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THE MODEM FRENCH THEATRE 
 
THE 
 
 MODERN FRENCH THEATRE 
 
 WITH CRITICAL NOTES ON SOME OF THE 
 PRINCIPAL FRENCH ACTORS 
 
 BY 
 
 WALTER HERRIES POLLOCK 
 
 (reprinted with additions from the examiner) 
 
 FOTHERINOHAM 
 
 8, rue neuve-des-capucines, 8. 
 
 1878. • 
 
C^f^ (TCP) 
 
 6*' 3'<^3 
 
THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE, j <^'p ^ 
 
 It is not a little strange that the French theatre from 
 which so many other theatres in this age borrow plays 
 of all kinds, should from the time of Jodelle, who flou- 
 rished in the reign of Henri II to that of Corneille have 
 been occupied by one set form of drama, an imitation 
 of the classical tragedy. In Corneille's Cid^ which was 
 founded on the work of two Spanish dramatists Guillen 
 de Castro and Diamante was the germ of the roman- 
 ticism that in the present age rose to its full height, 
 after a great struggle with the upholders of the tradi- 
 tional classic school. In 1829 on the boards of the 
 Francais, then the very temple of the classical drama, 
 as it is now the chief shrine both of the old and the 
 later drama, Alexandre Dumas produced his a Henri III 
 et sa Cour » a romantic drama of great power, written 
 in prose. This met with some opposition from the 
 classicists, but the storm of battle did not burst till the 
 following year when at the same theatre Victor Hugo's 
 Hernani was given. It is difficult for a spectator at 
 the present performances of this great play to realise 
 the fury which it excited forty-eight years ago. Party 
 spirit rose as vehemently over its merits or demerits as 
 it has lately done in England over the Eastern Question. 
 The riot inside the theatre may be compared to the 
 0. P. riots in England ; but the feeling outside the 
 theatre has never been equalled in the case of any art 
 controversy in England. M. Hugo received threatening 
 
 007 
 
THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 letters every day, and two of his admirers used to 
 escort him from the theatre to his house every night 
 during the run of the play, to guard him from the dan- 
 ger of a sudden or secret attack. Duels were fought on 
 the subject of Hernani\ a dying man wished to have 
 his tombstone inscribed with a testimony to his belief 
 in M. Hugo's genius ; and before the play was with- 
 drawn every single line in it had, on one occasion or 
 other, been hissed by its opponents. The hatred felt for 
 it was like that which inspires religious persecutions. 
 Now lines are spoken in its representation which even 
 on its production some ten years back were deemed too 
 dangerous for utterance ; and there would be universal 
 surprise if a dissentient voice were heard among the 
 audiences which assemble to witness it. Hernani, in 
 spite of faults which need not here be dwelt upon, is a 
 fine type of the poetical romantic drama of which 
 M. Hugo is the acknowledged master. Another form of 
 the romantic drama was cultivated by a poet whose 
 genius is as penetrating as M. Hugo's — Alfred de 
 Musset. His dramas, which are of so delicate a fibre 
 that they cannot be fitly interpreted any where but at 
 the Francais, have this in common with the classic 
 models, that they constantly suggest the idea of a fate 
 overriding the actions of men. He had a singular power 
 of concentration in his dramatic writing. In one speech, 
 in one line, he can lay bare a life time of tragedy ; and, 
 in many of his plays beneath the brilliant surface of 
 comedy there is a current of tremendous passion which, 
 when once it shows itself, strikes and blasts the senses 
 like a storm of lightning descending in the midst of a 
 summer day. 
 
 It would be well if any of Mus set's poetic power 
 had descended to the comedy writers of the present 
 day. To M. Augier indeed it has in a sense descended 
 
THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 7 
 
 and in some degree also to M. Coppee. M. Augier's 
 play Les FourchamhauU, wliich is not by any means 
 his best, has been immensely successful at the Fran- 
 9ais, and its success is a healthy sign of reaction against 
 thelowtoneof plays which for some years past have chic- 
 fly represented the modern art of play writing in France. 
 There are some striking remarks made by Schlegel 
 upon the French comedy of a former period. The object 
 of these comedies, he observes, is no longer life, but 
 society. « That perpetual negotiation between conflic- 
 ting vanities which never ends in a sincere treaty of 
 peace — the embroidered dress, the hat under the arm, 
 and the sword by the side — essentially belong to them, 
 and the whole of the characterization is limited to the 
 folly of the men and the coquetry of the w^omen. The 
 insipid uniformity of these pictures was unfortunately 
 too often seasoned by the corruption of moral prin- 
 ciples, which, especially after the age of Louis XIV, 
 till the middle of the century under the regency and 
 Louis XV, it became the fashion openly to avow. In 
 this period the favourite of the women, the homme a 
 bonnes fortunes, who, in a tone of satiety, boasts of the 
 multitude of his conquests too easily achieved, was not 
 a character invented by the comic writers, but an 
 accurate portrait from real life, as is proved by many 
 memoirs of the last century even down to those of a 
 Besenval. We are disgusted at the unrivalled sensua- 
 lity of the love intrigues of the Grecian comedy, but 
 the Greeks would have thought the intrigues with 
 married women in the French comedy entered into 
 merely from giddy vanity, much more disgusting. If in 
 the constant ridicule of marriage by the petits maitres, 
 and in their moral scepticism, especially with regard to 
 women, the poets merely intended to censure a prevailing 
 depravity, the picture is not therefore the less dangerous. 
 
THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 The great or fashionable world, which in point of 
 numbers is the small, but which considers itself as 
 alone of any importance, can hardly be improved by it, 
 and the example is but too seductive for the other clas- 
 ses from the brilliancy with which the characters are 
 surrounded. But in so far as comedy is concerned, this 
 deadening corruption is by no means entertaining and 
 in many pieces in which fools of quality give the tone, 
 as in the ^ Chevalier a la mode ' of Dancourt, for ins- 
 tance, the picture of complete moral dissoluteness, 
 which though true is both unpoetical and unnatural, 
 is not only wearisome in the extreme but most deci- 
 dedly disgusting. '> So writes Schlegel of the French 
 comedy of the past time, and so might he write, with 
 a difference, of that of the present day. The embroidered 
 dress, the hat under the arm, and the sword by the 
 side, have vanished, but the folly of the men and the 
 coquetry of the women have remained as the staple of 
 the play. Alexandre Dumas, fils, contends that his 
 plays are all admirably moral. And they are so in this 
 sejise, that when analyzed the picture which they pre- 
 sent of vice and its consequences is revolting. But the 
 mass of the public who fill a theatre do not care to ana- 
 lyse. They do not pierce beneath the surface; they 
 come to be amused, and they depart with the immediate 
 impression of what has amused them in their minds. 
 The constancy with which a theme is put before them 
 cannot but lead them in the end to believe in its cons- 
 tant and pervading existence. When an author who has 
 power enough to make his writings lifelike, even if 
 they were not informed with life by the perfection of 
 acting, presents to an audience always the same aspect 
 of human affairs, they are induced at last to believe 
 that aspect to be the true one. The author shows them 
 a never-varying picture of men whose honour is base- 
 
THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 9 
 
 ness, and women -whose strength is vice ; and the pu- 
 blic become disciples to his creed. In one of this wri- 
 ter's successful plays the man who is set up as a type 
 of honour among others who are supposed to be far 
 below him, is so placed that he must either betray a 
 woman's secret or see his friend rush into a disgra- 
 ceful marriage. In this position he not only warns his 
 friend, a course which may be justified, but subse- 
 quently makes sport of the woman's humiliation. And 
 it is after this that his friend says — speaking to the 
 girl whom he is to marry — « Vous epousez le plus 
 honnete homme que je connaisse. jj* The moral objec- 
 tion to this kind of play is not the only one; the want 
 of relief to the unpleasant side of nature found in most 
 of them, occasions them to be, as Burnett said King 
 William III, was, «of a disgusting dryness. " There 
 is another school of comedy-drama which has been 
 highly successful, and of which Octave Feuillet may 
 be said to be the leader. 
 
 This school delights in enlisting sympathy forvice by 
 means of surrounding it with an alluring and mystifying 
 sense of poetry and exaltation. The personages of plays 
 of this kind are always hovering between good and evil ; 
 they walk between the dominions of virtue and vice 
 and keep one foot in each. The heroines are women 
 who are not to be judged like ordinary mortals « They 
 resemble » as M. Feuillet says of one of them « stars 
 escaped from their orbits : they deal to day in heroism 
 to morrow in crime. » By dint of talking a great deal of 
 their good qualities which are kept in the background, 
 the writer awakes a kind of spurious sympathy with 
 their bad ones which are but too obvious. Let it be 
 noted that the French are not to be credited or discre- 
 dited with the invention of this kind of drama, which 
 can be traced to Kotzebue and the German stage. All 
 
10 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 that the French can fairly be reproached with is being 
 much cleverer than the German dramatists, and making 
 their scenes of dubious morality much more attractive. 
 Within the last few months as has been said a kind 
 of reaction has set in favour of « pieces saines; « 
 whether it will last or not remains to be seen ; but 
 meanwhile both M. Sardou's Les Bourgeois de Pont- 
 Arcy and M. Augier's Les Fourchamhault show that 
 what Parisian critics call « pieces saines » are capable 
 of attracting audiences. 
 
 May, 1878. 
 
M. GOT. 
 
 So much has been written recently about the French 
 stage, and in particular about the Theatre Francais, 
 that in speaking of French players it seems necessary 
 only briefly to recall attention to the advantages under 
 which the drama flourishes in Paris. There are seve- 
 ral theatres there which receive a subsidy from the 
 Government; and at the head of these, as indeed at the 
 head of all theatres, stands the institution oftheCome- 
 die Frangaise, to which the first subvention was gran- 
 ted in 1683 by a document signed by the king and 
 countersigned by Colbert. We need not discuss the 
 various changes which have taken place in the theatre 
 between that date and this ; but to take an instance of 
 the high estimation in which its company has ever been 
 held we may bring to our readers' minds the striking 
 incident of the First Napoleon finding time at Moscow 
 to draw up and sign a long list of articles for the regu- 
 lation of the Comedie Frangaise. At the present day the 
 walls of the Theatre Francais contain a miniature state 
 with excellent laws well administered by its officers. 
 The numerical strength of the company is, compared 
 with that of most theatres, enormous; and among its 
 members there are seldom found any inefficient. This 
 makes a constant change of perfomance possible, and 
 thus gives to the actors the repose both of actual rest 
 and of variety which is much wanted in England. A 
 societaire of the Comedie Francaise will hold up his 
 hands in horror at hearing of an actor playing a trying 
 part five or six nights a week and for several weeks in 
 succession. The annual gains of a leading player at the 
 
12 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 Frangais in his prime naturally enough fall short by 
 a great deal of what a successful actor may hope 
 at the first recognition of his powers to make in En- 
 gland. Against this disadvantage the societaire of the 
 Frangais may set, besides the knowledge that he is 
 working for the advancement of art, the assurance of a 
 pension when he retires. 
 
