THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES il -.■■;^ >--i ; . An?' Mi:-''' 4 ,. 'f ■ V '1 \ \v\V HENRY IRVING. ■y^wn. «. /i/ur€e?ytayi/i Oy, J^f ..> A REHEARSAL AT THE LYCEUM. 193 he has a much greater regard for artistic, fitness than for inartistic accuracy. It may surprise Mr. Archer to learn that people have been known to complain of Mr. Irving's callous indifference to pictorial detail. They demanded why Leonato in *' Much Ado About Nothing " did not wear mourn- ing for his daughter when it was given out that she was dead. What an unnatural father to go» about arrayed in brilliant colours when his brother was in black ! Was this the boasted accuracy of the Lyceum ? The simple answer was that Mr. Irving refused to have his pictures spoilt by a lot of people in the trappings and the suits of woe. Absolute realism on the stage is, in his opinion, unendurable. But the critics who fancy that his mind is always running on details of scenery and dresses are profoundly ignorant of the man.. These matters have their time and place, but his. constant labour is to improve the acting. There.-. is a rehearsal at the Lyceum. What is it — one... two, or three acts ? It is the first scene in.j " Hamlet," which takes about ten minutes to play, and it is rehearsed for two hours. Every- body concerned, Horatio, Marcellus, Bernardo, Francisco, and the Ghost, have played this scene together very many times. But experience has 14 1 04 HENR Y IR VING. made Mr. Irving fastidous. This first scene is the ke3--note of the play. If it be net so struck that the interest of the audience is at once aroused, the play will flag, and the other per- formers will have more than their fair share of work to give it life and movement. No wonder that Mt. Edwin Booth declared that, in his opinion, Mr. Irving as a stage- manager was unrivalled.^ The master-mind is visible throughout the entire representation. Mr. Irving has formed a distinct and broad con- ception not only of his own part, but of the whole scheme and purpose of the play. His crowds do not comport themselves like marionettes, nor as if they had been well-drilled. They seem to have caught the spirit of the scene, and to enter spon- taneously into it. Look at the crowd who watch the trial in " The Merchant of Venice." Note especially the knot of Jews in the corner. They have come to see the triumph of Shylock. Some of them are very old, and nearly deaf. But they catch a word now and then, and exult over the tenacity with which their co-religionist asserts his bond against the hated Christian. But the tide * See Appendix. INGENUITY OR IMA GIN A TION ? i j 5 of fortune turns, and Shylock is suddenly over- whelmed. Confusion and dismay seize upon the Jews. You see them eagerly debating this unexpected reverse. Then their heads drop in despair, and they glide out of the court which they had entered with a confident belief in victory, while the bystanders chuckle over their discom- fiture. That this subsidiary little drama greatly enhances the effect of the scene in the foreground need scarcely be said. It is one of the innu- merable proofs of Mr. Irving's imaginative grasp, which people who are not over-gifted with imagi- nation condescendingly call " ingenuit}'." Yet such ingenuity affords a better illustration of the poet than the most brilliant commentary that was ever written. All this mastery is the product of a subtle insight, developed by an experience the extent of which has probably never been equalled. One man in his time plays many parts; but Mr. Irving has already played the astonishing number of 649, and if he is spared will play a great many more. Is it surprising thai: his perception of character has been trained to the finest point of delicate discernment ? Not very long ago he was watch- ing a most admirable actor playing in the third 196 HENR Y IR VING. act of " Richelieu." *' Don't you think," said a friend, " that Richelieu's grief and despair were very finely shown ? " " Yes ; but at the crisis he took out his handkerchief and wiped his mous- tache. Richelieu would never have done that." " But what we miss in Irving is simplicity," say some. "There is great intellectual grasp no doubt ; but there is a want of freshness, and a haunting sense of the artificial." Well, no actor is always at his best, and the art may not always be concealed. Still, I wish that those who find Mr. Irving artificial had shared an experience I had some two or three years ago. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts has a kind of home and school for girls in the East end of London, and one winter evening Mr. Irving went down there to give a reading to some ex- ceedingly homely folk, old men and women among the number. He selected a story of Mrs. Gas- kell's, in which an only son turns out a villain, and actually attempts to rob his own father's house. The most touching part of the tale was the scene in the court at the young man's trial, when his father and mother were called to give evidence against him. For an hour and a half Mr. Irving held that assembly hanging on his words, for he read the story with a simplicity, PASSIVE DETRACTORS. i97 trutli, and pathos which went home to every heart. Another reason assigned by Mr. Archer in explanation of Mr. Irving's success is the most curious of alL Mr. Irving's admirers — the small circle of devotees — are untiring in their proclama- tions of his talents, while his detractors are com- paratively passive. Mr. Archer attaches too little importance to his own exploits. There never was an actor of distinction who had to encounter more persistent detraction than has attended Mr. Irving at every stage of his career since he became a man of mark. Of the efforts to overthrow him at a critical juncture in his rise to eminence enough has already been said. He came triumph- antly out of the ordeal not, as Mr. Archer seems to suppose, because his personal following was small and the general public coldly respectful, but because his genius and resolution carried everything before them. This is a matter not of opinion but of history. The critics, says Mr. Archer, are for the most part weary of dilating on Mr. Irving's defects; so they busy themselves in finding out the merits of each new impersona- tion. Not an unwholesome task, I fancy, even for the most acute critic. Mr. Irving is a sufficiently 1 98 HENR Y IR VING. great master of his craft to provide a whole generation of Archers with ideas. If half the pains expended to show that Mr. Irving's mannerisms are intolerable were spent on an inquiry into the real spirit of his art, there would be a good deal more profitable writing about the stage than we have yet been blessed with. There are plenty of people who can produce essays without end to prove that Mr. Irving is not a tragic actor, but a melodramatic actor of no very extraordinary quality. That the same man who has given us our most impressive melodrama should also shine in tragedy by means of a unique conjunction of emotional power and intellectual subtlety, is a fact they have never been able to grasp. " It is because Mr. Irving has the Shakespearian quality that he is tragic, comic, melodramatic,* bold, refined, con- templative, or otherwise, just as the case requires. The variety of Shakespeare is a constant spur to this actor's various mind, and gives constant cues to his diverse powers." These words deserve to be remembered as an admirable index to W.x. Irving's art. But if Mr. Irving is not so commonly as- sailed in print as he was wont to be, there is no abatement of detraction in society. You RABID HOSTILITY. 199 cannot engage in conversation at any dinner- table without struggling in the turgid stream of the anti-Irving animus. Many tongues seem to have no occupation but that of wagging in his dispraise. When I was looking at Mr. Long's portrait of Mr. Irving as Hamlet one day at the Academy, there came a lady and gentleman through the adjacent doorway, ** Irving as Hamlet," he remarked. " What absurd non- sense ! " exclaimed his companion ; and, without vouchsafing a glance at the picture, she literally rushed to the other end of the room. This rabid hostility to the actor has become a kind of disease to which the healing art of common sense and common justice is applied in vain. I know intelligent people to whom it is dangerous to talk of Mr. Irving's mannerisms. Their eyes roll wildly, and in all innocence of heart they tell the most remarkable fictions. They have brooded over some peculiarity of the actor till their dis- turbed fancy has made it a grotesquely impossible abortion which they gravely assure you is an in- dispensable part of his acting. There are many more who declare that they cannot endure him in tragedy, without reflecting that appreciation of tragedy is wholly beyond the scope of their sym- 200 HENR y IR V!NG. pathies. This incessant — there is a stronger adjective in Shakespeare — iteration and exaggera- tion of Mr. Irving's mannerisms might have done him irreparable mischief at one time if his power over the popular imagination had not been so great. One might almost suppose that there never were mannered actors before Mr. Irving. How would John Philip Kemble fare at the hands of Mr. Archer if he could return to the stage to resume his disputes with the pit about the pronunciation of the English language ? Kemble had a vocabulary of his own, and for the most peculiar words it was the nightly recreation of the pit to suggest the ordinary equivalents. When Kemble was not in the humour for the fray, he would disappoint his tormentors by leaving out a word for which they were lying in wait, and sub- stituting another. This story has probably been very much embellished in its transit from Kemble's day; and stories which are told of Mr. Irving's mannerisms now, though in all conscience they are sufficiently absurd already, will doubtless be handed down to posterity in an even more fabulous form. It may even happen that these legends of Mr. Irving will strike scientific minds in remote ages, still in the womb of time, as so extraordinary UNINSPIRED CENSORS. 201 that the actor will be scheduled amongst the solar myths. The reaction against all this fantastic mis- representation has done not a little to swell Mr. Irving's popularity. A keen and highly educated Scotchman, who had never seen the actor before, went to witness his Hamlet. The new critic's mind was full of that appalling mannerism of which he had heard so much. " I looked and watched, and watched and looked," said he, " but I could not see it." No doubt it was there ; but its relative proportion in a brilliant, subtle, and impassioned performance was so slight that it was imperceptible to a man who was enthralled by the actor's genius. There are people who count the times that Mr. Irving puts his hand to his head, just as there are people who, when examining a fine picture, find too much paint in a particular spot. The artist has no inspiration for them, because they have none for themselves. But, as a rule, it will be found that they have much more to say in detraction than the mass of the artist's admirers have to say in praise. The beauties of a great work of art are not realised in language by all who feel them. " There is always something new to be struck with in this 202 BENR Y IR VI NG. great actor's representations," wrote a pene- trating critic of Mr. Irving's Shylock. " Have we ever noticed before the involuntary clenching of the hand, as if round the haft of a knife, when Shylock learns from Tubal, and every time Tubal mentions to him, in the midst of his trouble about Jessica, the calamity which threatens or promises to place Antonio at his mercy ? Have we ever noted the solemn, slow striking of the breast at the sad words, ' The curse never fell upon our nation till now,' and then again, after deep thought, at the words, ' I never felt it till now ' ? Have we ever done justice to the wonderful, deliberate, and detailed elaboration of this Tubal scene, fraught though it be with the most con- suming passion ? Have we remarked, for in- stance, the magnificent point made where, upon hearing of Antonio's misfortune, Shylock utters the first ' I thank God ' in wild, savage rage, but, after a scarcely perceptible check, pronounces the second * I thank God ' with uplifted hands, in lofty accents of religious doom ? It is only neces- sary to remember to be prompted