torch, and the effect was magnificent.
At the opening of the Apothecary Scene, when Balthazar comes to tell
Romeo of Juliet's supposed death, Henry was marvelous. His face grew
whiter and whiter.
"Then she is well and nothing can be ill;
Her body sleeps in Capulet's monument."
It was during the silence after those two lines that Henry Irving as
Romeo had one of those sublime moments which an actor only achieves once
or twice in his life. The only thing that I ever saw to compare with it
was Duse's moment when she took Kellner's card in "Magda." There was
absolutely no movement, but her face grew white, and the audience knew
what was going on in her soul, as she read the name of the man who years
before had seduced and deserted her.
As Juliet I did not _look_ right. My little daughter Edy, a born
archaeologist, said: "Mother, you oughtn't to have a fringe." Yet,
strangely enough, Henry himself liked me as Juliet. After the first
night, or was it the dress rehearsal--I am not quite clear which--he
wrote to me that "beautiful as Portia was, Juliet leaves her far, far
behind. Never anybody acted more exquisitely the part of the performance
which I saw from the front. 'Hie to high fortune,' and 'Where spirits
resort' were simply incomparable.... Your mother looked very radiant
last night. I told her how proud she should be, and she was.... The play
will be, I believe, a mighty 'go,' for the beauty of it is bewildering.
I am sure of this, for it dumbfounded them all last night. Now
you--we--must make our task a delightful one by doing everything
possible to make our acting easy and comfortable. We are in for a long
run."
To this letter he added a very human postscript: "I have determined not
to see a paper for a week--I know they'll cut me up, and I don't like
it!"
Yes, he _was_ cut up, and he didn't like it, but a few people knew. One
of them was Mr. Frankfort Moore, the novelist, who wrote to me of this
"revealing Romeo, full of originality and power."
"Are you affected by adverse criticism?" I was asked once. I answered
then and I answer now, that legitimate adverse criticism has always been
of use to me if only because it "gave me to think" furiously. Seldom
does the outsider, however talented, as a writer and observer, recognize
the actor's art, and often we are told that we are acting best when we
are showing the works most plainly, and denied any special virtue when
we are concealing our method. Professional criticism is most helpful,
chiefly because it induces one to criticize oneself. "Did I give that
impression to anyone? Then there must have been something wrong
somewhere." The "something" is often a perfectly different blemish from
that to which the critic drew attention.
Unprofessional criticism is often more helpful still, but alas! one's
friends are to one's faults more than a little blind, and to one's
virtues very kind! It is through letters from people quite unknown to me
that I have sometimes learned valuable lessons. During the run of "Romeo
and Juliet" some one wrote and told me that if the dialogue at the ball
could be taken in a lighter and _quicker_ way, it would better express
the manner of a girl of Juliet's age. The same unknown critic pointed
out that I was too slow and studied in the Balcony Scene. She--I think
it was a woman--was perfectly right.
On the hundredth night, although no one liked my Juliet very much, I
received many flowers, little tokens, and poems. To one bouquet was
pinned a note which ran:
"To JULIET,
As a mark of respect and Esteem
From the Gasmen of the Lyceum Theater."
That alone would have made my recollections of "Romeo and Juliet"
pleasant. But there was more. At the supper on the stage after the
hundredth performance, Sarah Bernhardt was present. She said nice things
to me, and I was enraptured that my "vraies larmes" should have pleased
and astonished her! I noticed that she hardly ever moved, yet all the
time she gave the impression of swift, butterfly movement. While
talking to Henry she took some red stuff out of her bag and rubbed it on
her lips! This frank "making-up" in public was a far more astonishing
thing in the 'eighties than it would be now. But I liked Miss Sarah for
it, as I liked her for everything.
How wonderful she looked in those days! She was as transparent as an
azalea, only more so; like a cloud, only not so thick. Smoke from a
burning paper describes her more nearly! She was hollow-eyed, thin,
almost consumptive-looking. Her body was not the prison of her soul, but
its shadow.