 First among the societaires of the Comedie Francaise, 
 by virtue of his position as doyen, and certainly among 
 the first by reason of his powers is M. Got. An actor 
 who infuses a strong reality into whatever part he un- 
 dertakes, he combines rare qualities of humour which 
 never fails, and pathos which seldom falls short of 
 its mark. He has gestures which are peculiar to 
 him, especially that of pointing at an object with a 
 jerky movement of both hands ; yet his assumptions are 
 every one so well marked that he could not be called 
 a mannerist. He is so imbued with the feelings of the 
 character he represents that even his back can be elo- 
 quent. There is a story current that M. Got was ofiered 
 the part of the abbe on the first production of Musset's 
 II ne fautjurer de rien; that he accepted the part on 
 condition of being allowed to play it after his own 
 conception ; that the result, contrary to the expectation 
 of the author and all who attended rehearsals, was ad- 
 mirable ; and that this was the player's first success. 
 As M. Got, however, had appeared a year before as Mas- 
 carille in ih.QPrecieuses 7'idicides,ihe story is probably 
 not more than half true. However that may be, the 
 abbe, with his ill-fitting rustic clerical garb, his 
 awkward good nature, his mixture of pride in his posi- 
 tion and submission to the baroness who orders him 
 about, is one of M. Got's most humorous performances. 
 There is a formal grotesqueness in the abbe which is 
 irresistible. On one occasion he is called away suddenly 
 
M. GOT. 13 
 
 by a servant. What the man's message is can only be 
 guessed from the abbe's look and action ; but it would 
 be easy to construct a whole history out of the confu- 
 sed exit which he makes, with his hat, hurriedly 
 sought for, planted on the edge of his head, with a long 
 bent back, with one hand stretched before him, as if to 
 grasp his goal, and the other trailing with a stiff fore- 
 finger behind him. In another scene the baroness asks 
 him suddenly, « Have you read the 'Wandering Jew', 
 abbe ? »' I the struggle which ensues between his desire 
 to propitiate his patroness and his fear of seeming to 
 countenance an unholy book, and the relief with which 
 at last he discovers a compromise, are in the highest 
 sense comic. Again he commands the attention of the 
 audience merely by employing an interval when the 
 baroness leaves him unnoticed in wiping his spectacles 
 with a ludicrous concentration. Whatever the abbe is 
 doing one cannot help looking at him ; and one comes 
 away laughing at him and yet liking him. 
 
 The list of M. Got's successful perfomances is, like 
 that of other actors at French theatres, so long that we 
 can mention but a few of them. With the grotesque 
 humour of the abbe may be contrasted the deep feeling 
 displayed in Le Due Job. Le Due Job is a nobleman of 
 broken fortunes, and the hero of a play which, without 
 M. Got's acting, might be dull enough. He has served 
 in the army, and you recognise this fact during his first 
 scene, as much from something indefinable in his bea- 
 ring as from his mechanically handling his cane as if 
 it were a sword, while he listens to a long story, told 
 by a vulgar financier, to whom his bearing is perfectly 
 courteous, and yet, to one looking on, perfectly dis- 
 dainful. At times, recalling the habit of his soldiering 
 days, he hums the fanfare of the trumpets. His feelings 
 he has learnt, taught in a hard school, to conceal be- 
 
14 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 neath an appearence of indifferent cynicism. This re- 
 source fails him utterly once when the news of his dearest 
 friend's death reaches him. At first he is stupefied by 
 the shock ; the talk of the financier who has unfeel- 
 ingly given the intelligence amid business matters 
 passes unheeded. Then the memories of old times steal 
 upon him ; he begins to describe his dead friend, and as 
 he speaks his feelings assert themselves more; his 
 voice falters; he remembers suddenly that he is not 
 alone, tries to affect carelessness, and to hum his old 
 fanfare with unmoved gaiety. But the first notes are 
 choked in his throat, and he bursts into tears, over- 
 powered with an emotion which his audience can hardly 
 fail to share. To Balzac's Mercadet, in which part he 
 succeeded Geoffroy, M. Got gives a self-confidence and 
 self-possession which inspire in the spectator the belief 
 which is necessary for his portentous feats. You can- 
 not but admire the mind which is capable of conceiving 
 such gigantic projects, of laying plans for victory when 
 even escape seems hardly feasible, of darting from 
 scheme to scheme with bewildering rapidity, and yet 
 never being flurried. Running through the perfor- 
 mance is a vein of irony which is not biting enough to 
 prevent one's wishing for Mercadet's salvation by some 
 such happy stroke of fortune as occurs in the return of 
 the real Godeau when Mercadet has just resorted to 
 the desperate device of employing a fictitious partner. 
 For other specimens of M. Got's powers in different 
 directions we may refer to the bourgeois father-in-law 
 in Le Gendre de M. Poirier, whose very walk reveals 
 much of his character and training, and in whose reply 
 to the taunts of his noble son-in-law, brutal as it is, 
 there is yet something dignified ; and to the terribly 
 grim humour of the jealous podestat Claud io in Les 
 Caprices de Marianne, In his face and whole presence 
 
M. DELAUNAY. 15 
 
 throughout there is a griping joy in the consciousness 
 of petty power, and even while he is ludicrously entan- 
 gled in the train of his own robe he seems to walk in 
 the shadow of the treacherous revenge he is plotting. 
 For pure comedy M. Got's Figaro, which part he has 
 of late years ceded to M. Coquelin, and for simple farce 
 his valet, in various classical comedies, are admirable. 
 His acting of Remonin in Dumas's L' Strang ere was a 
 wonderfully studied performance ; and by his simplicity 
 and dignity as Bernard in Les Fourchamhault he pro- 
 duces a great impression, made by the highest, that is 
 the least affected, art. 
 
 There is one peculiarity in M. Got's acting. He 
 never seems to enter fully into a part when he under- 
 takes it at first. On the first night of his playing a new 
 character you may be disappointed at point after point 
 -which he seems to let slip, or to grasp inefi"ectually ; it 
 is as if he were feeling his way. After the first few per- 
 formances he seizes the difierent ideas which appeared 
 to elude him, and gives a rendering of character with 
 which few actors can compete. 
 
 M. DELAUNAY. 
 
 M. Delaunay, who made his first appearance in 
 1846, at the Odeon, and two years later left that theatre 
 for the Francais, is perhaps the most finished actor of 
 the modern stage. He has been often called « le premier 
 desjeunes premiers » and this is no light compliment, 
 for it is a difficult task to play one young hero of comedy 
 and drama after another, and to make of each one a 
 distinct and complete impersonation. But M. Delaunay 
 
16 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 has done much more than this. For a long time past 
 he has found opportunities £or showing that he has 
 passion and fire at his command as much as graceful 
 liveliness and attractive sentiment ; and lately in two 
 parts, which used to helong to M. Bressant, he has pro- 
 ved that if he should ever cease to he young, which one 
 can hardly believe, he will still have a wide range of 
 characters before him. 
 
 To say that M. Delaunay is perhaps the first actor 
 of the Comedie Francaise is to say that hard study and 
 incessant devotion to his art have produced the singu- 
 lar ease and spontaneity which are seen in all his per- 
 formances; but it is worth while to speak in some 
 detail of the faults which he struggled with and over- 
 came at the outset of his career, as no one seeing him 
 now could suspect their former existence. The most 
 remarkable physical advantage of the actor is his voice, 
 a voice of unsurpassed melody and expression, which 
 can be in turns gay, satirical, and tender, which can 
 rise and fall on the swell of passion, can ring with 
 light-hearted laughter, or seem to die away on the 
 dirge of a dead love, or freeze to a horrified whisper 
 that chills the blood, and never touch in all its infinite 
 variety a note that is not musical. Yet it was this 
 voice which was most in the way of the actor's success 
 when he first entered his profession. The critics of his 
 early appearances observed that but for the misfortune 
 of his voice he might do great things. It was weak, 
 and jarring by reason of being constantly pitched in a 
 high monotonous key. Again, M. Delaunay's style is 
 absolutely free from imitation of any other player ; his 
 bearing and gesture are always so natural that one can 
 hardly point to any action as peculiar to him, unless 
 it be an expressive one, which he often employs in pass- 
 ages of entreaty or remonstrance with both hands held 
 
M. DELAUNAY. 17 
 
 outwards. But like many good actors he has a singular 
 talent for mimicry which at first was a stumbling-block 
 to him. Constantly acting with M. Got, and admiring 
 his fine perception and skill, he fell into a habit of 
 imitating his style, and losing originality. The removal 
 of both these defects was due in the first instance to 
 M. DavesneSj sometime regisseur of the Francais ; but 
 the suggestions of M. Davesnes could only by carried 
 into effect by assiduous labour, by his pupil trying his 
 voice every morning, developing new notes and rejec- 
 ting bad ones, and keeping a careful watch over himself 
 every night on the stage. 
 
 One of the gayest and most brilliant of M. Delaunay's 
 impersonations is Dorante in Le Menteur, which Foote 
 adapted for the English stage as The Liar. M. Delau- 
 nay's Dorante lies so brightly and naturally that one 
 cannot be angry with him. He is overwhelmed with 
 his romantic imagination. His mind is stored with 
 brilliant fancy that must find expression. He cannot 
 resist representing things not as they happened, but 
 as in a fairy world they ought to have happened. His 
 nature rejects the dull commonplace of this earth, and 
 he walks lightly in some brighter atmosphere, with 
 the warm tints of which he cannot help colouring the 
 surroundings of his bodily prison-house. When indul- 
 gence of this tendency creates difiiculties, and brings 
 him face to face with the things of this world, far from 
 being disappointed or perplexed, he finds a new joy in 
 the call made on his invention, and delights in building 
 his imaginary fabric higher and higher into the clouds, 
 where reality cannot reach it to pull it down. It is 
 impossible to attach any serious blame to a creature so 
 airy, who laughs at indignation so carelessly and 
 musically. 
 
 As the height of sparkling comedy is reached in Le 
 
 2 
 
18 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 Menteur, so are the depths of passion sounded in La 
 Nuit d'Octohre, a poem by Musset in the form of a 
 dialogue between a poet and the Muse. In the desperate 
 mourning of the poet over the lost brightness of his 
 life, in his blasting denunciation of the woman who 
 has been false to him, and his gradual yielding to the 
 Muse's entreaties and consolations, Musset has expres- 
 sed a phase in his own history, and to his vivid picture 
 M. Delaunay, in his performance of the poet, gives a 
 fresh life. His misery is so deadly that one feels only 
 some supernatural vision can come between it and him 
 his outbreak of passion at the memory of the woman 
 who has fooled him is withering; when at last soothed 
 by the Muse's comfort, he flings open his study win- 
 dow, resolved to take up again his work « aux premiers 
 rayons du soleil, » a weight is taken from the specta- 
 tor's mind. 
 
 We have selected these two from many of M. Delau- 
 nay 's best-known performances, as afibrding a striking 
 instance of the variety of his power. Lately he has 
 discovered yet more versatility. His appearance as 
 Ollivier in Le Bemi-Monde set Paris wondering 
 before the event if its favourite comedian could dis- 
 charge his new task ; and left it after the event admi- 
 ring the ease with which he seemed to accomplish it. 
 To our thinking it is far from his best part ; the cha- 
 racter is a disagreeable one, and seems to demand a 
 certain cynicism which M. Delaunay does not give to 
 it ; he softens Ollivier's biting satire with a restless 
 gaiety which hardly suits it. But on the other hand 
 his liveliness gives a pleasant tone as far as may be to 
 an unpleasant play ; and his matchless elocution makes 
 the longest speech pleasant to listen to. As Richelieu 
 in M^^" de Belle-Isle^ and Gaston in Le .Gendre de 
 M. Poirier, parts formerly filled by M. Bressant, 
 
M. DELAUNAY. 19 
 
 M. Delaunay has shown himself capable of filling the 
 gap left by that great comedian's retirement. As Riche- 
 lieu he is, as a Parisian critic said, less of a grand 
 seigneur^ and less brutal than his predecessor ; and in 
 Gaston de Presles, also, he brings emotion more into 
 play than did M. Bressant. M. Bressant had a haughty 
 insolence as Gaston ; M. Delaunay has rather the 
 playful impertinence of a man who is pleased with his 
 wife for being loveable, though she is a hourgeoise, 
 and with himself for loving her though he is a marquis. 
 M. Bressant, when he broke into scorn of Poirier's 
 pretentions, was loftily, impassively disdainful ; 
 M, Delaunay 's contempt is mixed with good-natured 
 amusement. Throughout he brings out Gaston's good 
 qualities more fully than M. Bressant did. 
 