to multiply such noble examples of Irving's thrilling interpretation. The grave firmness and sardonic quality of the opening of the trial scene ; the expressive tapping J\1K. IRVmC'S GUIDE. action of the crescent-knife-point upon the bag of ducats offered in settlement : and then, when the tables turn, the haggard waning of the fanatic's confidence and satisfaction, unaccompanied by any loss of dignity, and culminating in a splendid exit, tottering, yet proud — these are all triumphs of the actor's art which must be remembered as long as such achievements can be borne in recollection," Yes ; many of us have observed all these things ; but w'e have not always catalogued them, as Mr. Irving's detractors catalogue his peculiarities of gait and intonation, any more than we have noted down in black and white the varied excellences of our dearest friends. Nevertheless, there is a compact impression of power made by Mr. Irving's acting on our minds ; and by degrees each vivid detail of his art grows in our vision to its full pro- portions. It is this experience which does much more to make the actor's fame than the barren routine of shallow censure does to mar it. One thing at least in Mr. Irving's career is indisputable. He has had no guide but his own insight. Macready had the advantage of study- ing great models, and of observing how the traditions embodied by the eminent actors of his 204 IIENR V IR VING. own day were made instinct with original power. Mr. Irving has had no models. Another im- portant difference between this actor and the elder tragedians is that the latter had a probation in the provinces. Kemble and Edmund Kean, for example, had worn the buskin for years when they displayed the fruits of study before a London audience. On the other hand, all Mr. Irving's tragic characters, Hamlet excepted — and in this connection the performance at Manchester in 1865 cannot count for much — have been first played in London. Without the invaluable experience derived from a long course of training in the highest range of the drama, Mr. Irving has set his stamp on some of the greatest tragic creations. ** Very true," says Mr. Archer, "but then you have made him a law unto himself. He is judged by his own standard, because we have no other." When Mr. Booth played at the Lyceum there was ample opportunity to compare two very notable standards of acting ; and whether the experienced judgment inclined to the elder or the younger tragedian, it could not be denied that the striking illumination of the play was due to an exceptional combination of originality and finished art. There is no need to hanker after comparisons PALMY DA YS OF THE DRAMA. 205 in order to determine whether Mr. Irving has enlarged our conceptions of tragedy. No form of human effort excites more diversity of opinion than acting, and there is no more hopeless task than that of arguing with the veteran play- goer, who is astonished that any person of taste should see anything to admire in the drama of to-dav ; who will not admit that there has been any acting since the retirement of Macready and Helen Faucit ; who says that declamation is a lost art, that our actors can neither speak nor walk, that our dramatic triumphs owe every- thing to the scene painter, and that a mechani- cal thing called melodrama, and an imbecile thing called modern comedy, have killed the truly elevating elements of dramatic literature which descended to us from Elizabeth. There never was a generation in which the same terrible lament was not uttered by playgoers whose affections clung to the stage-fashions of an earlier period. I know of no more impossible quest than that for the really palmy days of the British drama. If you look for them in Macready's time, you learn that they were in Edmund Kean's. If 5''0U read what the critics said of Kean, you find that very sapient judges held that there had been io6 HENR Y IR VING. no true glory for the stage since Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble were at their zenith. You con- scientiously wade through all that was ever written of those great artists only to be convinced that Garrick's reign was the golden age. You take a pretty long breath and start afresh ; but, alas ! it appears that, great actor and indefatigable manager as Garrick was, he played some horrible pranks with Shakespeare ; re-wrote a great part of " Romeo and Juliet ; " rescued " Hamlet " from " the rubbish of the fifth act ; " supple- mented the legitimate drama with harlequins and opera dancers, and produced five act plays of such phenomenal dulness that to see them now ranged on a dusty bookshelf is to feel as if you had swallowed forty fogs. From Garrick you pass forward, or rather backward, to Betterton. Bet- terton was a great light in the dramatic world, but you make the mournful discovery that he was responsible for the earliest decoration of the English stage with scenic accessories. This, said some of his contemporaries, was the begin- ning of a corruption which could lead only to perdition. Before Betterton's day scenery con- sisted of the highly primitive decorations which had come down from Shakespeare. A pair of " HAMLET" IN SHAKESFEARES DA Y. cc; linsy-vvoolsy curtains, or a bit of old tapestry covered with horrible figures " that would fright an audience," as a sprightly commentator remarked, did duty for palaces, landscapes, and sea views. To banish linsy-woolsy was clearly a sacrilegious act. It was a hideous outrage upon the severe virtue which had distinguished Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Your only resource now is to rush into their blissful period, and seek a refresh- ing calm in the contemplation of the perfect art and the noble simplicity which characterised Shakespeare's management of the Globe. If only our degenerate public could have seen Burbidge, the first Hamlet, who received his inspiration from the m.ighty poet himself, and •who played Shylock with a red wig and a false nose ! Here was the fountain head of the great Elizabethan stage. Our materials for a judgment of its capacity are somewhat scanty; yet we should readily imagine how grandly impressive must have been Hamlet's vigil on the platform at Elsinore, with a piece of board for the battle- ments ; how remarkably supernatural the ghost as he stalked from behind the linsy-woolsy ; how sweetly feminine the Ophelia represented by a boy of sixteen! But alack, the incuiable scepticism 2oS HENR V IR VING. which is the bane of this generation pursues us even here ! Why should we suppose that Bur- bidge's Hamlet was more remarkable than the great Hamlets of our time ? The first embodi- ment of so complex and subtle a personality naturally seemed wonderful to Burbidge's contem- poraries ; but should we rate it very highly if we could see it now? In a word, has the art of acting made no progress in the course of some three hundred and eighty years, or has the whole system of dramatic representation developed with successive ages ? It might as well be contended that because Garrick played Macbeth in silk stockings and a bag wig, Mr. Irving should repre- sent the same character in a frock coat and a silk hat. ■ It is Mr. Irving's highest title to honour that he has taught the intelligent playgoer never to despair of the English stage. If it ever was a paradox that the poetic drama, and the drama of wholesome realism, may hold their own against the forces of frivolity and thinly veiled vice, the time now gives it proof. When Shakespeare spelt bankruptcy in London, it was because there was no man of brains and culture who could set forth the poet's conceptions with a real and THE EDUCATIONAL STANDPOINT. 209 vigorous sense of their vitality. It is one thing to produce a Shakespearian play with lavish magnificence, but with no independent grasp of the author's purpose, and quite another to make it live upon the stage. That is what Henry Irving has done to-day, and that is why his memory, quite apart from his personal achieve- ments as an actor, will be held in honour and grateful remembrance by all who follow in his footsteps. He is one of the few men of rare capacity and force of character who educate their public, and it is from the educational standpoint that it would be well if more of us were to view the stage. Every art is worthy of study, even though its effects afford but a temporary pleasure to a jaded mind. To the uneducated eye the masses of colour in a picture gallery may give much delight, but what is that to enjoyment which springs from a knowledge of all the subtle harmonies of painting? There is no more difficult or fascinating art than that of acting. There is no world which employs so many faculties as the world behind the scenes. The effects which seem 60 simple and spontaneous, the incidents which are so picturesque and natural, the ease of move- ment, the grace of combination, the harmony of 15 2 1 o IIENR Y IR VING. colour — all these are the product of a complex organisation which is brought to perfection by unremitting study, skill, and labour. But it is from the public that the motive power of this elaborate machinery is derived, and in proportion as the public displays an intelligent interest in the higher drama, the actor and his coadjutors are stimulated to do their most brilliant work. If a tithe of the good people who denounce the stage v.'ould apply themselves to a rational study of its elements, they would do a great deal more for the moral tone of an indispensable art than they can accomplish by pious vituperation. If social loun- gers, whose interest in a theatre is mainly occu- pied with scandalous stories of the members of the dramatic profession, would think more of the characters represented on the stage, and less of the private lives of the artists who represent them, they would do something to justify their exist- ence. Yet Mr. Irving's career has shown most signally, that in an age when English society is supposed to have lost its faith in ideals, it is possible for an English actor to fulfil with pros- perity and renown the noblest functions of his calling. To Mr. Irving's influence must be assigned much of the credit for the growth of AN ENTERPRISING MA A 'A GER. z 1 1 dramatic intelligence in England. Never were there so many highly trained companies in the London theatres. Never was there such a prospect of unbounded success for a genuinely good play. And as the ridiculous is sometimes as striking an illustration as the sublime, I may cite as a re- markable concession to educated opinion the virtuous exploit of a London manager, who opened his theatre for a purely spectacular entertainment with the noble announcement that his productions would be " diverting, but not irreverent; grand, but not gaudy; mirthful, but not meretricious; decorous, but never depressing." ^mfWfrDjl CHAPTER XI. rsSJ YS AND ADDRESSES. T would be a grave oversight on the part of any biographer of Mr. Irving if no account were taken of the actor's efforts, both by voice and pen, to uphold the moral dignity and intellectual character of his profession. His first essay of this kind was a paper read before the Church of England Tem- perance Society, on March 31, 1876. An actor addressing an assembly of clergymen might have been too acutely conscious of the novelty of his position to speak his mind freely. But Mr. Irving improved the occasion without hesitation. He pointed out to his auditors how needful it was that they should make themselves acquainted with the real character of the theatre, instead of accepting unfavourable reports which had long PURITANIC IN CONS IS TENC Y. 2T3 ceased to be true. The abominations which used to infest the theatre had disappeared. Those abominations, it is often alleged, Mr. Macready tried, in vain, to repress ; he certainly struggled hard to do so, but whether he failed or not it is certain that those abominations have been now absolutely swept away, and that the audi- ence portion of any theatre is as completely free from immoral, or even indecorous associations, as Exeter Hall during the performance of the "Elijah." But this is not known, even now, to thousands of religious people. It is a curious circumstance, for instance — and I speak frankly in my endeavour to bring out the truth — that many good people, who would think it dangerous to go to a theatre to see plays, rush to see them represented at the Crystal Palace, or attend with