On the stage she has always seemed to me more a symbol, an ideal, an
epitome than a _woman_. It is this quality which makes her so easy in
such lofty parts as Phdre. She is always a miracle. Let her play
"L'Aiglon," and while matter-of-fact members of the audience are
wondering if she looks _really_ like the unfortunate King of Rome, and
deciding against her and in favor of Maude Adams who did look the boy to
perfection, more imaginative watchers see in Sarah's performance a truth
far bigger than a mere physical resemblance. Rostand says in the
foreword to his play, that in it he does not espouse this cause or that,
but only tells the story of "one poor little boy." In another of his
plays, "Cyrano de Bergerac," there is one poor little tune played on a
pipe of which the hero says:
"ƒcoutez, Gascons, c'est toute la Gascogne."
Though I am not French, and know next to nothing of the language, I
thought when I saw Sarah's "L'Aiglon," that of that one poor little boy
too might be said:
"ƒcoutez, Franais, c'est toute la France!"
It is this extraordinary decorative and symbolic quality of Sarah's
which makes her transcend all personal and individual feeling on the
stage. No one plays a love scene better, but it is a _picture_ of love
that she gives, a strange orchidaceous picture rather than a suggestion
of the ordinary human passion as felt by ordinary human people. She is
exotic--well, what else should she be? One does not, at any rate one
should not, quarrel with an exquisite tropical flower and call it
unnatural because it is not a buttercup or a cowslip.
I have spoken of the face as the chief equipment of the actor. Sarah
Bernhardt contradicts this at once. Her face does little for her. Her
walk is not much. Nothing about her is more remarkable than the way she
gets about the stage without one ever seeing her move. By what magic
does she triumph without two of the richest possessions that an actress
can have? Eleonora Duse has them. Her walk is the walk of the peasant,
fine and free. She has the superb carriage of the head which goes with
that fearless movement from the hips--and her face! There is nothing
like it, nothing! But it is as the real woman, a particular woman, that
Duse triumphs most. Her Cleopatra was insignificant compared with
Sarah's--she is not so pictorial.
How futile it is to make comparisons! Better far to thank heaven for
both these women.
EXTRACT FROM MY DIARY
_Saturday, June 11, 1892._--"To see 'Miss Sarah' as 'ClŽop‰tre'
(Sardou superb!). She was inspired! The essence of Shakespeare's
'Cleopatra.' I went round and implored her to do Juliet. She said
she was too old. She can _never_ be old. 'Age cannot wither her.'
_June 18._--"Again to see Sarah--this time 'La Dame aux CamŽlias.'
Fine, marvelous. Her writing the letter, and the last act the best.
_July 11._--"_Telegraph_ says 'Frou-frou' was 'never at any time a
character in which she (Sarah) excelled.' Dear me! When I saw it I
thought it wonderful. It made me ashamed of ever having played it."
Sarah Bernhardt has shown herself the equal of any man as a manager. Her
productions are always beautiful; she chooses her company with
discretion, and sees to every detail of the stage-management. In this
respect she differs from all other foreign artists that I have seen. I
have always regretted that Duse should play as a rule with such a
mediocre company and should be apparently so indifferent to her
surroundings. In "Adrienne Lecouvreur" it struck me that the careless
stage-management utterly ruined the play, and I could not bear to see
Duse as Adrienne beautifully dressed while the Princess and the other
Court ladies wore cheap red velveteen and white satin and brought the
pictorial level of the performance down to that of a "fit-up" or booth.
Who could mention "Miss Sarah" (my own particular name for her) as being
present at a supper-party without saying something about her by the way!
Still, I have been a long time by the way. Now for Romeo and Juliet!
At that 100th-night celebration I saw Mrs. Langtry in evening dress for
the first time, and for the first time realized how beautiful she was.
Her neck and shoulders kept me so busy looking that I could neither
talk nor listen.
"Miss Sarah" and I have always been able to understand one another,
although I hardly know a word of French and her English is scanty. She
too, liked my Juliet--she and Henry Irving! Well, that was charming,
although I could not like it myself, except for my "Cords" scene, of
which I shall always be proud.
My dresser, Sarah Holland, came to me, I think, during "Romeo and
Juliet." I never had any other dresser at the Lyceum except Sally's
sister Lizzie, who dressed me during the first few years. Sally stuck to
me loyally until the Lyceum days ended. Then she perceived "a divided
duty." On one side was "the Guv'nor" with "the Guv'nor's" valet Walter,
to whom she was devoted; on the other was a precarious in and out job
with me, for after the Lyceum I never knew what I was going to do next.
She chose to go with Henry, and it was she and Walter who dressed him
for the last time when he lay dead in the hotel bedroom at Bradford.