 Lately M. Delaunay has appeared as Le Misantrope. 
 In this part his penetrating art is devoted to illustra- 
 ting the manysided character of Alceste. He is by turns 
 sarcastic, mournful, sardonically tragic, deeply pathe- 
 tic, and in a certain sense gay. Every mood of the man's 
 mind is rendered with a searching and unrivalled skill. 
 
 The perfection of truth and grace in voice and action 
 which M. Delaunay exhibits in every part he plays is, 
 as we have said, the result of hard study, though it 
 appears the impulse of a moment; and hard study can 
 do much to make an actor. But in cannot give him the 
 command w^hich M. Delaunay has over his audience's 
 smiles and tears, unless he is born with the faculty for 
 reaching their hearts. 
 
20 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 M"« SARAH BERNHARDT. 
 
 M"' Sarah Bernhardt, like many other great ac- 
 tresses, failed to make any striking impression when 
 she first appeared on the stage of the Francais, whence 
 she went to the Gymnase and the Odeon and returned 
 ten years later to the Comedie, where since then she 
 has gradually built up the great strength and reputa- 
 tion which she now possesses. She has learnt to use a 
 musical and well-trained voice, an expressive face, 
 and a marvellously graceful bearing with what even 
 some years ago seemed little short of perfect art. But 
 M"® Bernhardt has that highest development of the ar- 
 tistic faculty which is never content with its own 
 attainments, which is ever striving after something 
 better than it has yet done, and ever surprising those 
 who watch the unfolding of its resources. In 1873 she 
 played Aricie to M"^ RousseiPs Phedre, with a depth 
 of feeling, a truth and grace, that raised a character 
 which' might well appear insipid into beauty. From 
 seeing this, however, one could hardly expect that two 
 years later she would play Phedre with surpassing 
 power. From the moment when she came on the stage, 
 drooping and trembling as if scorched with the passion 
 blazing within her to the conclusion of the tragedy, 
 the spectator's thoughts were riveted on the queen. It 
 was difficult to give any heed to the other characters, 
 well as they were acted. She reminded one of Beckford's 
 terrible description in 'Vathek' of the dead in the Hall 
 of Eblis, each of whom carried within him a flaming 
 heart. But they walked in gloomy silence, and her tor- 
 tures drove her to uncontrollable speech. She looked, 
 walked, and spoke as if she were consumed and yet 
 
m"« SARAH BERNHARDT. 21 
 
 sustained by her madness, as if she drew her life from 
 that which was destroying her. Her passion was so 
 intense that it seemed to wither whatever came in its 
 way ; her grief so desperate that horrorwas lost in pity. 
 Perhaps the finest passage in the performance was this 
 in the third scene of the first act. 
 
 CENONE. 
 
 Aimez-vous ? 
 
 PHEDRE. 
 
 De I'amour j'ai toutes les fureurs. 
 
 (ENONE. 
 
 Pour qui ? 
 
 PHEDRE. 
 
 Tu vas oui'r le comble des horreurs 
 J'aime . . A ce nom fatal, je tremble, je frissonne. 
 J'aime . . 
 
 (ENONE. 
 
 Qui? 
 
 PHEDRE. 
 
 Tu connais ce fils de TAmazone. 
 Ce prince si longtemps par moi-meme opprime. 
 
 (ENONE. 
 
 Hippolyte ? Grands dieux ! 
 
 PHEDRE. 
 
 C'est toi qui I'as nomme ! 
 
 The effect here is the more difficult on account of the 
 gradual preparation for a revelation which to the spec- 
 tator is no news. With each pause M"" Bernhardt 
 conveyed a greater sense of horror, and yet when the 
 final confession came it struck and blasted the senses 
 like lightning. The actress delivered the last words 
 
22 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 with a terrible mixture of triumph and self-loathing. 
 She spoke them with averted head and with a shrin- 
 king of the whole body ; and still there was a kind of 
 fierce joy in her self-condemnation, which one may 
 compare to the delight of a fanatic in his self-inflicted 
 martyrdoms. 
 
 The same actress who is overpoweringly tragic in 
 Phedre can be in Coppee's Le P assault as tender and 
 winning as the « nuits d'ete, « the beauty of which her 
 Zanetto celebrates as he enters ; or represent, as in La 
 Fille de Roland, a simple dignity and a noble fire. In 
 this play she gives expression with singular truth and 
 pathos to the growth of a maiden love, and by her force 
 elevates even to sublimity a somewhat bombastic tirade 
 of which a portion falls to her. The actress has as 
 complete a command of the lightest comedy as of gran- 
 deur and pathos. In a bright fantastic little piece by 
 M. Ferrier, called Chez PAvocat, she played a wife 
 who unexpectedly met her husband in an avocat's office, 
 whither they had each come to inquire about the pos- 
 sibility of a separation, and in this part her acting was 
 singularly witty. The fineness of her insight, the grace 
 of movement and speech with which she clothed it, 
 would have given point to her dialogue even if of itself 
 it had none. M"* Sarah Bernhardt did very much for 
 Dumas's L'Etrangere, in which, by her dramatic 
 power and perfect elocution, which deals alike success- 
 fully with verse and prose, she gave life to an impos- 
 sible character and saved a mercilessly long discourse 
 from being tiresome. A critic, writing of her in this 
 piece, said that she was the Cleopatra of the Francais; 
 and though in appearance the actress is as unlike 
 Cleopatra as may be, it is easy to believe that age will 
 never wither her, « nor custom stale her infinite va- 
 riety. » Lately, as Dona Sol in Hernani^W^" Bernhardt 
 
M. MOUNET-SULLY. 23 
 
 has given fresh illustrations of her extraordinary 
 power. 
 
 The word genius is far too loosely applied, as a rule, 
 to those artists who are gifted with unusual talents ; 
 but we have little hesitation in asserting that true 
 genius is possessed by M"^ Sarah Bernhardt. 
 
 M. MOUNET-SULLY. 
 
 M. Mounet-Sully is in some respects the most remar- 
 kable actor on the French stage ; and when one consi- 
 ders the style of his master and his own, not the least 
 remarkable thing about him is that he was a pupil of 
 M. Bressant. M. Mounet-Sully seems to be the only 
 living player capable of undertaking the tragic heroes, 
 whether of the strictly classical or of the romantic 
 drama. The manner in which he fills these parts is in 
 various ways surprising ; and the surprise is not 
 confined to the spectators, as the player has acquired so 
 little control over his emotions that he frequently yields 
 in a performance to the impulse of a moment, and, 
 inspired by this, occupies a position on the stage which 
 is entirely diiferent from that which he has taken at 
 rehearsals. He has recognised the fact that to give 
 expression to great passion an actor must by capable 
 of comprehending it, and he has not sufficiently taken 
 into account that this expression must be shaped accor- 
 ding to certain rules which cannot be disregarded. 
 M. Mounet-Sully is an actor who undoubtedly has true 
 passion, in which respect he resembles Edmund Kean ; 
 but Kean always knew to a nicety what part of the 
 
24 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 stage he would tread, and what inflection of voice he 
 would use at every passionate outburst in his part. To 
 judge how important an element in the actor's art 
 system is, it is only necessary to imagine the effect of 
 a play in which all the performers should disregard 
 studied effects and vary the positions and actions they 
 had tried at rehearsal, by every tresh suggestion which 
 came into their minds when they were before an 
 audience. The same place on the stage might as easily 
 as not suddenly appear to everyone concerned in a 
 scene as the most desirable one for him or her to occupy. 
 There would be a hustling and confusion which might 
 in one sense be strictly natural, but which would 
 certainly not carry out the requirements of the theatre. 
 On the stage, as, has been often said, things cannot be 
 done exactly as they are in real life. The glare of the 
 footlights would make Apollo look like a spectre if he 
 refused to paint his face, and what is true of such a 
 particular as this is necessarily true of the general 
 principle to which it belongs. The impression of reality 
 conveyed from the stage to the spectator is produced 
 by a studied arrangement of artificial effects ; and when 
 this is disturbed, by the intrusion either of actual 
 objects on the scene or of unstudied emotion in the 
 player, the illusion must be hindered, not helped. 
 
 Most of M. Mounet-Sully's faults might be removed 
 if he would consider more deeply the fact that the mir- 
 ror of the stage must owe as much to mechanical skill 
 and framing as mirrors do in everyday life. He has gifts 
 physical and mental, which, properly used, might give 
 him a position few actors have attained. He has a face 
 and figure suitable for poetic action and expression, 
 and a voice whose sonorous tones can strike any note 
 in the scale of passion. He has also, as he has often 
 shown even in performances disfigured by want of 
 
M. MOUNET-SULLY. 25 
 
 application, that vastness of imagination which a tra- 
 gedian ought to have : which can comprehend the poet's 
 greatest thoughts, and carry them in their fulness to 
 an audience that but for him they might never reach. 
 But he squanders these precious gifts recklessly ; he 
 seems to be content with the mere possession of them, 
 and to take not enough thought of how he can turn 
 them to the best profit. He is at little pains to control 
 or direct the passion he feels, and is therefore perhaps 
 at his best when, as in the classical French tragedy, a 
 constraint which he cannot break through is imposed 
 by the author's measured diction. One of his finest 
 performances is that of Hippolyte (in Racine's Phedre) 
 to whom he gives a marvellously truthful aspect of 
 untamed nobility. His love for Aricie is the perfection 
 of manly tenderness; and his repulsion of Phedre's 
 passion is the utmost expression of a strong nature 
 filled with horror at what is shameful, and yet careful, 
 with the gentleness of strength, to wound as little as 
 may be the object of its horror. The despairing cry 
 with which he leaves Theseus after he has learnt that 
 by no means but those he will not use he can establish 
 his innocence strikes the hearer with admiration and 
 pity. 
 
 In parts where the author has set less strict bounds 
 to the player's expression, in such a part, for instance, 
 as Gerald in M. de Bornier's La fille de Roland, 
 M. Mounet-Sully is less fortunate. With much that 
 one may admire-with such things as the fine rendering 
 of his chivalrous devotion to Berthe, in which beseems 
 to have caught the very spirit of the chivalrous age 
 which the poet has aimed at reproducing, and the elo- 
 quent and imaginative delivery of the ballad about the 
 two swords , Joyeuse and Durandal — there is also 
 much to blame. The actor seems at times overcome 
 
2d THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 with the knowledge that he has certain advantages 
 which it is his duty to employ. He rolls his eyes and 
 displays his teeth, not only when the occasion demands 
 some violence of emotion, but at many points where a 
 more sedate demeanour would be desirable. There is 
 one scene in the play which ends with Gerald mounting 
 guard outside his father's castle, where Berthe is hou- 
 sed, and taking up the cry of « Veillez, » which, accor- 
 dingto the author, should be heard passing from sentry 
 to sentry as the curtain falls. As a matter of fact whether 
 by M. Mounet-Sully's arrangement or the stage mana- 
 ger's, Gerald's cry alone was heard ; and the shout 
 with which the actor delivered this became, at the 
 time, almost proverbial. It never failed to arouse a 
 murmur of laughter in the house, in spite of which 
 M. Mounet-Sully never condescended to moderate the 
 vigour of voice which he devoted to this word. 
 