the greatest ease of mind a promenade concert, the audience at which really is thickly contami- nated with the evil which has entirely disappeared from our theatres — that evil being rendered all the more harmful because the whole assembly is constantly perambulating the floor of the opera house. Mr. Irving then drew in moderate language a picture of the actual condition of the stage, and 214 HENR Y IR I INC. made a good point by asking his audience whetlier a sound dramatic entertainment was not better than the attractions of the tap-room. " I have thought it best — as well as I could — to dwell on the proved attractiveness and the demon- strably good influence of dramatic amusements, rather than on the evils of those vicious indul- gences which it is the object of a religious temperance movement to overcome, because I know more of the former aspect of the subject than of the latter, and because I am anxious to offer, as my cordial contribution to your good work, a suggestion that the clergy, and all who co-operate with them, should use their influence for the purification, rather than the suppression or tabooing, of the stage. The worst performances presented in our theatres cannot be so evil as the spending of a corresponding period of time in a gin-palace or a pot-house. Drinking by the hour, as practised in the evenings by too many of our working men, is not, be it remembered, mere silent drinking — it is not mere physical indulgence or degradation. It takes place in good fellowship. It is accompanied by conversation and merriment. Such conversation ! and such merriment ! Where drink is and the excitement that comes of it — with AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY. 215 no restraining opinion or usage to curb the tongue — there the talk will be obscene, the whole atmosphere degrading. "Now, it may be possible for such habits to co- exist, to a certain extent, with theatrical tastes. Men still go to the theatre as an amusement, not as an exercise of mental improvement. And it is well they so regard it, or they would not go at all ; but it is impossible to imagine that drink can have the same fascination for a man who has, and indulges, theatrical tastes, as for one who finds in the public-house his only joy. "Make the theatre respected by openl}^ recognis- ing its services. Make it more respectable by teaching the working and lower middle classes to watch for good or even creditable plays, and to patronise them when presented. Let members of religious congregations know that there is no harm, but rather good, in entering into ordinary amusements, so far as they are decorous. Use the pulpit, the press, and the platform to denounce, not the stage, but certain evils that find allowance on it. . . . Gentlemen, change your attitude towards the stage, and, believe me, the stage will co-operate with you in your work of faith and labour of love." 2 1 3 IlENR Y IR VING. That this sensible and temperate appeal was not without effect, the support accorded to Mr. Irving by the clergy has borne ample evidence. It is a time-honoured joke, that the manager of a Scotch theatre, peeping at the house before the rising of the curtain on the first night of Mr. Irving's engagement, was so astonished to see parsons in the stalls, that he thought the actor must be about to open a prayer-meeting. Less familiar, perhaps, is the story told of Edwin Booth's father who went down to New Orleans as his habit was, on the chance of finding an en gagement. The managers were always glad to have him, but on this occasion they could not meet his wishes. ** Very sorry, Mr. Booth," said one, " but I have an opera company here, and I cannot make room for you." Nothing discon- certed, the actor applied to the manager of a French theatre, for he could play in French as well as in English. But here too ill-fortune attended him. " Never mind," he said, when the manager was profuse with his apologies, " I'll do something before I leave the town." And, sure enough, he preached a sermon with the utmost zeal to an attentive congregation. Perhaps the Scotch manager thought for the THE FERRY BAKR INSTITUTE. 21; moment that Mr. Irving was going to rival this achievement. It is not the least of Mr. Irving's claims to distinction that the recognition of the drama as an educational influence, by many who had formerly regarded it with indifference, if not with distaste, is mainly due to his exertions. Before he became famous, too much of the play-going world in London was given up to entertainments which Tennyson aptly described in his farewell address to Macready — "And those gilt-gauds men-children swarm to see." But thoughtful men began to perceive that Mr. Irving's genius and ambition were likely to rescue the higher drama from the reproach of having "flickered down to brainless pantomime." No better proof of this wholesome change of feeling could have been afforded than the election of Mr. Irving as President of the Perry Barr Institute, near Birmingham, in 187S. Perry Barr is an off-shoot of the Midland Institute, which has done so much for the cultivation of the masses. Nor did this remarkable compliment to Mr. Irving stop here ; for in August of the same 3'ear he was invited to lay the foundation stone of another 2 1 8 HENR V IK VING. institution of the same class at Harborne. On this occasion he said : " They who were so closely affiliated to the great centre (the Midland Institute) might well feel proud of their association with such an important movement. It was not for him to speak in detail of the course of study to be pursued at their institute — to recommend one branch of study in preference to another ; but speaking as an actor — and they would see that it was as difficult for player as for professor to forget his calling for five minutes — he was glad to know that they would not leave out of their culture that legitimate development of the imagination without which life was but a dry routine. If they did not idealise something, this was a painfully prosaic world. Poetry and fiction did much to lighten their care, and for many people the drama did more, for it sometimes helped many — especially the poor, the uncultured, and unlettered — to a right appreciation of life. He did not argue — and he was sure they did not expect him to argue — whether dramatic exposition had or had not a beneficial influence in the main upon society. If they differed on that point he should not have been there, and he should not have had the satis- THE ACTOR'S HIGHEST AIM. 219 faction of having been chosen by his friends at Perry Barr as the representative of the association of dramatic art with the educational work. With those people who maintained that there was a something radically vicious in the whole theorj^ and principle of the stage — well, they must live as comfortably as they could. Such persons would like to rob actors of their audiences, but actors did not bear them any malice for that. What sensible men had to do was not to make futile attempts to destroy an institution which was bound up with some of the best instincts of human nature, but to strive to remove its abuses and elevate its tone. He was sure the members of that Institute would never forget what they owed, and what the world owed, to that great supreme genius who had shed immortal lustre on the dramatic literature of the country. Far above the merits of any individual actor, there was this consideration : that if he aimed at the highest standard of his profession, he helped thousands to a fellowship, sympathy, and intelligence with the great mind which gave to the drama its noblest form. But some people said, ' Oh, we think Shakespeare very admirable, and if you played nothing but his works at every theatre we should be delighted to support you.' It 220 HENR Y IR VING. seemed to him that one might almost as well say, ' If every book of poetry I take up has not the lofty inspiration of Milton, I must refuse to support poetry.' But it was impossible for Shakespeare to be played in every theatre, for many obvious reasons. In dramatic representation, as in every- thing else, there must be a variety of tastes. Art had many phases, and every one of them contained something admirable and excellent in its way. Certainly, the higher the general level of their culture, the more exalted would be their taste ; and he felt assured that the efforts of the members of that Institute and kindred institutes would be directed to foster what was worthiest in dramatic art." But Mr. Irving's most forcible vindication of the stage was his address to the members of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution on Novem- ber I, 1881. The occasion might well have made him prouder than ever of the profession which was honoured in his person by an assembly represent- ing the highest culture of Scotland. Mr. Irving evidently felt that this was a time, not for apology, but for a striking statement of the highest claims of his art to the esteem of educated men. He began by commenting in severe terms on SHAKESPEARE AND HIS INTERPRETERS. 221 the theory that the highest dramatic literature was unsuited to the theatre. "To boast of being able to appreciate Shake- speare more in reading him than in seeing him acted used to be a common method of affect- ing special intellectuality. I hope this delusion — a gross and pitiful one with the most of us — has almost died out. It certainly conferred a very cheap badge of superiority on those who entertained it. It seemed to each of them an inexpensive opportunity of worshipping himself on a pedestal. But what did it amount to? It was little more than a conceited and feather- headed assumption that an unprepared reader, whose mind is usually full of far other things, will see on the instant all that has been de- veloped in hundreds of years by the members of a studious and enthusiastic profession. My own conviction is, that there are few characters or passages of our great dramatists which will not repay original study. But at least we must recognise the vast advantages with which a prac- tised actor, impregnated by the associations of his life, and by study — with all the practical and critical skill of his profession up to the date at which he appears, whether he adopts or rejects 222 HENR V IR VING. tradition — addresses himself to the interpretation of any great character, even if he have no origin- ahty whatever. There is something still more than this, however, in acting. Every one who has the smallest histrionic gift has a natural dra- matic faculty ; so that as soon as he knows the author's text, and obtains self-possession, and feels at home in a part without being too familiar with it, the mere automatic action of rehearsing and playing it at once begins to place the author in new lights, and to give the personage being played an individuality partly independent of, and yet consistent with, and rendering more power- fully visible, the dramatist's conception. It is the vast power a good actor has in this way which has led the French to speak of creating a part when they mean its being first played ; and French authors are so conscious of the extent and value of this co-operation of actors with them that they have never objected to the phrase, but, on the contrary, are uniformly lavish in their homage to the artists who have created on the boards the parts which they themselves have created on paper. I must add, as an additional reason for valuing the theatre, that while there is only one Shakespeare, and while there are com- UTILITY OF THE AVERAGE DRAMA. 