Sally Holland's two little daughters "walked on" in "Romeo and Juliet."
Henry always took an interest in the children in the theater, and was
very kind to them. One night as we came down the stairs from our
dressing-rooms to go home--the theater was quiet and deserted--we found
a small child sitting forlornly and patiently on the lowest step.
"Well, my dear, what are you doing here?" said Henry.
"Waiting for mother, sir."
"Are you acting in the theater?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what part do you take?"
"Please, sir, first I'm a water-carrier, then I'm a little page, and
then I'm a virgin."
Henry and I sat down on the stairs and laughed until we cried! Little
Flo Holland was one of the troop of "virgins" who came to wake Juliet on
her bridal morn. As time went on she was promoted to more important
parts, but she never made us laugh so much again.
Her mother was a "character," a dear character. She had an
extraordinarily open mind, and was ready to grasp each new play as it
came along as a separate and entirely different field of operations! She
was also extremely methodical, and only got flurried once in a blue
moon. When we went to America and made the acquaintance of that dreadful
thing, a "one-night stand," she was as precise and particular about
having everything nice and in order for me as if we were going to stay
in the town a month. Down went my neat square of white drugget; all the
lights in my dressing-room were arranged as I wished. Everything was
unpacked and ironed. One day when I came into some American theater to
dress I found Sally nearly in tears.
"What's the matter with you, Sally?" I asked.
"I 'aven't 'ad a morsel to heat all day, dear, and I can't 'eat my
iron."
"Eat your iron, Sally! What _do_ you mean?"
"'Ow am I to iron all this, dear?" wailed Sally, picking up my Nance
Oldfield apron and a few other trifles. "It won't get 'ot."
Until then I really thought that Sally was being sardonic about an iron
as a substitute for victuals!
When she first began to dress me, I was very thin, so thin that it was
really a grief to me. Sally would comfort me in my thin days by the
terse compliment:
"Beautiful and fat to-night, dear."
As the years went on and I grew fat, she made a change in the
compliment:
"Beautiful and thin to-night, dear."
Mr. Fernandez played Friar Laurence in "Romeo and Juliet." He was a very
nervous actor, and it used to paralyze him with fright when I knelt down
in the friar's cell with my back to the audience and put safety pins in
the drapery I wore over my head to keep it in position while I said the
lines,
"Are you at leisure, holy father, now
Or shall I come to you at evening mass?"
Not long after the production of "Romeo and Juliet" I saw the
performance of a Greek play--the "Electra," I think--by some Oxford
students. A young woman veiled in black with bowed head was brought in
on a chariot. Suddenly she lifted her head and looked round, revealing a
face of such pure classic beauty and a glance of such pathos that I
called out:
"What a supremely beautiful girl!"
Then I remembered that there were no women in the cast! The face
belonged to a young Oxford man, Frank Benson.
We engaged him to play Paris in "Romeo and Juliet," when George
Alexander, the original Paris, left the Lyceum for a time. Already
Benson gave promise of turning out quite a different person from the
others. He had not nearly so much of the actor's instinct as Terriss,
but one felt that he had far more earnestness. He was easily
distinguished as a man with a purpose, one of those workers who "scorn
delights and live laborious days." Those laborious days led him at last
to the control of two or three companies, all traveling through Great
Britain playing a Shakespearean rŽpertoire. A wonderful organizer, a
good actor (oddly enough, the more difficult the part the better he
is--I like his _Lear_), and a man who has always been associated with
high endeavor, Frank Benson's name is honored all over England. He was
only at the Lyceum for this one production, but he always regarded Henry
Irving as the source of the good work that he did afterwards.
"Thank you very much," he wrote to me after his first night as Paris,
"for writing me a word of encouragement.... I was very much ashamed and
disgusted with myself all Sunday for my poverty-stricken and thin
performance.... I think I was a little better last night. Indeed I was
much touched at the kindness and sympathy of all the company and their
efforts to make the awkward new boy feel at home.... I feel doubly
grateful to you and Mr. Irving for the light you shed from the lamp of
art on life now that I begin to understand the labor and weariness the
process of trimming the Lamp entails."
X
LYCEUM PRODUCTIONS (_continued_)
"MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING" TO "FAUST"
Our success with "The Belle's Stratagem" had pointed to comedy, to
Beatrice and Benedick in particular, because in Mrs. Cowley's old comedy
we had had some scenes of the same type. I have already told of my first
appearance as Beatrice at Leeds, and said that I never played the part
so well again; but the Lyceum production was a great success, and
Beatrice a great personal success for me. It is only in high comedy that
people seem to know what I am driving at!