 As Hernani M. Monnet-Sully has somewhat toned 
 down his extravagances, and in many passages of the 
 part displays the truest feeling. 
 
 It must be said, however, that while M. Mounet- 
 Sully is often laughed at, he also attracts spectators ; 
 and when all his faults have been told, the fact of which 
 we have already spoken remains that he is the only 
 actor who can fill with any success a certain line of 
 characters, and that those characters are the most poe- 
 tic of the French drama. It is perhaps unfortunate for 
 him that this should be so ; a wholesome rivalry might 
 stimulate him to better exertions, but as yet no rival 
 has arisen. M. Mounet-Sully has twice appeared as a 
 principal figure in modern drama, once in Jean de 
 Thommeray, and lately as the lover in Dumas's 
 L'Etrangere. Both of these parts might have puzzled a 
 more experienced actor than M. Mounet-Sully ; but it 
 was clear enough before he attempted them that his 
 
Mile FAVART. 2t 
 
 qualities were not suited to the rendering of such cha- 
 racters, however well designed ; and he will be wise if 
 in future he avoids them, and devotes his energies to 
 the study of the more poetic drama. 
 
 M»e FAVART. 
 
 M"" Favart, who, after her first appearance at the 
 Francais, left it for a smaller theatre, and returning to 
 it a year later, became in due course one of its most dis- 
 tinguished members, has of late been somewhat hardly 
 treated by critics. AVith the English public, a player 
 
 ^^^ who has once deservedly been a favourite can always 
 count on finding a claim to applause acknowledged. 
 The inevitable barriers raised by time between the 
 spectator and the illusion desired on the stage are sof- 
 tened and shaded by the memory of former hours when 
 the power that may now have lost something of its 
 outward expression could lift an intent audience out of 
 their individual cares and troubles, and carry them 
 away on the fiood of an exalted passion. This benevo- 
 lence may doubtless be carried too far in encouraging 
 actors to remain on the stage and encounter tasks for 
 
 ■ which they are, from physical causes, utterly disquali- 
 fied ; and the player who joins discretion to other merits 
 will be careful, if possible, to give no opening for a sta- 
 tement that he has outstayed his welcome on the boards. 
 But it is surely better that some indulgence should be 
 extended to long-trusted servants of the public than 
 that there should be a searching investigation and 
 condemnation of their faults the moment that any di- 
 
28 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 minution is perceived in their capacities. M"" Favart 
 has been indiscreet in showing some unwillingness to 
 believe that any new talent can succeed her in the place 
 where for long she reigned alone ; she was unwise, for 
 instance, in attempting to prove to an English audience 
 that she could play the part in Le Sphinx in which 
 M^'" Croizette was winning applause from the Pari- 
 sians. But many of the qualities which M"^ Favart has 
 possessed still exist, and require only to be used in the 
 right direction. She has a strength in passionate out- 
 bursts which is unsurpassed, an ease and dignity of 
 movement which exactly meet the requirements of 
 parts where the comedy of drawing-rooms veils some 
 tragic interest. She excels in the rendering of irony 
 and contempt. Her commanding presence and incisive 
 tones are capable of conveying a withering scorn. When 
 in L' Aventuriere she turns on those who are unmas- 
 king her plans, and ends a speech of bitter recrimina- 
 tion with, « Relevez done les yeux, honnetes gens ! » 
 the words seem to cut as they fall from her lips. It is 
 perhaps the consciousness of possessing this incisive 
 power of speech which has betrayed M^^^ Favard into 
 a habit of dwelling too long on her words, so long, in- 
 deed, that it has been proposed to have an ent'racte 
 between each of her utterances. The actress has, while 
 acquiring this trick, exaggerated another which was 
 always a blemish on her elocution ; as if to make up for 
 doling out the greater part of a speech like something 
 too precious to be given out but with painful delibera- 
 tion, she seems at its end to grow weary of her self- 
 imposed task, and pours forth the words which remain 
 with bewilderingly rapid generosity. Such defects as 
 these do not injure M^'® Favart's remarkable power of 
 byplay which enables her to convey in one look and 
 gesture a whole history of suffering, passion, or re- 
 
Mile FAVART. 29 
 
 morse. And whatever faults may have heen found either 
 now or formerly with her method it should be remem- 
 bered that M"' Favart has performed no easy feat in 
 filling with success parts associated with the name of 
 Rachel. 
 
 One of M"^ Favart's most striking impersonations in 
 the modern school of drama is Julie in M. Feuillet's 
 play of that name. The piece, although its defects are 
 in a manor concealed by the veil which M. Feuillet's 
 grace and skill of writing throw over them, is radically 
 false and vicious in tone. M. Feuillet has a singular 
 aptitude for taking an ugly subject and glossing over 
 its hideousness. It suits him to have a base motive for 
 his work, but he is careful not to shock his own or his 
 spectator's fine sensibilities by exhibiting his theme in 
 its natural state. He wraps it round with artfully dis- 
 posed gauzes of sentiment; he cloaks the vileness of 
 adulterous passion with a pretence of unselfish devotion 
 and compassion. But the disguise is a thin one, and 
 only the art of such an actress as M"° Favart can induce 
 a spectator to sympathise with emotions that to a rea- 
 der will appear untrue to nature as well as vicious. 
 The part of Julie brought out M"® Favart's various me- 
 rits in a marked degree. The light dialogue of the first 
 scene could not be more pleasantly and gracefully spo- 
 ken than it was by her ; and yet she showed the trouble 
 in her heart all the while. She gave reality by the force 
 of her expression and action to the unreal speech in 
 which Julie gives herself up as lost for ever because 
 her husband leaves her alone for a time. She softened 
 in a marvellous way the repulsive rivalry between a 
 mother and daughter ; and the passion of the last act, 
 which culminated in her death, was so powerful that 
 the spectator could not but believe in the vain image 
 set before him by the author. The death scene itself 
 
30 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 was terrible and yet not revolting, because the actress 
 subordinated the physical to the mental effect, and 
 exhibited not a succession of contortions and writhings, 
 carefully studied from the deathbeds of everyday occur- 
 rence, but the sudden agony and prostration of a frame 
 worn to destruction by the passions contending wi- 
 thin it. 
 
 Another part in which M"® Favart has struck the 
 keys of many emotions is Marianne, in Alfred de 
 Musset's Les Caprices de Marianne. Here, in the dia- 
 logue with the reckless Octave, there is an opportunity 
 for the expression of ironical contempt, which she 
 uses to the utmost. As the action goes on you see her 
 love for him growing by degrees, beneath the measured 
 coldness of her manner. At the end when his dearest 
 friend whose cause he has been pleading to her has 
 been killed by her husband's assassins, Octave delivers 
 a desperate farewell to all the sunlight and gaiety of his 
 careless life. « Pourquoi dites-vous. Adieu F Amour ? » 
 asks Marianne, opening her arms towards him. « Je 
 ne vous aime pas, Marianne. C'etait Celio qui vous 
 aimait, » replies Octave, with cold contempt. Upon this 
 she sinks to her knees, and the curtain falls while she 
 utters a heart-broken cry; and this cry, as M"^ Favart 
 delivered it, rang through the house like a death-knell ; 
 it paralysed the attention so that one could scarce lift 
 a hand to applaud the power that weighed one down 
 with an imaginary horror. 
 
 In strong contrast to her rendering of passion is 
 M"^ Favart's impersonation of the Muse in Musset's 
 La nuit d'Octohre^ who comes to cheer the sinking 
 heart of the poet. To this she gives a statuesque still- 
 ness which has a strangely supernatural air; the words 
 which she has to speak recognise the grief which she 
 has come to console, and point to something higher 
 
M. BRESSANT. 31 
 
 than individual misery where it may find relief; as she 
 utters them they seem fraught with the still sadness 
 of a summer evening, and the hope of the dawn that it 
 contains. 
 
 In this part M"® Favart is likely to he long without 
 a rival ; and there are many other parts which she 
 might hold undisputed, and which give plenty of op- 
 portunity to a fine actress. 
 
 M. BRESSANT. 
 
 It has heen our purpose to speak only of players 
 actuelly upon the stage ; but it is so short a while since 
 M. Bressant retired, that we may be excused for attemp- 
 ting to recall some characteristics of one of the finest 
 actors whom this generation has seen. M. Bressant was 
 in parts which depended on the outward courtliness 
 and dignity of the actor, as well as on his intellectual 
 qualities, without a rival. As has been already observed 
 M. Delaunay has proved that he is capable of filling 
 the gap left by M. Bressant's retirement, but, with 
 true artistic feeling, he has been careful, in the parts 
 to which he has already succeeded, to avoid rather 
 than challenge comparison with his predecessor. These 
 parts have been open to slightly different interpreta- 
 tions, and M. Delaunay has given a touch of emotion 
 where M. Bressant preserved impassiveness and been 
 gay where he was cynical. 
 
 With a fine presence which seemed to command 
 attention and enforce obedience without an effort, 
 M. Bressant possessed in a marked degree all the 
 resources of diction. These he employed with singular 
 
32 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 power in Don Carlos's long soliloquy, which took a 
 quarter of an hour to deliver in the fourth act of Her- 
 nani, and also in the speech which ends the act. The 
 delivery of the two last lines — 
 
 Je t'ai crie : Par ot faut-il que je commence ? 
 Et tu m'as repondu : Mon fils, par la clemence, 
 
 which the actor gave standing on the edge of Charle- 
 magne's tomb, and gazing intently into it, could not 
 have been surpassed in beauty. Throughout the part 
 of Don Carlos M. Bressant's kingly bearing was admi- 
 rable. There was no stilted stifihess in his demeanour 
 but by a certain curtness of manner and indifference 
 as to the effect of his words on the persons he addressed 
 he conveyed the notion of a man so accustomed to pro- 
 found deference that he never paused to see if it was 
 yielded to him. In the first act, where Don Carlos saves 
 Hernani by saying — 
 
 C'est quelqu'un de ma suite, 
 
 M. Bressant spoke the words without even glancing at 
 Hernani to see the impression they produced on him, 
 as if it could never occur to Don Carlos to occupy him- 
 self for an instant with the emotions of a creature so 
 far removed from him. Again, when Don Carlos falls 
 into the power of Hernani, who says to him — 
 
 Songes-tu que je te tiens encore? 
 Ne me rappelle pas, futur cesar romain, 
 Que je t'ai Ik, chetif et petit, dans ma main, 
 Et que si je serrais cette main trop loyale, 
 J'^craserais dans I'oeuf ton aigle imperiale ! 
 
 to which Don Carlos merely answers, « Faites ! « the 
 reply was given with such absolute indifference, and 
 
M. BRESSANT. 33 
 
 yet with such dignity, that one felt the words « chetif 
 et petit 5> to be an insult most trivial and out of place, 
 and that it could not be possible for Hernani to lay 
 hands on a being so supreme as Don Carlos. 
 