223 paratively few dramatists who are sufficiently classic to be read with close attention, there is a great deal of average dramatic work excellently suited for representation. From this the public derive pleasure. From this they receive — as from fiction in literature — a great deal of instruc- tion and mental stimulus ; some worldly, some social, some cynical, some merely humorous and witty, but a great deal of it, though its literary merit is secondary, well qualified to bring out all that is most fruitful of good in common s}mpa- thies. Now, it is plain that if, because Shake- speare is good reading, people were to give the cold shoulder to the theatre, the world would lose all the vast advantage which comes to it through the dramatic faculty in forms not rising to essen- tially literary excellence." Mr. Irving then pointed out that th.e stage, which men like John Angell James used to de- nounce fifty years ago, had been reformed, and that nothing was more absurd than the idea that to avoid the theatre was to avoid moral con- tamination. "There are people now who think that they can keep their children, and that those children will keep themselves in after life, in cotton 224 HENR V IR VING. wool, so as to avoid all temptation of body and mind, and be saved nine-tenths of the respon- sibility of self-control. All this is mere fantasy. You must be in the world, though 3'ou need not be of it ; and the best way to make the world a better community to be in, and not so bad a place to be of, is not to shun, but to bring public opinion to bear upon its pursuits and its relaxa- tions. Depend upon two things — that the theatre, as a whole, is never below the average moral sense of the time ; and that the inevitable demand for an admixture, at least, of wholesome sentiment in every sort of dramatic production brings the ruling tone of the theatre, whatever drawbacks may exist, up to the highest level at which the general morality of the time can truly be regis- tered. We may be encouraged by the reflection that this is truer than ever it was before, owing to the greater spread of education, the increased community of taste between classes, and the almost absolute divorce of the stage from mere wealth and aristocracy. Wealth and aristocracy come around the stage in abundance, and are welcome, as in the time of Elizabeth; but the stage is no longer a mere appendage of court-life, no longer a mere mirror of patrician vice hanging JIJE PROPERTY OF EDUCATED PEOPLE. 225 at the girdle of fashionable profligacy, as it was in the da3's of Congreve and Wycherley. It is now the property of the educated people. It has to satisfy them or pine in neglect. And the better their demands, the better will be the supply with which the drama will respond. This being not only so, but seen to be so, the stage is no longer proscribed. It is no longer under a ban. Its members are no longer pariahs in society. They live and bear their social part like others — as decorously observant of all that makes for the sweet sanctities of life — as gracefully cognisant of its amenities — as readily recognised and welcomed as the members of any other profession. Am I not here your grateful guest opening the session of this philosophical and historic institution ? — I who am simply an actor, an interpreter, with such gifts as I have and such thought as I can bestow, of stage plays. And am I not received here with perfect cordiality on an equality, not hungrily bowing and smirking for patronage, but inter- changing ideas which I am glad to express, and which you listen to as thoughtfully and as kindly as you would to those of any other student, any ■other man who had won his way into such pro- minence as to come within the ken cf a clistin- 16 226 IIENR Y IR VING. guished institution such as that which I have the honour to address ? I do not mince the matter as to my personal position here, because I feel it is a representative one, and marks an epoch in the estimation in which the art I love is held by the British public. You have had many distin- guished men here, and their themes have often been noble, but with which of those themes has not my art immemorial and perpetual associa- tions ? Is it not for ever identified with the noblest instincts and occupations of the human mind ? If I think of poetry, must I not remember how to the measure of its lofty music the theatre has in almost all ages set the grandest of dramatic conceptions ? If I think of literature, must I not recall that of all the amusements by which men in various states of society have solaced their leisure and refreshed their energies, the acting of plays is the one that has never yet, even for a day, been divorced from literary taste and skill ? If I meditate on patriotism, can I but reflect how grandly the boards have been trod by personifica- tions of heroic love of country ? There is no sub- ject of human thought that by common consent is deemed ennobling that has not ere now, and from period to period, been illustrated in the bright A TIMID BISHOP. --7 vesture, and received expression from the glowiivj^ language of theatrical representation. And surely it is fit that, remembering what the stage has been and must be, I should acknowledge eagerly and gladly that, wdth few exceptions, the public no longer debar themselves from the profitable pleasures of the theatre, and no longer brand with any social stigma the professors of the histrionic art. Talking to a very eminent bishop one day, I said to him, * Now, my lord, why is it, with your love and knowledge of the drama, with your deep interest in the stage and all its belongings, and your wide sympathy with all that ennobles and refines our natures — why is it that you never go to tbe theatre ? ' ' Well, my dear Irving,' said he, ' I'll tell you. Tm afraid of the Roch and the Record.' I hope soon we shall relieve even the most timid bishop — and my right reverend friend is not the most timid — of all fears and tremors whatever that can prevent even ministers of religion from recognising the wisdom of the change of view which has come over even the most fastidious public opinion on this ques- tion." Who was the prelate deterred b\' the Rock and Record — those watchdogs of Puritanic prejudice — : 2 8 HENR V IR VI NG. from openly visiting the theatre, it is bootless to inquire, though it may be hoped that he has since found the nerve to brave their ignoble rage. There was much talk at this time of a school for actors, and though j\Ir. Irving has since taken a prominent part in the establishment of the School of Dramatic Art which promises to be a most useful institution, he cherished that dread which English actors have always felt, and with no small reason, of the formalism of a conservatoire. " Every actor in full employment gets plenty of schooling, for the best schoolmg is practice, and there is no school so good as a well-conducted playhouse. The truth is that the cardinal secrets of success in acting are found within, while prac- tice is the surest way of fertilising these germs. To efficiency in the art of acting there should come a congregation of fine qualities. There should be considerable, though not necessarily, .systematic culture. There should be delicate ■instincts of taste cultivated, consciously or uncon- sciously, to a degree of extreme and subtle nicety. There should be a power, at once refined and strong, of both perceiving and expressing to others the significance of language, so that neither shades nor masses of meaning, so to speak, may be either IS A DRAMATIC SCHOOL NECESSARY? 22 j lost or exaggerated. Above all, there should be a sincere and abounding sympathy with all thai is good, and great, and inspiring. That sympathy, most certainly, must be under the control and manipulation of art, but it must be none the less real and generous, and the artist who is a mere artist will stop short of the highest moral effects of his craft. Little of this can be got in a mere training school, but all of it will come forth more or less fully armed from the actor's brain in the process of learning his art by practice. For the way to learn to do a thing is to do it ; and in learning to act by acting, though there is plenty of incidental hard drill and hard work, there is nothing commonplace or unfruitful." This is all very true ; but it scarcely proves the inutility of a training school, in which a pupil may- learn the technicalities of his craft. Mr. Irving must have been much indebted in his early youth to the lessons he received from Mr. Hoskins; and why should not a dramatic apprentice acquire as useful knowledge in a dramatic school ? But the actor was on surer ground when he assailed the dramatic " reformers." An associa- tion had been formed not long before for the pur- pose of purifying plays — and it was solemnly HENRY IRVING. agreed that farces and dramas taken from the French must be strenuously discountenanced. So earnest were the organisers of this wonderful scheme, that they even proposed to take a theatre in which nothing should be permitted that could bring a blush to the cheek of " the young person." Fortunately for their pockets this project was not put into execution. Perhaps Mr. Irving's advice acted as a timely deterrent, though it was more of a castigation than an admonition. "The dramatic reformers are very well-meaning people. They show great enthusiasm. They are new converts to the theatre, most of them, and they have the zeal of converts. But it is scarcely according to knowledge. These ladies and gen- tlemen have not studied the conditions of theatrical enterprise. . . . They do not know what to ban or to bless. If they had their way, as of course they cannot, they would license, with many flourishes and much self-laudation, a number of pieces which would be hopelessly condemned on the first hearing, and they would lay an embargo for very insufficient reasons on many plays well entitled to success. It is not in this direction that we must look for any improvement that is needed in the purveying of material for the stage. Ce- THE DEMANDS OF PUBLIC TASTE. 231 lieve me, the right direction is public criticism and public discrimination. I say so because, beyond question, the public will have what they want. So far from managers in their discretion, or at their pleasure, forcing on the public either very good or very bad dramatic material, it is an utter delusion. They have no such power. If they had the will they could only force any particular sort of enter- tainment just as long as they had capital to ex- pend without any return. But they really have not the will. They follow the public taste with the greatest keenness. If the people want Shake- speare — as I am happy to say they do, at least at one theatre in London, and at all the great theatres out of London, to an extent, as proved by financial receipts entirely unprecedented in the history of the stage — then they get Shakespeare. If they want our modern dramatists — Albery, Bou- cicault, Byron, Burnand, Gilbert, or Wills — these they have. If they want Robertson, Robertson is there for them. If they desire opera-bouffe, de- pend upon it they will have it, and have it they do. What then do I infer ? Simply this : that those who prefer the higher drama — in the representa- tion of which my heart's best interests are centred — instead of querulously animadverting 2,^2 HENRY IRVING. on managers who give them something different, should, as Lord Beaconsfield said, ' make them- selves into a majority.' If they do so, the higher drama will be produced. But if we really under- stand the value of the drama, we shall not be too rigid in our exactions. The drama is the art of human nature in picturesque or characteristic action. Let us be liberal in our enjoyment of it. Tragedy, comedy, historical pastoral, pastoral comical — remember the large-minded list of the greatest-minded poet— all are good, if wholesome, — and will be wholesome if the public continue to take the healthy interest in theatres which they are now taking. The worst times for the stage have been those when playgoing was left prett}' much to a loose society, such as is sketched in the Restoration dramatists. If the good people con- tinue to come to the theatre in increasing crowds, the stage, without losing any of its brightness, w^ill soon be good enough, if it is not as yet, to satisfy the best of them." The services of the stage to thought and culture have probably never been more convincingly as- serted than in the following passage : " Let me insist on the intellectual and moral use, alike to the most and least cultivated of us, OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO THE STAGE. 