The stage-management of the play was very good; the scenery nothing out
of the ordinary except for the Church Scene. There was no question that
it _was_ a church, hardly a question that old Mead was a Friar. Henry
had the art of making ceremonies seem very real.
This was the first time that we engaged a singer from outside. Mr. Jack
Robertson came into the cast to sing "Sigh no more, ladies," and made an
enormous success.
Johnston Forbes-Robertson made his first appearance at the Lyceum as
Claudio. I had not acted with him since "The Wandering Heir," and his
improvement as an actor in the ten years that had gone by since then was
marvelous. I had once said to him that he had far better stick to his
painting and become an artist instead of an actor. His Claudio made me
"take it back." It was beautiful. I have seen many young actors play the
part since then, but not one of them made it anywhere near as
convincing. Forbes-Robertson put a touch of Leontes into it, a part
which some years later he was to play magnificently, and through the
subtle indication of consuming and insanely suspicious jealousy made
Claudio's offensive conduct explicable at least. On the occasion of the
performance at Drury Lane which the theatrical profession organized in
1906 in honor of my Stage Jubilee, one of the items in the programme was
a scene from "Much Ado about Nothing." I then played Beatrice for the
last time and Forbes-Robertson played his old part of Claudio.
During the run Henry commissioned him to paint a picture of the Church
Scene, which was hung in the Beefsteak Room. The engravings printed from
it were at one time very popular. When Johnston was asked why he had
chosen that particular moment in the Church Scene, he answered modestly
that it was the only moment when he could put himself as Claudio at the
"side"! Some of the other portraits in the picture are Henry Irving,
Terriss, who played Don Pedro; Jessie Millward as Hero, Mr. Glenny as
Don John, Miss Amy Coleridge, Miss Harwood, Mr. Mead, and his daughter
"Charley" Mead, a pretty little thing who was one of the pages.
The Lyceum company was not a permanent one. People used to come, learn
something, go away, and come back at a larger salary! Miss Emery left
for a time, and then returned to play Hero and other parts. I liked her
Hero better than Miss Millward's. Miss Millward had a sure touch;
strength, vitality, interest; but somehow she was commonplace in the
part.
Henry used to spend hours and hours teaching people. I used to think
impatiently: "Acting can't be taught." Gradually I learned to modify
this conviction and to recognize that there are two classes of actors:
1. Those who can only do what they are taught.
2. Those who cannot be taught, but can be helped by suggestion to work
out things for themselves.
Henry said to me once: "What makes a popular actor? Physique! What makes
a great actor? Imagination and sensibility." I tried to believe it. Then
I thought to myself: "Henry himself is not quite what is understood by
'an actor of physique,' and certainly he is popular. And that he is a
great actor I know. He certainly has both imagination and 'sense and
sensibility.'" After the lapse of years I begin to wonder if Henry was
ever really _popular_. It was natural to most people to dislike his
acting--they found it queer, as some find the painting of Whistler--but
he forced them, almost against their will and nature, out of dislike
into admiration. They had to come up to him, for never would he go down
to them. This is not popularity.
_Brain_ allied with the instinct of the actor tells, but stupidity
allied with the instinct of the actor tells more than brain alone. I
have sometimes seen a clever man who was not a born actor play a small
part with his brains, and have felt that the cleverness was telling more
with the actors on the stage than with the audience.
Terriss, like Mrs. Pritchard, if we are to believe what Dr. Johnson said
of her, often did not know what on earth he was talking about! One
morning we went over and over one scene in "Much Ado"--at least a dozen
times I should think--and each time when Terriss came to the speech
beginning:
"What needs the bridge much broader than the flood,"
he managed to give a different emphasis. First it would be:
"What! _Needs_ the bridge much broader than the flood!" Then:
"What needs the bridge _much_ broader than the flood."
After he had been floundering about for some time, Henry said:
"Terriss, what's the meaning of that?"
"Oh, get along, Guv'nor, _you_ know!"
Henry laughed. He never could be angry with Terriss, not even when he
came to rehearsal full of absurd excuses. One day, however, he was so
late that it was past a joke, and Henry spoke to him sharply.