 As Octave in Musset's Les Caprices de Marianne^ 
 M. Bressant displayed something of the same careless 
 and graceful gaiety which made his Almaviva an ad- 
 mirable perfomance ; but while Almaviva's gaiety was 
 purely natural, one saw that Octave's was a matter of 
 habit rather than impulse, and that the words he says 
 of himself, « Ma gaiete n'est qu'un masque. Mon coeur 
 est plus vieux qu'elle, » were true. The swing of en- 
 joyment with which he delivered the speech in praise 
 of wine in the second act was real, but it was the deli- 
 berate expression of a feeling deliberately sought. Even 
 when he was most carried away by the emotion he had 
 roused in himself, and ended a poetical address to the 
 bottle with « Je ne puis vous le cacher ! Elle a failli 
 passer toute entiere sur mes Idvres dans la chaleur de 
 son premier baiser, » there was a savour of bitter irony 
 in his utterance. All through the part, as well at his 
 wildest as at his most cynical moments, one felt that 
 Octave's reckless existence was overshadowed by the 
 thought of what he might have been. His grief for the 
 death of Celio, the friend on whom all the best feelings 
 of his nature are centred, and who inevitably suspects 
 him of treachery at the moment of his death, was infi- 
 nitely saddening; and the pitying contempt with which 
 he rejected Marianne's proffered love was crushing in 
 its coldness and impassiveness. 
 
 An impersonation equally perfect of another kind of 
 rake was given by M. Bressant as Don Fabrice in 
 UAventuriere. "Here the trials and struggles of the 
 man's early life have resulted in a sombre gravity ins- 
 tead of a wild gaiety. His feelings are constantly re- 
 
 3 
 
34 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 pressed beneath an aspect of stern stillness, but he who 
 looks can see that the mind within is restless, though 
 the features are forbidden to betray it. To convey this 
 impression, as M. Bressant undoubtedly did convey it, 
 is perhaps more difficult than to suggest the passion 
 that works beneath Octave's antic humour. 
 
 M. Bressant has not only been a fine actor himself : 
 he has been the cause of fine acting in others. Some of 
 the best players now at the Francais have been his 
 pupils, and his name will be remembered with honour 
 as long as the stage of the Comedie exists. 
 
 M"** CROIZETTE. 
 
 M"® Croizette, who first studied her art in M. Bres- 
 sant's class at the Conservatoire, made her first appea- 
 rance at the Theatre Frangais, in the Verre d^Eau in 
 1870. Since that time she has appeared in various 
 parts of different calibre, but it was only three years 
 later that she found a good opportunity for showing 
 how great a talent she possessed. The piece which 
 furnished this occasion was not of any great impor- 
 tance ; it was a clever and graceful comedy in one act, 
 by Meilhac and Halevy, called VEte de la Saint- 
 Martin. The piece turned upon a young wife gradually 
 making her way to the heart of her husband's uncle, 
 to whom she presented herself in the character of a 
 reader. The curtain rose and fell to her reading out 
 the same passage in 'Les Trois Mousquetaires.' The 
 action, meanwhile, was occupied with the yielding of 
 the uncle to her fascination, which indeed she carried 
 
m"« croizette. 85 
 
 too far, as, ignorant that she was his nephew's wife, 
 he suddenly proposed to her himself. Of course all was 
 happily arranged at the end of the piece, which depen- 
 ded for its success less upon its skilful writing than 
 the admirable playing of M. Thiron and M"® Croizette. 
 The actress had here no scope for the passion which 
 she has since shown herself capable of commanding, 
 but there was a singular charm in the airs and graces 
 with which she dazzled the uncle. There was nothing 
 very much in the part, but it was rendered with such 
 truth, and there was something so striking in the 
 actress's peculiar irregular beauty, that the audience 
 were as completely fascinated as the uncle. A greater 
 success in one sense was made by M"® Croizette's perfor- 
 mance of M""® de Chelles in Le Sphinx. But the success 
 here was due to the discussion which naturally follow- 
 ed the hideously realistic rendering of the death-scene. 
 The thing was done with wonderful art and force, but 
 it was a thing which would have been better left un- 
 done. The representation of merely physical horrors 
 upon the stage is, from every point of view, unadvisable. 
 If a death-scene is to be represented, the player should 
 indicate the mental rather than the bodily disturbance 
 of the sufferer. His face may present the struggle 
 which he makes with his agony, and so inspire terror 
 or pity in his audience ; but when he descends to mere 
 contortions of the visage and writhings of the limbs he 
 will be in danger of suggesting nothing but disgust. 
 Besides, once the attempt is made to represent the hi- 
 deous side of life or death upon the stage with absolute 
 accuracy, the representation should, to be artistic, be 
 carried out in full detail. This is obviously impossible 
 to the most daring player, and the result is that **rea- 
 listic" scenes of death or murder are not only revolting 
 but also untrue. However, M"*" Croizette's death-scene 
 
36 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 was talked about, and attracted general attention to her 
 and since the performance of Le Sphinx she has been 
 recognised definitely as one of the leading actresses at 
 the Francais. She has been seen perhaps at her best in 
 Dumas's Le Demi-Monde and UEtrangere. In the 
 former she represented Susanne D'Ange, a scheming 
 woman "whose hand is against everyone, with a remark- 
 able force. There was a fire in her passion, a depth 
 in her despair, which commanded the spectator's sym- 
 pathy in spite of himself. In L'Etrangere she plays 
 the wife of the well born ruffian, De Septmonts, and in 
 the scene where she turns upon him and crushes him 
 with well-merited reproaches the actress reaches a 
 high level of passion and art. Her voice and face quiver 
 with shame and scorn, and in the midst of her excite- 
 ment she preserves an air of command which takes 
 away all fear that de Septmonts will carry out his mo- 
 mentary intention of striking her. It may be objected 
 that this imposing presence might not be natural to 
 the daughter of old Mauriceau, and the only answer 
 that can be found is that it seems to be natural to 
 M"^ Croizette. 
 
 M"^ Croizette has been less fortunate in the plays of 
 Musset than in those of Dumas ; she seems able to con- 
 ceive and to render a broadly marked character with 
 great force, but it is the force of a sudden blow, not of 
 the delicate perception and patient labour which are 
 necessary to the interpretation of every line that Musset 
 wrote. 
 
M. FEBVRE. 37 
 
 M. FEBVRE. 
 
 M. Frederic Febvre, whose first dramatic appea- 
 rances were made at Havre, went from theatre to 
 theatre for some time in Paris, until he made his first 
 successes at the Odeon, of which the most notable was 
 his representation of Celestin in the Testament de 
 Cesar Girardot. But he obtained later a more complete 
 success at the Vaudeville, whence several years ago he 
 went to the Com^die Frangaise, of which he became a 
 societaire in less than a year. M. Febvre, has the na- 
 tural advantages of a good presence and a resonant 
 voice; unlike most members of the Comedie Frangaise, 
 he had, at the early part of his career, no better training 
 than can be got from practice on the stage and 
 self teaching. He has in this way learnt the science 
 of the stage, as far as gesture and movement go, 
 to perfection; and he excels in the art of wearing 
 the outward appearance in face and costume of what- 
 ever personage he represents. He is capable of assuming 
 something of the repose and dignity of manner of which 
 we have spoken as belonging peculiarly to M. Bressant, 
 and he is no doubt the actor at the Francais to whom 
 M. Bressant's heavier parts naturally descend. One of 
 these, St. Geran, in Une Chatne, M. Febvre played 
 with marked success a year or two ago, giving to the 
 figure of the retired admiral an excellent air of dignity 
 and command. One of M. Febvre's best parts has been 
 that of De Turgy, which he filled when Julie was first 
 produced. It is no easy task to invest the figure of a 
 middle-aged man who is the hero of an illicit passion 
 with interest. M. Febvre succeeded, however, in giving 
 to this character, for whom, when one reads the play 
 
38 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 one can have little liking or respect, a certain air of 
 chivalry which for the moment imposed upon one's 
 judgment. The passion of the character is throughout 
 repressed, and for that reason the actor was seen at his 
 hest in representing it. For, although M. Febvre's 
 experience and perceptions prevent him from failing 
 in any character he undertakes, the one striking defect 
 of his acting interferes with his success in parts where 
 anything like a flow of passionate utterance is required. 
 This defect, which an early course at the Conservatoire 
 would probably have removed, but which is now past 
 curing, is an indistinctness of speech which makes it 
 difficult even for French ears at times to hear what he 
 says. But for this fault M. Febvre's impersonation 
 of the American Clarkson in UEtrangere would be 
 throughout admirable. The actor's dress, face, and 
 manner in this part are alike true to nature ; and much 
 of the success of tl^e last act is due to M. Febvre's 
 playing in the scene with De Septmonts. As he listens 
 to the Duke's infamous propositions, his manner grows 
 gradually more and more intent, and his expression 
 more and more scornful, until at last he almost breaks 
 through his habitual coolness to tell De Septmonts what 
 a scoundrel he thinks him. 
 
 One of M. Febvre's most satisfactory performances 
 was that of the hero of VAmi Fritz in which he toned 
 down with singular skill the repulsive quality which 
 as a matter of fact belongs to the character. 
 
M^l® REICHEMBERG. 39 
 
 W REICHEMBERe^. 
 
 There is a type of character which, being peculiar 
 to the French stage, is always called by its French 
 description, Vingenue. This kind of young woman is 
 capable of being horribly tiresome. She has been work- 
 ed to death by fourth rate dramatists. She appears 
 with an apron of clear and spotless muslin, with her 
 hair arranged in a childish fashion, with a bouquet in 
 her hand, and with her arms bare. Her employment is 
 to difiuse brightness and purity around her. She finds 
 her mother bathed in tears, plunged in sombre 
 thoughts and presentiments ; she skips up to her 
 with aggravating childishness, « Pourquoi pleures- 
 tu, maman? Regarde done ces jolies fleurs, » she says, 
 and the mother, observing that one must not trouble 
 this young life with the secrets that burden her, gives 
 a profound sigh, wipes away her tears, and assumes a 
 terrible smile of gaiety. She meets a villain, bent on 
 atrocious crime, and, by saying « Good-day » to him, 
 convinces him of the error of his ways, and fills him 
 with repentance. The most shameless libertines are 
 abashed when she remarks that it is a fine day. One 
 has grown so tired of the ingenue and her stereotyped 
 attributes that even when the character is handled by 
 first-rate playwrights there is danger of its producing 
 an irritating effect. There are actresses whose gifts and 
 accomplishments enable them to avoid this danger, and 
 among them M"^ Reichemberg holds a high place. 
 With a bearing that has a natural quality of distinction, 
 and the grace that fine training gives, a voice that is 
 tender and penetrating, and can take infantine tones 
 without being exaggerated or ridiculous, M"® Reichem- 
 
40 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 berg possesses a distinct power of personation, and can 
 be much more than merely young and artless. Her 
 Agnes, in VEcoledes Femmes^ is a charming piece of 
 puritanism ; her usual light manner is put aside ; she 
 is delightfully stiff, bewitchingly prudish. Her Rosette 
 in On ne hadine pas avec V amour, is as tender as her 
 Agnes is restrained. She follows every movement of 
 the young Seigneur Perdican with eyes that are devout 
 in their affection ; by the intensity of her innocent love 
 she unfolds to her audience the passionate story which 
 Musset reveals as if by a flash of lightning. At the 
 moment when she relinquishes the hope of her mar- 
 riage, her grief is so deep, so fixed, so penetrating, 
 that her death, which is the sudden catastrophe of the 
 play, seems its only possible conclusion. 
 
 InLajoiefaitpeur, where M"® Reichemberg plays 
 the daughter of the house, first mourning her brother's 
 death, then rejoicing in his return, all the actress's 
 most winning qualities are displayed. The change 
 from tender dejection to the play of happiness more 
 natural to her youth and disposition is given with 
 exquisite skill. Her languid steps become light, her 
 voice takes a clearer ring; afraid of startling her 
 mother by too sudden a joy, she seeks to command her 
 growing smiles, but her movements betray her ; she 
 seems to float in happiness like a butterfly fluttering 
 from darkness into sunshine. There is a quality of 
 truth and tenderness in her acting which makes the 
 expression of her new joy as touching as that of her 
 grief at first. 
 