233 of this art * most beautiful, most difficult, most rare,' which I stand here to-day, not to apologise for, but to establish, in the high place to which it is entitled among the arts and among the amelio- rating influences of life. Grant that any of us understand a dramatist better for seeing him acted, and it follows, first, that all of us will be most in- debted to the stage at the point where the higher and more ethereal faculties are liable in reading to failure and exhaustion, that is, stage-playing will be of most use to us where the mind requires help and inspiration to grasp and revel in lofty moral or imaginative conceptions, or where it needs aid and sharpening to appreciate and follow the nice- ties of repartee, or the delicacies of comic fancy. Secondly, it follows that if this is so with the intel- lectual few, it must be infinitely more so with the unimaginative many of all ranks. They are not inaccessible to passion and poetry and refine- ment, but their minds do not go forth, as it were, to seek these joys ; and even if they read works of poetic and dramatic fancy, which they rarely do, they would miss them on the printed page. To them, therefore, with the exception of a few startling incidents of real life, the theatre is the only channel through which are ever brought the 234 HENR Y IR VING. great sympathies of the world of thought beyond their immediate ken. And thirdly, it follows from all this that the stage is, intellectually and morally, to all who have recourse to it, the source of some of the finest and best influences of which they are respectively susceptible. To the thoughtful and reading man it brings the life, the fire, the colour, the vivid instinct which are beyond the reach of study. To the common indifferent man, immersed as a rule in the business and socialities of daily life, it brings visions of glory and adventure, of emotion and of broad human interest. It gives him glimpses of the heights and depths of character and experience, setting him thinking and wonder- ing even in the midst of amusement. To the most torpid and unobservant it exhibits the humorous in life and the sparkle and finesse of language, which in dull ordinary existence is shut out of knowledge or omitted from particular notice. To all it uncurtains a world, not that in which they live and yet not other than it— a world in which interest is heightened and yet the con- ditions of truth are observed, in which the capa- bilities of men and w^omen are seen developed without losing their consistency to nature, and developed with a curious and wholesome fidelity THE FAULTS OF THE STAGE. 235 to simple and universal instincts of clear right and wrons:." Mr. Irving's anxiety not to overstate his case was shown by his allusion to Shakespeare's mis- givings about the theatre. "There never was a time when the stage had not conspicuous faults. There never was a time when these were 'not freely admitted by those most concerned for the maintenance of the stage at its best. In Shakespeare, when- ever the subject of the theatre is approached, we perceive signs that that great spirit, though it had a practical and business - like vein, and essayed no impossible enterprises, groaned under the necessities or the demands of a public which desired frivolities and deformities which jarred upon the poet-manager's feelings. As we descend the course of time we find that each generation looked back to a supposed previous period when taste ranged higher, and when the inferior and offensive peculiarities of the existing stage were unknown. Yet from most of these generations we inherit works as well as traditions and biographical recollections which the world will never let die. The truth is that the immortal part of the stage is its nobler part. 2 3 3 HENR Y IR VI NG. Ignoble accidents and interludes come and go, but this lasts on for ever. It lives, like the human soul, in the body of humanity — associated with much that is inferior, and hampered by many hindrances — but it never sinks into nothingness, and never fails to find new and noble work in creations of permanent and memorable excellence. Heaven forbid that I should seem to cover, even with a counterpane of courtesy, exhibitions of deliberate immorality. Happily this sort of thing is not common, and although it has hardly been practised by any one who, without a strain of meaning, can be associated with the profession of acting, yet public censure, not active enough to repress the evil, is ever ready to pass a sweeping condemnation on the stage which harbours it." Then comes a remarkable panegyric of Shake- speare which should be remembered by those who have accused Mr. Irving of exalting the player at the expense of the play. " Only the theatre can realise to us in a lifelike way what Shakespeare was to his own time. And it is indeed a noble destiny for the theatre to vin- dicate in these later days the greatness which sometimes it has seemed to vulgarise. It has been too much the custom to talk of Shakespeare " THE ACTOR—SHAKESPEARE." 237 as Nature's child — as the lad who held horses for people who came to the play — as a sort of chance phenomenon who wrote these plays by accident and unrecognised. How supremely ridiculous ! J low utterly irreconcilable with the grand dimen- sions of the man ! How absurdly dishonouring to the great age of which he was, and was known to be, the glory ! The noblest literary man of all time — the finest and yet most prolific writer — the greatest student of man, and the greatest master of man's highest gifts of language — surely it is treason to humanity to speak of such a one as in any sense a commonplace being ! Imagine him rather, as he must have been, the most notable courtier of the Court — the most perfect gentleman who stood in the Elizabethan throng — the man in whose presence divines would falter and hesitate lest their knowledge of the Book should seem poor by the side of his, and at whom even queenly royalty would look askance, with an oppressive sense that here was one to whose omnipotent and true imagination t'ne hearts of kings and queens and peoples had always been an open page ! The thought of such a man is an incomparable inheri- tance for any nation, and such a man was the actor — Shakespeare. Such is our birthright and 2 jS HENR V IR VIA'G. yours. Such the succession in which it is ours to labour and yours to enjoy. For Shakespeare belongs to the stage for ever, and his glories must always inalienably belong to it. For mysel.^, iL kindles my heart with proud delight to think that I have stood to-day before this intellectual audi- ence — known for its discrimination throughout all English-speaking lands — a welcome and honoured guest, because I stand here for justice to the art to which I am devoted — because I stand here in thankfulness for the justice which has begun to be so abundantly rendered to it. If it is metaphori- cally the destiny of humanity, it is literally the experience of an actor, that one man in his time plays many parts. A player of any standing must at various times have sounded the gamut of human sensibility from the lowest note to the top of its compass. He must have banqueted often on curious food for thought as he meditated on the subtle relations created between himself and his audiences, as they have watched in his impersona- tions the shifting tariff — the ever gliding, delicately graduated sliding-scale of dramatic right and wrong. He may have gloated, if he be a cynic, over the depths of ghastly horror, or the vagaries of moral puddle through which it may have been J NOBLE PRIVILEGE. his duty to plash. But if he be an honest man, he will acknowledge that scarcely ever has either dramatist or management wnlfully biassed the effect of stage representation in favour of evil, and of his audiences he will boast that never has their mind been doubtful — never has their true percep- tion of the generous and just been known to fail, or even to be slow. IIovv noble the privilege to work upon these finer — these finest — feelings of universal humanity ! How engrossing the fascina- tion of those thousands of steady eyes, and sound sympathies, and beating hearts which an actor confronts, with the confidence of friendship and co-operation, as he steps upon the stage to work out in action his long pent comprehension of a noble masterpiece ! How rapturous the satisfac- tion of abandoning himself, in such a presence and v.'ith such sympathisers, to his author's grandest flights of thought and noblest bursts of emotional inspiration ! And how perpetually sustaining the knowledge that whatever may be the vicissitudes and even the degradations of the stage, it must and will depend for its constant hold on the affection and attention of mankind upon its loftier work ; upon its more penetrating passion; upon its themes which most deeply 2 } IlENR V IR VI KG. search out the strong affections and high hopes of men and women ; upon its fit and kindhng illustration of great and vivid lives which either have been lived in noble fact or have deserved to endure immortally in the popular belief and admiration which they have secured ! ' For our eyes to see ! Sons of wisdom, song, and power, Giving earth her richest dower, And making nations free — A glorious company ! * Call them from the dead For our eyes to see ! Forms of beauty, love, and grace^ " Sunshine in the shady place," That made it Hfe to be — A blessed company ! ' " It would have been surprising if this eloquent plea for the stage had passed unchallenged. To disparage the theatre is the favourite occupation of some writers who affect a belief that real dramatic literature is best appreciated by the student in the serene seclusion of his closet, undis- turbed by the garish lights and the inadequate mechanism of the play-house. Mr. Irving's on- slaught on this theory evoked some replies, in which it Vv'as not very candidly assumed that the oUsJ^ A NUT FOR THE " UNCO' GUWr 241 actor had claimed infallibility for the stage, and set Shakespeare's interpreters above Shakespeare himself. Mr. Irving wrote an article which was virtually a rejoinder, and which appeared in Good Wovd^ for January, 1G83. There must have been much upturning of the eyes amongst the *' unco' guid " when they found an essay by an actor in a magazine edited by Dr. Norman Macleod. It would be interesting to know whether Dr. Macleod lost any subscribers by this editorial experiment, /^-^^ and whether, like a clergyman in Edinburgh who preached about the drama during Mr. Irving's last visit, he was favoured with anonymous warn- ings of his fate when he should stand before " the great white throne." Mr. Irving's article was entitled " Shakespeare on the Stage and in the Study." With a touch of bitterness he reviewed the variations and inconsis- tencies of religious sentiment with regard to the drama. " At Ober-Ammergau to-day, many people who regard a theatre with misgiving, if not aver- sion, are profoundly moved by the story of the Divine Passion, unfolded, not by preachers, but trained artists. For the same class, the drama- tisation of the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' by Dr. 17 242 HENR V IR VING. George Mac Donald and his clever family, is void of offence. Yet the actors who personified the creations of iEschylus and Sophocles would have been astonished could they have foreseen that their profession would be alternately patronised, petted, and preached at ; outlawed in the land of Shakespeare ; refused the rites of decent burial in the land of Moliere ; and not safe even now from misconstruction. Reflecting on the vicissitudes of his art, an actor might be tempted to the conclu- sion that holding the mirror up to Nature was the most thankless of occupations. He is repaid by the delight his craft affords to thousands, and by the appreciation it has won from some of the noblest of human intellects ; but when a wave of prejudice, a little higher than usual, dashes in his face, he is distracted by the insoluble puzzle that a large section of the community still believes him to have some responsibility for the perpetuity of evil." Mr. Irving then proceeded to combat the state- ment of an American professor to the effect that an actor's study is not how to think, but how to represent to the senses of an audience, and that acting is mere dramatisatio^n to eye and ear, not to the mind. " The apt pupil," retorted Mr. STUDENT AND PL A YGOER. 2 13 Irving, " may chance to learn quite as much in a single evening at the theatre as he will learn from a whole course of lectures. . . . He may have an admirable idea of ' Hamlet ' in the abstract. Fully to comprehend the play as it is set before him, his mind should be saturated with all the lore of research and commentary. But Hamlet is flesh and blood, not a bundle of philosophies. The student may recognise all his ideas and more in the scene ; but above all he will find what •critical investigation cannot give him — the tones of a human voice vibrating with passion, tender- ness, and mockery, together with the subtle play of look and gesture which impart form and colour lo the thought. The American writer I have •quoted suggests that Hamlet's address to the players proves that the poet held their craft in light esteem. I should have thought that ' to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure ' was a noble function for any art. . . . Seeing that Shakespeare was himself an actor, that his genius was distinctly inspired by the stage, that every play abounds with evidence of what he owed to his knowledge of stage effect, it is not surprising that he should pay so high a tribute to 244 HENR V IR VING. the art which, if words have any meaning, he clearly recognises as the great interpreter of his- works. None but an actor would have conceived and executed the marvellous climax of the play- scene in ' Hamlet.' Had Shakespeare attached slight importance to the acted drama he would never have put into Hamlet's brain the notable device which led to the confirmation of his uncle's guilt : ' I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have, by the very cunning of the scene, Been struck so to the soul, that presently They have proclaimed their malefactions.' If the poet owed this idea to the stage, what must the interpreters of it owe to the stage ? Is it pos- sible that the student not gifted with phenomenal imagination can in his clor.et realise all the force of this episode as it is realised by the actor ? . . , There are people who fancy they have more music in their souls than was ever translated into har- mony by Beethoven or Mozart. There are others who think they could write poetry, paint pictures, in short do anything, if they only made the effort. To them what is accomplished by the practised' actor seems easy and simple. But as it needs the. skill of the musician to draw the full volume of " THINKING aloud:' 245 eloquence from the written score, so it needs the skill of the dramatic artist to develop the subtle harmonies of the poetic play. I challenge the acute student to ponder over Hamlet's renuncia- tion of Ophelia — one of the most complex scenes in all Shakespeare — and say that he has learned more from his meditations than he could be taught by players whose intelligence is equal to his own." When Mr. Irving came to discuss the soliloquies in Shakespeare, he was on ground peculiarly his own ; for no actor of our day has ever been more successful in laying bare the innermost secrets of the mind. " It is not only the stress and strain of emotion which in Shakespeare are most powerfully realised on the stage. The actor should also have a mastery of intellectual self-communion. The whole working of Hamlet's or Macbeth's mood may be laid bare in the soliloquies. To pre- sent the m.an thinking aloud is the most difficult achievement of our art. Here the actor who has no real grip of the complexities of the character, but merely recites the speeches with a certain grace and intelligence, will be untrue. The more intent he is upon the words and the less on the ideas that dictated them, the more likely is he to 246 HENR V IR VING. lay himself open to the charge of mechanical in- terpretation. It is perfectly possible to express to an audience all the involutions of thought, the speculation, doubt, wavering, which reveal the meditative but irresolute mind. Hamlet's spirit may be read in his face, and as the varying shades, of fancy pass and repass this mirror, they may yield more material to the studious playgoer than he is likely to get by the most diligent poring over the text. It is a commonplace that the face is sometimes a more exact indication of the thought than the most perfect utterance. An eloquent look, a speaking gesture, or a suggestive pause, may be worth an infinity of footnotes. One of the greatest charms to the spectator is to watch the by- play of the actor, to see the poison of lago's devilry stealing into Othello's soul, to observe the gradations of passion, the transition of undoubting love into the slow agony of misgiving, and the frenzy of despair. How is the reader to realise in his mind's eye what is actually depicted on the actor's face ? Can he * in a fiction, in a dream of passion, force his soul so to his own conceit, that from her working ' he can evolve all the features of a fine stage picture ? see the great Caesar, per- turbed by presentiments of doom, or watch the THE RECRUITS OF THE STAGE, 2^7 coming of the tragedy in the looks of Brutus, Cassius, and Casca ? " Most forcible of all was the evidence that Shake- speare had been made a reality to many students by the latest dramatic exposition of his plays. " It would surprise the misbeliever in the potency of Shakespeare on the stage to know- how many University students, not content with reading the poet, are ambitious to embody his creations. It is one of the most encouraging signs of the future of dramatic art, that ever}' year finds an increasing number of educated men and women, willing to brave all the drudgery of an arduous calling, in the hope of rising some day to its highest walk. They are inspired not by the mere enthusiasm of inexperience, but by the firm conviction that there is always a great and appreciative public for the artists who have caught even something of the spirit of our dramatic ideals. This was some time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. Thousands who flock to-day to see a Shakespeare represen- tation, which is the product of much reverent study of the poet, are not content to regard it as a scenic exhibition. Without it Shakespeare might have been for many of them a sealed book; 24 J IlENR Y IR VI NG. but many more have been impelled by the vivid realism of the stage to renew studies which other occupations or lack of leisure have arrested. The great sale of the acting edition of a Shake- speare play is a simple attestation of this fact. Candidates in competitive examinations still read Shakespeare with their tutors, but they are, nevertheless, most anxious for the performance of the particular play in which they are inter- ested. They have learned that the artist is a not less instructive teacher than the commentator." Figures are more substantial than theories ; and it may be pertinently added that the sale of the Lyceum version of " Romeo and Juliet " reached 10,000 copies, while that of " Much Ado About Nothing " was even larger. This is a pleasant little nut for the sceptics who believe that the Lyceum audiences care less for the play than for the scenery. That Mr. Irving is an emotional as well as an intellectual actor none who have entered into the spirit of his art can doubt. The union of intel- ligence and sensibility of which Talma speaks is conspicuous in everything he has done. It was natural, therefore, that he should hold a view of his art strongly antagonistic to that propounded HAS PUNCH FEELINGSI 249 by Diderot in his " Paradoxe sur le Comedien." A translation of this work by Mr. Walter Herries Pollock has been published under the title of ■" The Paradox of Acting," and in an interesting preface Mr. Irving has combated Diderot's theory that a true actor should never feel. With the practical insight characteristic of the dramatic instinct, he brings the matter to the test of illustration. " When Macready played Virginius after burying 2iis loved daughter, he confessed that his real experience gave a new force to his acting in the most pathetic situations of the play. Are we to suppose that this was a delusion, or that the sensibility of the man was a genuine aid to the actor? Bannister said of John Kemble that he was never pathetic because he had no children. From this I infer that Bannister found that the moral quality derived from his domestic associations had much to do with his own acting. And John Bannister was a great actor. Talma says that when deeply moved he found himself making a rapid and fugitive observation on the alteration of his voice ; and on a certain spasmodic vibration it contracted in tears. Has not the actor who can thus make his own leelings r so HENR Y IR I 'ING. part of his art an advantage over the actor who never feels, but makes his observations solely from the sensibility of others ? Untrained actors,, yielding to excitement on the stage, have beeni known to stumble against the v/ings in impas- sioned exit. But it is quite possible to feel all the excitement of the situation and yet be per- fectly self-possessed. This is art which the actor who loses his head has not mastered. It is. necessary to this art that the mind should have, as it were, a double consciousness, in which all the emotions proper to the occasion may have- full swing, while the actor is all the time on the alert for every detail of his method. . . . Nor need it be contended that the actor of sensibility must always feel, that, as Diderot suggests, he- must wear himself out by excess of soul. It may be that his playing will be more spirited one- night than another. But the actor who combines- the electric force of a strong personality with a. m.astery of the resources of his art, must have a greater power over his audiences than the passionless actor who gives a most artistic simu- lation of the emotions he never experiences." A striking illustration of Mr. Irving's point may be drawn from his own experience. He has ofteni THE TESTS OF PERSONAL ART. 251 said that when playing Hamlet in provincial theatres, and not feeling sure of the stage- carpenter, he has firmly gripped the chair into which he throws himself at the end of the play- scene, perfectly alive, even in the whirlwind of his passion, to the risk of a tumble. The most practical passage in Mr. Irving's preface to " Talma on the Actor's Art " — which he called the vadc mccuin of the actor's calling — has already been quoted. But another interesting passage is worthy of reproduction to show how earnestly Mr. Irving keeps ever before him a noble and exacting ideal. " To the actor the whole field of human nature is open. Whether in the ideal world of the stage, or in the actual world of social intercourse, his mind is continually accumulating impressions which become a part of his artistic being. This experience is common to the students of other arts; but the actor has this advantage, that all he learns is embodied in his ov/n personality, not translated through some medium, like the painter's canvas, or the novelist's page. At the same time this purely personal art is subjected to the most severe tests. It is easier to detect a flaw in an actor's impersonation than an improbability in a HENRY IRVING. book. One man enacts a character before many — a false intonation jars immediately upon the the ear ; an unnatural look or gesture is promptly convicted by the eye. . . . There must be no suggestion of effort. The essence of acting is its apparent spontaneity. Perfect illusion is attained when every effect seems to be an accident. If the declamation is too measured, the sense of truth is at once impaired ; if, on the other hand, it falls only the shadow of a shade below the level of appropriate expression, the auditor's sympathy is instantly checked. * The union of grandeur without pomp, and nature without triviality,' is of all artistic ideals the most difficult to attain ; and with this goal before him no actor can feel that his art is a plaything." To the Nineteenth Century Mr. Irving has con- tributed three papers under the general title of " An Actor's Notes on Shakespeare." The first and least important, which appeared in April, 1877, was intended to show that the Third Mur- derer in " Macbeth " — by some commentators supposed to be Macbeth himself — was " an atten- dant" who figures in the opening of the third act. This speculation is sustained by a variety of reasons, which show the writer's mastery of detail. DID OPHELIA KNOW? ^Ji ]\Iuch more interesting is the article on " Hamlet and Ophelia" (May, 1S77), in which Mr. Irving essays to show, not only that Hamlet was well aware before his last interview with his love that he was watched by the King and Polonius, but also that Ophelia was unaware of the plot. The aim is to vindicate Ophelia from the suspicion of weak insincerity, if not of downright falsehood, when she answers Hamlet's sudden question — "Where's your father?" with the plaintive "At home, my lord." Mr. Irving's