M. THIRON. 41 
 
 M. THIRON. 
 
 M. Thiron fulfils the province of playing old men, 
 uncles, fathers, and would-be lovers with singular 
 success. In comedy of all times and nations, from 
 Terence to Dumas, there is a certain stereotyped air 
 about the Angry old man who becomes softened at the 
 sight of his young relations' trouble or happiness ; the 
 soft-hearted old man who becomes angry at their per- 
 versity ; the cheerful old man who has always a bag of 
 gold ready for a scapegrace young dog of a nephew ; 
 and the amorous old man who always resigns his suit 
 with a half laugh and half-sigh when he finds that the 
 same young dog is his rival. It is M. Thiron's merit 
 to keep out of sight the strings which pull these pup- 
 pets, as it is M"^ Reichemberg's to give individuality 
 to the ingenues whom she represents. M. Thiron's per- 
 fomance of the old gentleman in L^Ete de la Saint- 
 Martin, of which play we have already spoken, was 
 an admirable instance of fine perception and equally 
 fine execution. He saved the tolerably well-worn situa- 
 tion of an old man falling more and more in love with 
 a young girl from any touch of commonplace ; he even 
 raised the representation to pathos not less when the 
 progress of his autumn passion was being observed 
 than when his goodness of heart asserted itself in for- 
 giveness of the young couple who had in all innocence 
 deceived him and in a renunciation of all but a fatherly 
 love. And with a rare art the pathos was subdued 
 throughout to that gentleness which is becoming to 
 comedy ; its sadness was ncr greater than that caused 
 by a cloud passing for a moment across the sun. The 
 samelighthandlingisyetmorevaluableinX'^^ran^^Vg, 
 
42 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 where M. Thiron has to fill in Mauriceau a part writ- 
 ten with a more incisive and heavier pen than that of 
 MM. Meilhac and Halevy. In a play of which the inci- 
 dents are saved from appearing impossible as much by 
 the actor's skill as by the author's knowledge of stage 
 requirements, in which one of the least dishonest and 
 morally inverted characters is the vihrion, whom the 
 author denounces as a pestilent vermin to be removed 
 at the right time by Providence (under the kind super- 
 intendence of M. Alexandre Dumas), Mauriceau figures 
 as a retired trader who, for the sake of this vibrion's 
 title, has sold his daughter to him, well knowing his 
 character. But there are certain things which even 
 Mauriceau's love for the noblesse cannot induce him 
 to support^ and at a crisis he offers himself as the 
 second of his son-in-law's challenger, who is also his 
 daughter's lover. The position is no doubt distressing; 
 but knowing that Mauriceau brought about the mar- 
 riage, with his eyes wide open, one would not perhaps 
 pity him much but for the delicate and forcible acting 
 of M. Thiron, who, though he represents Mauriceau 
 throughout as nothing more or less than a bon bour- 
 geois, more than passably stupid in all things outside 
 his business, succeeds at this point in carrying his 
 audience into complete sympathy with the suffering 
 for which he has himself to thank. 
 
 M. Thiron's representation of Van Buck, the affec- 
 tionate opinionated choleric uncle, in Musset's II ne 
 fautjurer de rien, is in its way perfect. He makes you 
 feel the regard which the nephew has for him even 
 while he is vexed and amused at his tyrannical obs- 
 tinacy. 
 
 The actor's weak point is discovered when he at- 
 tempts a part where a high-bred dignity of demeanour 
 and speech is needed ; and for this reason his perfor- 
 
M. COQUELIN 48 
 
 mance of the Marquis in Le Demi Monde was not 
 satisfactory ; but in the lamented absence of M. Bres- 
 sant, the part was perhaps most safely entrusted to 
 M. Thiron, who is at least certain of doing every- 
 thing he undertakes with discretion. On the other hand 
 M. Thiron' s performance of the vulgar Baron in Les 
 Fourchamhault is altogether admirable. 
 
 M. COQUELIN. 
 
 It would be unjust to say that M. Coquelin is unri- 
 valled in a certain line of parts, for the expression 
 would not give an adequate idea of the variety displayed 
 by an actor who can command laughter with broad 
 farce, draw tears by deep pathos, and handle with a 
 fine skill such disagreeable figures in comedy as Don 
 Annibal in UAventuriere, or the Due de Septmonts in 
 DEtrangere. M. Coquelin was a pupil of M. Regnier, 
 to many of whose parts he has succeeded, and he 
 could hardly have had a better master ; but M. Coque- 
 lin is in this sense a born comedian, that it is difficult 
 to imagine his ever having followed any career but 
 that of an actor. No one could look at his face and not 
 be struck by its intense humour and mobility; and, 
 according to report, it was an amateur performance at 
 Boulogne, where M. Coquelin began life not as an 
 actor, that opened to him the course he has success- 
 fully pursued. 
 
 The extraordinary comic powers of M. Coquelin's 
 face and voice, his untiring energy, and complete appre- 
 ciation of pure fun, are seen unadulterated in the lying 
 
44 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 valets of classical comedy, unreal creatures who, in 
 M. Coquelin's hands, assume a reality that the most 
 imaginative reader can hardly give to them. It is an 
 old saying that humour and sadness are nearly allied 
 and it often happens that actors with M. Coquelin's 
 capacity for catching the essence of humour and com- 
 municating it to an audience are gifted also with a 
 feeling for the deeper and more tender aspects of cha- 
 racter. It is not always the case, however, that they 
 can convey their tears as well as they can their laughter 
 from the stage to the spectators ; and one need not go 
 hack toListon for instances of players who, filled them- 
 selves with pathetic impulses, cannot excite the liste- 
 ning crowd to anything but amusement. M. Coquelin, 
 however, can impress an audience with sadness as 
 well as with mirth. This power is seen in a marked 
 degree when he plays G-ringoire in the piece of that 
 name. HereM. Coquelin represents an ugly, wretched- 
 looking being, whose occupation is professedly that of 
 a kind of buffoon, but who has a poet's instincts and 
 a poet's heart. This strange figure has a curious fasci- 
 nation ; he attracts the attention at first by his very 
 oddness, and by some hardly expressed indication that 
 he is not quite what he seems at first sight ; then 
 suddenly he reveals himself and shows you the noble 
 feeling beneath his quaint appearance. In a speech of 
 some length, he describes what he imagines, or rather 
 what he feels, a poet to be ; as he speaks, the actor's 
 voice rings with a new tenderness, his face takes a 
 new expression of mingled exultation and sadness; a 
 sense of beauty and of fiery passion pierces through 
 the ungainly maskwhich nature and circumstance have 
 compelled the unknown poet to wear. 
 
 A part of greater length than Gringoire, composed 
 diversely of tragic and comic feelings, was attempted 
 
M. COQUELIN. 45 
 
 by M. Coquelin in Taharin, and it was perhaps more 
 the fault of the author than the actor that the play had 
 no permanent success. The most striking scene in the 
 piece was the last, in which Tabarin, while going 
 through his buffooneries in the play within the play, 
 learns that his wife, a beautiful actress, who is the 
 curse and the idol of his life, has run away with a 
 young student. His despair is terrible; the mimic 
 audience, taking it for part of the show, applaud voci- 
 ferously for a time, but presently get wearied, and hiss. 
 Then Tabarin turns on them, and crushes them with 
 his scorn. « Is a player, » he cries, « to have no human 
 feelings ? Is he the mere toy ot a senseless crowd ? What 
 will you command me ? Shall I cry ; shall I dance ; shall 
 I laugh? « And he does laugh, madly and bitterly — 
 a laugh that is discordant with despair. The public is 
 exasperated; a riot seems imminent, when the wife 
 suddenly comes back, and Tabarin, resuming his far- 
 cical manner, turns again on the audience, and asks 
 them how they could be such fools as not to see that 
 he was playing a joke on them. The rapid changes from 
 one form of complicated excitement to another were 
 given at this point with force and with an absolute air 
 of nature by the actor, who, in other parts of the play 
 was less successful, perhaps because less well fitted 
 with the part. 
 
 M. Coquelin's pathetic powers are seen with less 
 disadvantage to counterbalance them in Manuel's pretty 
 piece called Les Ouvriers. When the young artisan 
 Marcel, in despair at the apparently hopeless misery 
 of those he loves, sits down and weeps, it is difficult to 
 remain unmoved. As the Due de Septmonts in V Etr an- 
 ger e M. Coquelin performs the difficult task of repre- 
 senting a man whose nature is so corrupt and ruffianly 
 that he has lost all sense even of the honour current 
 
4C THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 among thieves, but is cased in all the inherited tradi- 
 tions of good society. He has a contented composure, 
 an unassertive insolence, that are kept up from beginn- 
 ing to end. In the last scene, Clarkson, the American, 
 who has undertaken to be his second in a duel, on 
 hearing the facts of the case, denounces the Duke in 
 no measured terms as a rogue and a ruffian. The 
 vacuous astonishment with which the Duke listens 
 and says, struggling against the dumbness of amaze- 
 ment, « C'est — c'est k moique vous parlez ? « is almost 
 sublime. 
 
 M. Coquelin's besetting sin is a tendency to exagge- 
 ration. It is the danger no doubt of his great powers in 
 broad fun that they sometimes tempt him to turn fine 
 comedy into mere farce. This was seen when he took 
 M. Regnier's old part of Balandard theavoue in Scribe's 
 Une chatne. While the play went on, it was impossible 
 not to laugh ; but the amusement did not extend over 
 one's after reflections. By their light one saw the mis- 
 take which the actor had made, and that the set of 
 people represented by Scribe would never have given 
 their confidence to such an extravagant being as 
 M. Coquelin made of Balandard. 
 
 M"« JOUASSAIN. 
 
 M"^ Jouassain, while yet quite young, employed 
 herselfin the representation, in which she is unrivalled 
 of old ladies. It requires, one would think, a greater 
 devotion to art to play with admirable purpose and 
 finish part after part which is the object of a pleasant 
 
mU<» jouassain. 47 
 
 ridicule than it does to figure as the queen of tragedy 
 or the heroine of intrigue. M"^ Jouassain, however, 
 has always approached her task with complete readi- 
 ness, and by her singular intelligence and power of 
 execution has both made for herself an unique reputation 
 and gained from her audiences the same goodwill and 
 appreciation which she has brought to the rendering 
 of every part she has undertaken. This actress has a 
 certain attractive quaintness of manner which inspires 
 a liking in the spectator for the old women whom she 
 presents to him, even when there is nothing particu- 
 larly attractive in their character. 
 
 Most people know how charming an old lady in pri- 
 vate life can be when with the dignity of years she 
 preserves a youthful power of sympathy. When M"° 
 Jouassain has such a character as this to deal with, 
 she gives it its full value, and thus her performance of 
 Oelio's mother in Les Caprices de Marianne, was, in 
 spite of her brief appearance, a thing which dwelt upon 
 the memory. Her aspect, her movements, the tone of 
 her voice, had in them a kindness and sadness which 
 touched the heart. 
 
 In contrast to this was M"® Jouassain's performance 
 of M™® Pluche in On ne badinepas avec V amour. Here 
 the actress did not flinch from giving due emphasis to 
 the disagreeable nature of the woman whom she had to 
 portray, while yet there was some indefinable quality 
 in her acting that prevented one from entertaining any 
 unkind recollection of the stiff, ridiculous duenua. 
 
 The two parts of which we have spoken are Musset^s 
 creations ; but M"® Jouassain's excellence of style and 
 diction are seen to equal advantage in the comedies of 
 Molidre. 
 
48 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 M. BARRE. — M. GARRAUD. — M. BOUCHER. 
 
 M. Barre, who a fewyears ago was elected a societaire 
 of the Francais, trod many stages before he arrived at 
 thatof the Odeon, whence he passed to the Francais, 
 where twenty years ago he made his first appearance 
 as Pierrot in Don Juan. Since that time his career has 
 been one of unfailing industry directed by considerable 
 intelligence. His talent has none of the brilliant quali- 
 ties which can ensure a striking success, but he has 
 never neglected or failed to do justice to any part with 
 which he has been intrusted. He has played in his time 
 many parts which are none the less important for their 
 having no very salient points. To none of them has he 
 ever tried to give spurious prominence, and he has 
 never failed to give to any of them its due weight. After 
 one has seen a piece played with finish and complete- 
 ness, in which he has taken a part, his name does not 
 perhaps rise immediately in one's mind ; but after re- 
 flection always shows how valuable his careful, sen- 
 sible, and unobtrusive art has been. When the Comedie 
 was over in London, M. Barre filled several parts, 
 which are now usually given to M. Thiron, and filled 
 them with excellent success. His services have been of 
 more worth to the theatre than those of some actors, 
 who, with more brilliancy, cannot be so surely relied 
 on ; and his election as a societaire was a becoming and 
 graceful recognition of what he has done in a long 
 career of sincere devotion to his art. 
 
 M. Garraud belongs in a sense to the same category 
 as M. Barre — that is, he is an eminently useful actor, 
 one who has at a need taken the place of M. Delaunay 
 and M. Bressant. But with the same willingness to 
 
MM. BARRE, GARRAUD, BOUCHER. 49 
 
 give what is in him that marks M. Barre, he has less 
 to give. There is a certain heaviness in his method, 
 which, in many small parts, is of little importance, 
 but in larger ones tells much against the player's good 
 intentions. M. Garraudhas little of M. Barre's discre- 
 tion in handling a part : he seems always anxious to 
 prove to his audience that he understands his author's 
 meaning ; and his anxiety leads him to give an undue 
 emphasis to what he does. He seems so fearful lest 
 anyone should fail to perceive his intelligence and skill 
 that he ends in acting as a kind of unnecessary chorus 
 to himself. He is, however, in respect of the care which 
 he gives to all his undertakings, an actor whom the 
 company could ill afford to lose. 
 
 M. Boucher is an actor who, some few years ago, 
 was ayoung man of singular promise ; and such he has 
 remained ever since. With every natural gift, with 
 excellent training, with a knowledge of how to move 
 well and how to speak well, both in verse and prose, he 
 has never chosen to improve his great opportunities. 
 He has neglected the one thing needful — work ; and 
 the consequence is that, while certain advantages which 
 he at first had are naturally on the wane, he has gained 
 nothing to make up for their decrease. A certain cons- 
 traint and want of life in his acting might some while 
 ago have been taken to be a result of timidity or im- 
 perfect experience, which would in time be overcome 
 by natural talent and study; seeing that these qualities 
 exist to precisely the same extent in the actor's perfor- 
 mances now, one can hardly hope to see them removed. 
 M. Boucher a few years ago was the only very young 
 actor of any promise at the Francais ; if he does not 
 fulfil the hopes formely entertained of him, it will be 
 his own fault. 
 
50 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 M. MAUBANT. 
 
 M. Maubant is the very incarnation of classical 
 drama. In 1841 he made his first appearance at the 
 Francais, as Achilles, in Iphigenie. He went after this 
 to the Odeon for some time, and having returned to 
 the Francais in 1845 he was elected a. societaire in 1852. 
 M. Maubant has every quality that is requisite for the 
 interpretation of the parts with which his name is asso- 
 ciated. His fine presence, telling voice, and dignified 
 gesture, give a weight that avoids oppression to the 
 severe figures of tragedy which he is generally called 
 on to represent. He is perhaps wanting in creative 
 power, but the fathers of classical drama do not give 
 much scope for anything beyond traditional excellence. 
 M. Maubant ^s diction and power of repose are admi- 
 rable in such parts as that of Thes^e in Pkedre ; and 
 he is no less successful in the peres nobles of classical 
 comedy. His representation of the father in Le Menteur 
 is a singularly dignified and finished performance ; and 
 in a piece of the modern school, M. Manuel's Les 
 Ouvriers, he presents the figure of a hard man of busi- 
 ness troubled by a secret remorse with striking force. 
 One of M. Maubant's finest characters is that of Char- 
 lemagne, in La Fille de Roland. To this he gave an 
 aspect of commanding yet sorrowful majesty; his face 
 his voice, his gestures, seemed charged with the 
 memory of past glory and with the expectation 
 of death. 
 
MM. PRUDHON, LAROCHE. 51 
 
 M. PRUDHON. — M. LAROCHE. 
 
 M. Prudhon, in spite of having been a pupil in 
 M. Regnier's class at the Conservatoire, and having 
 played at the Francais ever since 1865, is one of the 
 least competent actors whom one can hope to see. His 
 singular stiffness and ungracious aspect one could more 
 easily get over if they were not accompanied by an 
 obtrusive air of self-importance and confidence. M. Pru- 
 dhon has seldom played a part of the first rank ; he is 
 generally cast for secondary characters which, for 
 some unexplained reason, are usually high-bred gent- 
 lemen. To these personages M. Prudhon imparts a 
 marvellous deal of offence ; the dull heaviness of his 
 face and bearing is carried on in his voice; he is stu- 
 pidly familiar where he should be attractively easy, 
 and he delivers speeches of graceful gallantry so that 
 they sound like ill-directed insolences. And through 
 all that he does he preserves the injured air of a man 
 who was made for better things. 
 
 M. Laroche, an actor of considerable talent and 
 versatility, who constantly improves, began his career 
 in 1 862 at the Frangais , which he left for the Vaudeville 
 the Odeon, and the Gaiete, to return to it in 1870. He 
 has played such parts as Nero in Britannicus, and 
 Alceste in the Misanthrope, not with any striking 
 success, but with a becoming avoidance of failure. As 
 Maurice de Saxe in Adrienne Lecouvreur, an old part 
 of M. Bressant's, which he played a year or two ago 
 with M"^ Favart. he made a great advance upon what 
 he had done before. Grace of manner and diction he 
 has always had, but here he displayed a passion and 
 
52 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 dignity which took one by surprise. His last scene 
 with Adrienne, where, by a violent effort of his own 
 will, he commands hers, so as to drag her for a brief 
 moment out of the bewildering influence of the poison 
 that has seized her, was full of intensity. He made a 
 greater success than this as Ragenhardt, the Saxon 
 captive, in La Fille de Roland. To this cabined war- 
 rior's wild and gloomy figure he gave a singular reality 
 and his speech of defiance had all the nobility of an 
 untamed spirit struggling with its bonds. About his 
 first appearance in this part, M. Mortier, the clever 
 Monsieur de L'Orchestre of the Figaro, invented an 
 amusing anecdote. At the last moment before the cur- 
 tain went up, it was discovered that the Saxon soldier's 
 long flaxen wig was missing. Every one was in despair. 
 Suddenly the stage manager was inspired. « Fetch the 
 wig which M"® Croizette wore as Baronette, « he cried 
 and every one breathed again as the cocotte's tresses 
 were fastened under the warrior's helmet. M. Laroche 
 frequently appears in the part of a light-hearted and 
 well-bred young man. He moves well and speaks well 
 but he wants gaiety, and would succeed better if he 
 could rid himself of a crooked and sickly smile which 
 he employs to suggest it. 
 
 M""* TREBELLI. 
 
 ' There are those who think that the operatic differs 
 so far from the ordinary stage that no singer ought to 
 be called, in the true sense of the word, an actor. Ac- 
 complished comedians, both of this and ot the last 
 
M»« TREBELLI. 53 
 
 generation, have been heard to say, that any singer of 
 moderate intelligence can persuade the public he is a 
 fine actor, while he is really nothing of the sort ; that 
 with the assistance of the music it is easy enough to 
 make such imposing gestures, and to walk the stage 
 with such an imposing air, as to convince the specta- 
 tors that they are witnessing an admirable dramatic 
 performance, while in fact they are looking at the 
 empty movements of a puppet. No doubt there is a dif- 
 ference between operatic and ordinary acting ; the emo- 
 tions in opera are expressed more slowly than in a play ; 
 the feeling which the actor exhibits in a few fiery 
 words, the singer is often compelled to spread over 
 several bars of music; and this difi'erence, it would 
 seem, is not altogether advantageous to the singer. If 
 from the fact that the singer's changes of expression 
 and action are less rapid than the player's, it results 
 that there is a less continuous strain upon his resources, 
 it follows also that the spectator has fuller opportuni- 
 ties of observing any defect in the dramatic interpreta- 
 tion. Considering how many operas there are which 
 depend as much upon acting as upon singing for their 
 full success, and how many singers there have been 
 who have owed their reputation as much to dramatic 
 as to musical force, it might seem idle to insist upon 
 the fact that operatic singers may lay claim to the 
 highest consideration as actors. This however, has been 
 often denied by persons of some authority in dramatic 
 matters, and it has therefore seemed worth while to say 
 these few words, by way of preface to considering the 
 performances of two distinguished singers from a 
 purely dramatic point of view. There are other operatic 
 singers who also possess great dramatic excellence, 
 but our concern is with French players only ; and it 
 will hardly be doubted that M"' Trebelli and M. Faure 
 
54 , THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 are the finest French representatives of lyrical drama 
 who are now heard in London. 
 
 Both M""^ Trebelli and M. Fan re have carried the 
 faculty of impersonation to something near perfection. 
 Both have the power of marking distinctly every cha- 
 racter they undertake, with but little assistance from 
 the art of disguise. M""^ Trebelli's range of characters 
 is necessarily more limited than M. Faure's, and 
 between the boy's parts which she usually plays there 
 is a kind of family resemblance which must add 
 to the difficulty of giving, as she does, to each one 
 a distinct individuality. MaffioOrsini, Siebel, Urbano, 
 Arsace are every one shown to us as real and living 
 persons, whose different characters are indicated, not 
 only by skilful touches of detailed execution, but by 
 some intangible quality in the very aspect of the actress 
 as she comes upon the stage. The tenderness and 
 poetry of a boyish love have never been better re- 
 presented than in M"*® Trebelli's Siebel; and the 
 sentiment is well relieved by the gaiety conveyed by 
 means of by-play, in the early part of the Kermesse 
 scene, and the joyousness expressed in the garden 
 scene, at finding that holy water breaks the evil spell 
 laid on the flowers. The actress's Urbano, in the Hu- 
 guenots^ is as perfect a representation of the purely 
 gay and somewhat mischievous side of boyhood as her 
 Siebel in Faust is of its more impassioned aspect. 
 There is a careless merriment in every gesture, every 
 look of the brilliant page, who, with all his laughing 
 impudence, preserves from first to last the courtly gen- 
 tleness that should belong to a queen's attendant. Maffio 
 Orsini, in Lucrezia Borgia ^ is so like in character to 
 Urbano that it is difficult to define the difierence bet- 
 ween the two persons indicated by the actress. But a 
 difference is undoubtedly shown, and it consists, per- 
 
Mine TREBELLI. 55 
 
 haps, in the greater freedom which Orsini's position 
 gives him. Arsace, again, in Semiramide^ is apart 
 from all of these characters. To him are given the fire 
 of a young warrior flushed with triumph, the dignity 
 of a prince loaded with honours. And here there is a 
 tragic element that is not found in the other characters 
 we have spoken of. The amazement, the shame, the 
 love, full of pity and forgiveness, which succeed each 
 other or meet together in Arsace's mind during the 
 great scene with Semiramide, are rendered by the 
 actress with the utmost force ; and the defiance of the 
 villainous Assur, in the earlier part of the opera, raises 
 the emotions of suspicion and hatred to grandeur. 
 Cherubino is considered, from a dramatic point of 
 view, one of M'"^ Trebelli's finest assumptions. A 
 singular charm is given to the petulant tricks of 
 the spoilt boy ; and the awkwardness with which he 
 wears his woman's disguise is indicated with a won- 
 derfully light and truthful touch. 
 