stage-management of the prelude to this scene is here explained. *' There is nothing in the text or stage- directions that convicts of actual complicity. Her feeling was probably somewhat vague and con- fused, especially as she would not be taken more into confidence than was necessary. Much that was said in the interview between the Queen, the King, and Polonius might have been spoken apart from Ophelia; the room in the castle being probably a large one, in which a knot of talkers might not be overheard by a pre-occupied person. When suggestions of this sort are condemned as over-refined, it is, I think, too often forgotten that it must be settled between stage-managers and players, in every case, how the latter are to dis- 254 IlENR V IR VI NG. pose themselves when on the stage ; that Shake- speare himself must have very much affected the complexion of his plays by his personal directions; that the most suggestive and therefore most valu- able of these have been lost ; and that in repro- ducing old plays, in which there is much scope and even great necessity for subtle indications of this kind, nothing can be too refined which intel- ligibly conveys to an audience a rational idea of each individuality and a consistent theory of the whole." These words are a key to Mr. Irving's system of representing Shakespeare ; and they show how infinitely greater is the labour expended by him on the play than the care, thorough as that is, devoted to its pictorial setting. The rest of this paper is a subtle analysis of Hamlet's emotions in the scene with Ophelia, emotions of which Mr. Irving's acting is a more vivid vehicle than his words. The third section •of the " Actor's Notes " (February, 1S79) is an explanation of Mr. Irving's reason for discarding the tradition which prescribes the use of actual pictures or medallions when Hamlet enjoins his mother to — " Look here upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers." A COMPLIAIENT FROM SALVmr, 255 l\Ir. Irving contended that the text itself did not authorise the use of such pictures, and laid stress on Hamlet's injunction, " Look you, now, what follows," as a proof that the " counterfeit present- ment " was in the mind's eye oviXy. Whether this theory be justifiable or not, there can be little doubt that the scene gains much in imaginative force from Mr. Irving's treatment. The Queen needs no portraits, miniature or full length, to sharpen the contrast between "the mildew'd ear" and " his wholesome brother." So much was Signor Salvini struck by the innovation, that he paid its author the compliment of adopting it. Mr. Irving took this opportunity to protest against excessive realism in the representation of Shake- speare, and indulged in a good-humoured jest at the expense of Mr. Tom Taylor, who, in a revival of "Hamlet" under his direction, had insisted on placing what looked like a crane near the platform at Elsinore, apparently in order to suggest the commercial activity of the Danes. A fitting supplement to these contributions to the literature of the stage is the article entitled ■*' The Production of a Play," which appeared in the New York Spirit of the Times. In this Mr. Irving described in much detail the working of ? r 6 HEiVR Y IR VI NG. the great organisation behind the scenes at the Lyceum, from the rehearsals of the play down to the marshalling of the gas-men in the " flies." How the text is first prepared, how the characters are allotted, how the actors are fitted into their respective grooves, and all the angles of individual susceptibility rounded off, how the supernumer- aries are inspired with the spirit of the scene, how the scenery is manipulated at the right moment, and how an intricate combination of lights is so arranged that every gas-man is in his place in the nick of time — all this is set forth with a fulness of knowledge which makes it clear that some of the faculties of a great general are needed to form a great manager. CHAPTER XII. FERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. HAT manner of man is he who has been the cynosure of English playgoers iot a dozen years ? If his impersonations are, as Mr. Archer acutely remarks, so many projections of his own individuality, how much individuality has he left in private life ? There is a story told of Mr. Tennyson that somebody fol- lowed him for a long time in the hope of catching some pearl of poetic wisdom from his lips. For days, and even weeks, the quest for this holy grail was unsuccessful. The enthusiastic disciple- never heard a word. At last he had the happiness-- to stand behind the Laureate one day while the- latter, who was accompanied by Mrs. Tennyson, was gazing at a picture in the Royal Academy. The precious moment came. The poet spoke, iS 258 IIENR Y IR VING. *' \\y dear," he said, " I think I'll go and have some stout." This is just the kind of legend which a cynical person might tell about Mr. Irving for the con- fusion of enthusiasts who fancy, when they see the actor in the street, and catch a glimpse of the pale and pensive face under the very broad- brimmed hat, that he is turning over in his mind some new reading of Shakespeare. The truth is that Mr. Irving is not an actor off the stage. He does not wrap himself in the ponderous majesty which became a second nature to John Kemble ; nor does he habitually talk blank verse like Mrs. Siddons. On the other hand, he has shown no inclination for the vagaries of Edmund Kean, who used to row up the Thames with a small lion in the stern of the boat. Yet simple and natural as j\Ir. Irving's manner is, you cannot look long at those clear-cut features, which so admirably express the mingling of sensibility, refinement, and resolution, nor listen long to his talk about his art, without feeling that here is a strong man whose energetic character is streaked with imagination, as quartz is streaked with the precious metal. Mr. Irving's pictures have generally been un- satisfactory. When he is photographed he nearly THE DESPAIR OF PHOTOGRAPIJERS. 259 always looks as if the apparatus at the back of his head had made him uncomfortable. He seems to have an objection to photographs "in character," for of late years only two have been taken. One was Vanderdecken and the other Shylock. Photo- graphers are vainly besieged by people who wonder why they cannot have their favourite as Hamlet or Charles I.; and prentice hands have made rapid sketches of the actor when he is on the stage, sketches which have afterwards been photographed with painful results. To pictorial posters I\Ir Irving has never lent the light of his counten- ance ; but he has been moulded in statuettes and medallions without end. Perhaps the photo- graphers have always been flurried by his restless desire, as soon as he is seated, to get up and walk about. When an idea seizes him, which happens often, he is apt to start from his chair and pace the room with hasty strides, while he illustrates his topic with rapid gestures which make the listener feel the exceeding commonplace of sitting still. Yet, at other times, he will lapse into a reverie, and, talking more to himself than to you, relate, perhaps, some story of his early days, like a man in a dream. llie painters have been on the whole mora i 60 HENR V IR VING. fortunate than the photographers, and at least one portrait has been produced which will give posterity a far better idea of Mr. Irving's person- ality than any number of counterfeit presentments of the "Alas! poor Yorick" species. This is the portrait painted by Mr. Millais for the Garrick Club. With astonishing skill the artist has caught the nervous vividness, so to speak, of the mobile face, and that peculiar distinction which would make any one who saw Mr. Irving for the first time in a crowd say, " There goes a remark- able man." Two other Academicians, Mr. Edwin Long and Mr. Frith, have painted Mr. Irving with unequal success. Mr. Long's portraits of the actor as Richard III. and Hamlet have every element except that of strength, while Mr. Frith's ambition to put Mr. Irving into a crowd of celebrities on one canvas has produced a sort of ghostly schoolboy. Another notable portrait is Mr. Whistler's Philip II., which would be a very satisfactory work if it did not suggest the Colossus of Rhodes in Spanish attire.^ ** Irving is easy to caricature," remarked Mr. Millais, " because his face is so full of character.'* And certainly no public man of our time has been ' Of the sculptors, the late Mr. Krodie executed a fine bust of Mr. Irvin"-, winch is now in the possession of the Baroness lUirdett-Coutts ; and Mr. C)nslow Ford has won high encomiums for his statue of tlie actor as Hamlet. A RECIFE FOR CARICATURE. 261 more persistently caricatured. He may fairly be said to divide this kind of honour with Mr. Gladstone, for wherever you see a comical picture of the Prime Minister, you are pretty sure to find a similar compliment to the actor in the same window. The recipe for a caricature of Mr. Irving is simple. Exaggerate a strongly marked eye- brow, elongate a very strong chin, put an enormous pince-nez on an extravagantly high-bridged nose, add an impossible wilderness of hair, an attenu- ated frame, and shadowy limbs, and the joy of the caricaturist is complete. Mr. Irving must have learned pretty early to regard such perform- ances with equanimity, for he used to garnish the mantelpiece of his dressing-room at the theatre with these appurtenances of fame. The best story about his legs he tells himself. A parson told him that the only thing which troubled a tender conscience in the theatre was the ballet. *' What do you think of the ballet, Mr. Irving ? " The actor said he knew no more about it than his questioner. " But you have a ballet in your theatre." Mr. Irving disclaimed that honour. ** Then why is it that so much is written about your legs?" But let us glance for a moment at the actor's 252 IIENR Y IR VI NG. abode. It is an unromantic spot, that house in Bond Street. Grimness, not to say grime, is suggested by the windows, which seem to have been designed for any purpose save that of admitting Hght. How many people gaze curiously at that uninviting exterior every day ! Some of them seem to devote most of their spare time to loitering on the opposite side of the street in the hope of catching sight of Mr. Irving when he goes out to the theatre. Occasionally an admirer makes a rush at him, seizes him by the hand, mutters some incoherent ecstasies, and then flies round the nearest corner. Very " uncritical," this proceeding ; but when a liberal allowance is made for the effect of the moon on a certain order of mind, there must remain a considerable number of hero-worshippers who feel that they cannot be sufficiently grateful to the man to whom they owe some of the highest and purest delight of their lives. The door opens, and we are lost in gloom. Presently the eye, becoming accustomed to the darkness, discerns some pictures on the staircase wall. Here are bewitching ladies on curvetting steeds, and near them two gentlemen who are submitting their differences of opinion to the test A STAIRCASE TRAGEDY. 263 cf cold steel. No doubt the ladies are the cause of the fury which is continued all the way upstairs, until, impatient for the denouement, you arrive breathless at a spot where the soft glow from a coloured globe discloses one of the combatants being run through the body, while the other is simpering with satisfaction. This tragedy over, 3'ou have leisure to reflect that the old prints are intended to illustrate the delicacies of carte and tierce, and that the fair riders are innocent of everything except a professional anxiety to show their horsemanship. There was a time when, turning into one of the rooms, you would have found yourself in the society of two very old and very black oak cabinets, a gigantic bookcase surmounted by a raven, probably the ominous bird which doth " bellow for revenge" in the play-scene in "Hamlet;" some fine old prints, notably one of Garrick, and another of that plump-faced youth. Master Betty, whom an inexplicable craze once christened the English Roscius ; the Colossus of Rhodes ; and a mantelpiece adorned with a curiously wrought shield, illustrating a passage in the lives of Adam and Eve ; the whole illuminated by the actor's own candles, as Thackeray would have said, by 264 IIEXR V JR VING. night, and by a dim religious light shed through the stained-glass windows in the day. But these curiosities have been whisked away to Mr. Irving's house at Hammersmith ; so we mount a little higher and enter the actor's sanctum. In the old days there was crowded into this room such a collection of interesting odds and ends that even a visitor who could calculate space with mathematical nicety found it difficult to sit down. Pictures, books, tables, a piano, a bust, a cabinet, and the inevitable suggestion of church in the windows, bewilder you even now before you begin to appreciate the artistic disarray. Mr. Irving seems to dislike nothing so much as a formal arrangement of his furniture. Even in this he can be neither commonplace nor classic. There is no severe assortment of ornaments in pairs. Everything looks as if it had been set down by accident, and yet the whole effect is as tasteful as the most fastidious sense could desire. You look around, and your eye is immediately caught by a vivid little sketch of Mr. Irving as Hamlet, lying at Ophelia's feet, and shading his eyes with the fan as he watches the king. This is the work of Mr. F. W. Lawson. Next to it is a picture by Mr. Cattermole, representing an ideal AN ODD MEDLEY. 