 ]y[rae Xrebelli is no less successful when she has 
 to play women's parts. Her Azucena in the Trovatore 
 has long been noted for its wild and penetrating pathos; 
 and her performance of Zerlina in Don Giovanniis the 
 perfection of rustic coquetry. 
 
56 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 M. FAURE. 
 
 It is a rare thing to find the perfect cultivation of 
 two arts allied in one exponent of the musician's and 
 the playwright's thoughts. Ronconi, according to all 
 accoants, made up by the power of his acting for defi- 
 ciencies in the vocal part of his performances ; Giuglini, 
 with a voice of wonderful sweetness and a perfect me- 
 thod, possessed a mind which could receive no ideas 
 on the subject of acting; Signer Mario, who began by 
 being a poor actor, ended by becoming one of consum- 
 mate skill. Now that he has retired, there are few 
 operatic singers on the London stage who both sing 
 and act with any marked merit, and there are certainly 
 none who equal M. Faure in excellence. Of M. 
 Faure's singing it is not our present province to speak, 
 but we have little hesitation in asserting that he is 
 one of the most varied as also one of the strongest 
 actors of the present day. M. Faure has the natural 
 advantage of a fine presence, but there are many actors 
 who have been treated with equal kindness in this 
 respect by the great goddess Chance, and have failed 
 to make a proper use of that kindness. This actor is 
 the only one who has that majestic bearing, that air 
 of dignity inseparable from himself which distinguished 
 M. Bressant in every part he undertook. M. Bressant, 
 however, with all his merits, of which we have before 
 tried to make some recognition, was apt to rely too 
 much upon the mere force of his presence. He seemed 
 to know that if from fatigue or disinclination he wished 
 to slur over any portion of his part he might safely do 
 so, trusting to his grand manner to convince his au- 
 
M. FAURE. 57 
 
 dience that his words and actions had been admirable. 
 M. Faure might easily enough rely in like manner 
 upon his personal influence to carry him through any 
 ungrateful or tiresome piece of work; but he is too 
 complete an actor to do so. Of whatever personage he 
 is representing he never forgets the characteristics ; he 
 never for a moment puts forward the man to supply 
 the deficiency of the actor. And to the variety of perso- 
 nages to whom he can give a distinct life it would be 
 difficult to put a limit. One who can play Pietro in the 
 Etoile du Nord and Figaro in Le Nozze with equal 
 merit, though not from the nature of the parts with 
 an equally striking appeal to an audience, is obviously 
 no ordinary actor. 
 
 Pietro is in this way the most difficult in M. Faure's 
 long list of successful parts that to produce the desired 
 efiect upon the spectators the actor must be at once 
 brutal and royal, degraded and noble. He must make 
 you respect a man who in a moment of mad passion 
 threatens a woman with uplifted hand, and who, 
 while waiting an event upon which his life and the 
 welfare of a vast nation depend, seeks distraction, not 
 as Hamlet did while expecting the ghost, in trivial 
 talk, raised to importance by its bitter irony, but in a 
 gross and deliberate bout of drunkenness. Scribe, who 
 wrote the book of the opera, knew well what a drama- 
 tic efiect might be got from violent contrasts ; and knew 
 no doubt how striking, in the hands of an intelligent 
 actor, might be the Czar's sudden recovery by an efibrt 
 of will from his drunken fit and subsequent avowal of 
 his identity to the soldiery, who, occupied with plots 
 for his murder, can find nothing to do but to fall on 
 their knees with blind and absolute devotion when he 
 reveals himself. But Scribe can hardly have foreseen 
 the strength and delicacy which M. Faure brings to 
 
58 THE- MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 the interpretation of this scene, as to that of the whole 
 character. Through every phase of sullen wrath or 
 unbridled fury in the earlier scenes, M. Faure, while 
 he gives full force to the animal side of Peter, gives 
 also and constantly an impression of nobility. In the 
 tent scene, though he represents every stage of increa- 
 sing drunkenness with absolute fidelity, he is never 
 without dignity ; and when he commands his senses to 
 return to him one feels as much pity for him as for 
 the devoted girl whom he thinks he has, in his intoxi- 
 cation, doomed to death. His revelation of himself to 
 the disaffected troops which immediately follows this 
 is the type of grandeur and courage, as his lament for 
 Catherine, in the last act, is the essence of tenderness. 
 Mephistopheles is the part in which, perhaps, 
 M. Faure is best known and most popular; and his 
 acting of it is, in this respect, more remarkable than 
 that of Pietro, that in the one case he raises Scribe's 
 hero from the regions of startling melodrama to those 
 of actual and commanding life : in the other he triumphs 
 over the blunders of the French adapters, and restores 
 Goethe's fiend, in spite of them, to his proper place. 
 With some actors Mephistopheles is the roistering 
 grotesque devil of a mystery, with others he is a plea- 
 sant gentleman, masquerading as a demon ; with 
 M. Faure he is the exact embodiment of the spirit who 
 denies — to whom 
 
 ever3rthing 
 Is only good for perishing. 
 
 Every action, every look, seems instinct with the love 
 of destruction. Yet on the surface of the character 
 there plays constantly a gaiety which seems to be 
 partly assumed and to spring partly from the real 
 
M. FAURE. 59 
 
 enjoyment which the snake's cousin tinds in his work. 
 This quality of enjoyment is most strongly shown in 
 the Kermesse scene, where also occurs the defiance of 
 the crowd, followed by shrinking from the cross hilts 
 of their swords. The power with which the actor here 
 depicts the utter annihilating terror which seizes 
 Mephistopheles, makes the scene almost painful to 
 witness. The wild stare of agony in the eyes, the teeth 
 clenched in a grin of despair, the trembling limbs, the 
 body bent double with terror, have in them something 
 appalling, and it is a relief when, the cause of this pros- 
 tration being removed, Mephistopheles resumes, without 
 an effort, his old high bred indifference of demeanour. 
 Only once, except at moments, is this careless manner 
 dropped, until the scene within the cathedral, when 
 Mephistopheles towers above the wretched Gretchen, 
 implacable and majestic as Satan himself. At one other 
 point, the singing of the serenade under her window, 
 the actor represents the devil undisguised; there, 
 however, it is not the grandeur of a fallen angel, but 
 the bitter mockery of a malevolent fiend that is brought 
 out, and it is difiicult to imagine anything more appal- 
 ling than the hellish scorn with which M.Faure invests 
 his tones. The cruel laugh of triumphant hatred seems 
 to chill one's blood. 
 
 It is the misfortune of a baritone, or one should per- 
 haps say of a basse-chantante, that it is his province 
 frequently to appear in villanous characters. Don Gio- 
 vanni, Assur mSeynir amide, Duke Alfonso in Lucrezia 
 Borgia, Caspar in Der Freischiitz, Nelusko in VAfri- 
 caine, are among M. Faure's best characters. To the 
 figure of Caspar the actor gives a sullen gloom, relieved 
 only by a savage humour in the moment of his expec- 
 ted triumph. In the incantation scene, by the power of 
 his acting, he imparts life to the somewhat clumsy 
 
60 THE MODERN FRENCH THEATRE. 
 
 stage devices which represent the terrors of ZamiePs 
 dominion. Seeing the struggle in Caspar's mind between 
 a natural inclination to terror and a determination 
 which always supplies fresh courage for every new 
 display of the infernal powers, one forgets that the 
 goblins are absurdly pantomimic, that the serpents 
 move in an impossible fashion, or that the fiery sword 
 refuses to be lighted. 
 
 M. Faure as Don Giovanni represents with admirable 
 skill the brilliant fascinating recklessness and imper- 
 turbable courage of that most polished and most abo- 
 minable of scoundrels. To Assur and Duke Alfonso, 
 M. Faure gives in diJfferent methods the grandeur of 
 villany ; and his Nelusko has all the smouldering fero- 
 city of a savage, with a dignity which not all savages 
 possess. 
 
 One of M. Faure's most interesting representations 
 is that of Hamlet. Here, as in the case of Mephistopheles 
 with the fine instinct of a great actor, he triumphs 
 over the clumsiness of the writers of the opera-book, 
 aud shows not the Hamlet of MM. Carre and Barbier, 
 but that of Shakespeare. It is of course open to those 
 who think operatic acting is not acting, to say that as 
 M. Faure has not the difficulties of long spoken soli- 
 loquies to contend with, it is extravagant to say that 
 he can play Hamlet ; but they could hardly deny that if 
 he has no opportunity for fully interpreting, he at least 
 gives an admirable suggestion of the Prince's character. 
 And in this point his performance is better than that of 
 any other actor of the part, that he has and never loses 
 the aspect and manner of royalty. 
 
 In the Huguenots, M. Faure has, in England, until 
 lately, played San Bris, apart which requires little 
 beyond a cold and impressive dignity, which no other 
 actor is more capable than M. Faure of giving to it. 
 
M. FAURE. 61 
 
 When he resumed the part, familiar to him in France, 
 of Nevers, he gave it an importance which one could 
 hardly have thought it could take. Other actors have 
 made not what M. Faure makes, but something consi- 
 derable out of the scene in which Nevers expresses his 
 indignation at the scheme for the destruction of the 
 Huguenots, and refuses to stain his sword in a massacre 
 But no other actor has grasped the character with the 
 firm and delicate touch of M. Faure ; has given so per- 
 fect a picture of courtly gaiety and chivalrous devotion. 
 Nevers, as played by M. Faure, becomes the principal 
 figure in the first act ; there are a brightness and grace 
 in his joyous manner which give new life to the whole 
 scene. One of the finest conceivable pieces of acting is 
 found in his listening to the propositions of San Bris 
 for the despatch of the Huguenots. One sees the shame 
 and repulsion which gradually grow in his mind as he 
 sits and hears these shocking projects unfolded; and 
 when, rising to his feet, h^ indignantly fiings down 
 his sword, refusing all share in a murder, one wonders 
 that San Bris does not bow before the splendour of his 
 anger. 
 
 With this tribute to a talent of vast resources is 
 ended the attempt to describe the characteristics of 
 certain French Players. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 The modern French theatre. — Introduction 5 
 
 M. Got 11 
 
 M. Delaunay 15 
 
 M»e Sarah Bernhardt 20 
 
 M. Mounet-Sully 23 
 
 M"eFavart 27 
 
 M. Bressant 31 
 
 M"e Croizette 34 
 
 M. Febvre 37 
 
 M"« Reichemberg 39 
 
 M. Thiron - 41 
 
 M. Coquelin 43 
 
 M"e Jouassain 46 
 
 -MM. Barre, Garraud, Boucher 48 
 
 M. Maubant 50 
 
 MM. Prudhon , Laroche 51 
 
 MmeTrebelli » 52 
 
 M. Faure ^ 56 
 
 PAUL LEPRETRE ET C>«, IMPRIMEURS A DIEPPE. 
 
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 U.C, BERKELEV LIBRARIES 
 
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