265 Hamlet, with auburn hair, addressing the players. Opposite is one 'of Mr. Lawson's " children of the Great City," a typical little girl-Arab, standing at a street corner. Can that be a bust of Miss Terry ? So it is ; but the ever-changing charm of that winning actress's face cannot be reproduced in marble. Here is a cabinet full of curiosities — old rings once worn by famous actors, reminis- cences of Garrick and Kean, Daniel Clarke's lan- tern — an odd medley of theatrical properties and souvenirs from Mr. Irving's friends. And then the books ! Every edition of Shakespeare seems to be represented on these shelves, not to speak of individual copies of the plays already performed at the Lyceum, or of those which Mr. Irving's ex- haustless energy has prepared for representation at some future time. Books of costume, some of them of great value, occupy a considerable space in this library, and a glance into them may reveal where the actor's unerring eye for the picturesque has found some fine harmony in colour. Mr. Irving's love of contrast, of light and shade in art, is visible everywhere, and it is especially note- worthy in the two striking portraits of Garrick which hang outside the door, just over a collec- tion of old swords — the one representing " little 2C6 HENRY IRVING. David " in a tragic mood, his piercing eyes almost flashing as you look at them ; and the other full of the irresistible drollery of Abel Drugger. There is only one other room like this. It is a charming little nook in the old house at Ham- mersmith, which Mr. Irving has lately recon- structed, and which promises to be one of the most delightful retreats in London. In this room an artist might well lose himself in a day-dream, if he were not disturbed by the three enormous dogs which scamper madly over the beautiful lawn, and then rub their noses against the win- dow-pane, gazing hungrily at the stranger. If Mr. Irving wants an inspiration for the character of Mephistopheles, he should find it in that bronze statuette of Faust's familiar. Should he have Don Quixote in his mind's eye, there is the woful knight in full panoply. There, too, is an impressive head of Dante, and a still more vivid remembrance of Verona in a curious effigy of Friar Laurence, who gazes wistfully at the por- trait of a beautiful boy, said to have been the original Romeo. And surely that is Imogen before the cave of Belarius ; while all around are books enough to summon from the vasty deep of litera- ture the countless spirits of poetry and art. 7^ HE OLD LADY AT S TRA TFORD- ON- A I 'ON. 267 Amidst such surroundings it is easy to under- stand that Mr. Irving's artistic development makes it imperative for him to apply all his sense of the beautiful to the realisation of his dramatic ideals. Always an admirable talker, he is most animated and incisive when discussing this question of scenery. You feel that he is earnest about it because to a man whose business it is to bridge the real and the ideal, and who has entered thoroughly into both, the problem is not how to "amaze, indeed, the very faculties of eyes" with splendour of decoration, but how to do simple justice to the poet's conception. Whatever may be said with truth against Mr. Irving's manage- ment, it can never be said that he has deliberately sacrificed one iota of dramatic principle to win popular applause by mere spectacular display. But after he has abandoned himself to a frolic with his dogs, you may find the actor in another mood. He tells a story not only with the quiet humour which illustrates the keen observation of the man of the world, but often with a gaiety which is irresistible. Somebody said one day that the old lady who acts as custodian of Shakespeare's house at Stratiord-on-Avon had made disparaging- remarks about Mr. Irving. He might be a very 2 5S HENR Y IR VING. fine actor, she said, but he could not care much for the great poet he professed to admire, for he had never taken the trouble to pay Stratford a visit. This in the old lady's eyes was an unpardonable offence. " Such is fame," remarked Mr. Irving. " I have been there, but she doesn't remember me. I went with a friend, and just opposite Shakespeare's house we met a native, and asked him whose place that was over there. ' Dunno,* he said. ' Come, come, you must know who lives there. Is his name Shakespeare ? ' ' Dunno.' ' But can't you tell us whether he's alive now?' ' Dunno.' ' But surely you know whether he was famous — whether he ever did anything? ' ' Yees, he— he ' ' Well, what did he do? ' 'He writ summut.' * That's it — we were sure you knew all about him. What did he write ? ' * He writ a boible.' " It is plain that as a manager Mr. Irving is more successful than Macready. Apart from the consideration that there are more playgoers now than there were in Macready's time, there is one potent fact which goes far to explain Mr. Irving's better fortune. He is devoted to his art, and Macready was not. All who knew Macready knew that his heart was not in his profession. A STORY OF MACREADY. 25) His writings show that he was never weary of cursing the miserable fate which had made him an actor. Great as was his reputation, he took no pride in it, and to the last regarded the stage almost with loathing. Phelps, who, as we have seen, had something of the same spirit, said on one occasion that the qualities which would make success on the stage might be more usefully and honourably devoted to some other calling. Much as Macready's acting was admired by his contem- poraries, and valuable as are the traditions he created, his unhappy temper made a wide popu- larity impossible. People cannot be very enthu- siastic about an actor who despises the profession which has made his fame. There are many stories of Macready's deplorable infirmity, but one which, perhaps, is little known, has the advantage of a redeeming humour. The Queen was anxious to have a dramatic performance at Windsor, and commanded Charles Kean to organise it. Kean felt that it would be a graceful compliment to Macready to solicit his invaluable co-operation. Macready consented to act, but he would not at- tend the rehearsals of the play, which was "Julius Csesar." Kean was much annoyed at this, but nothing was said, and the performance was given 2 /J HENR Y IR VI NG. at Windsor with very great success. When all was over, Macready, who had addressed no word to anybody, save on the stage, stalked off to his dressing-room. It was the custom for the actors to sup together after the entertainments at the Castle, and Kean, though incensed at Macready's hehaviour, sent him an invitation to join the company at table. The messenger knocked at door of the dressing-room. " Come in," growled the tragedian. " If you please, sir, Mr. Kean has sent me " ** Go out ! " When this gracious reply was reported to Kean, he was furious. " Oh, I'll go and make it all right," said an actor who knew Macready well. So he knocked at the door, and announced his name. " Come in, sir." " INIr. Macready, I heard just now that Mr. Kean had sent to you " " If Mr. Kean has any com- munication to make to me, I refer him to my lawyer," thundered Macready. Probably this was the first and only time that an invitation to supper was referred to a legal adviser. Mr. Irving, on the other hand, has neglected no opportunity of exalting his profession. It is not too much to say that the English stage owes more to him for its social elevation than it owes to any one of his predecessors. He has brought CA IT J VA TED Dl I TNES. 27 1 back to the theatre a great number of people who had learned to shun it. and has made playgoers of men and women who a few years ago were wont to boast that they had never seen a dramatic entertainment. Dissenting divines open their hearts to him and wish him God-speed. A popular Presbyterian minister in Edinburgh, who had never visited a theatre in his life, was per- suaded to see Mr. Irving in " Hamlet," and for genuine sympathy and honest judgment his tribute to the actor may be commended to the attention both of the class who still regard the stage as an abomination, and of writers sitting in the seat of the scorners, and assuming that any one who is not an habitual playgoer must be uncritical.^ It must be this love and mastery of his art which make Mr. Irving's name a talisman even to thousands who have never seen him. He is the repository of all manner of confidences from all manner of people in all stations of life. Many who have entered into the spirit of his acting seem to feel instinctively that a man who has made real and vivid to them some of the greatest creations of the human mind must have a heart ' See Appendix. 272 IIENR Y IK VI NG. alive to the longings and sufferings of his fellow- creatures. But this fascination extends to many more to whom he is quite unknown, and who, often from remote parts of the world, send their simple messages of hearty goodwill. Something has already been said of the recruits Mr. Irving has won to the stage. The remarkable growth of amateur dramatic clubs is another sign of his influence. When by a misconception of an after-supper speech he was supposed to have poured contumely on the whole race of amateur actors, there ran a thrill cf horror through the country. At first blush there seemed something so wanton in the attack that most amateurs for a time were speechless. It was as if some highly respected veteran, after patting a small boy kindly on the head, had suddenly whipped out a birch and chas- tised him. Many of the dramatic clubs owned Mr. Irving as godfather, and rejoiced in the borrowed magic of Lis name. Everywhere he was regarded as a confidant who was sure to sympathise with amateurs in their struggles with the listlessness or open hostility of uncultured neighbours. Many a youth lingered fondly and hopefully over Mr. Irving's anecdote of his vigil at the door of the Freemason's Tavern, when he watched the en- AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND. 273 trance and the exit of celebrated actors who attended the annual dinner of the Royal General Theatrical Fund. That Mr. Irving, of all men, should turn as it were upon his offspring, and incontinently rend them, was therefore nothing short of a cataclysm. He was overwhelmed with remonstrances, and only by protracted explana- tions, both public and private, was he able to make it clear that he had been wholly misunder- stood, and that, so far from having intended to throw discredit upon amateur actors as a body, he regarded them as an aid to the advancement of intelligence. Mr. Irving's social r.uccess has been unstinted. He has done more than any other actor to break down that pride which prompted too many people to regard those who have made the stage their sphere of life as an inferior caste, very well behind the footlights, but not fit to be admitted into society. In the highest circles in which genius has a place of honour, Mr. Irving is a representa- tive figure. It is true that much of this esteem is due to his high personal character, his generosity, his amiability, his courtesy. The critics who are always trying to get at the back of the north wind seem to suggest that without these qualities his 19 274 IIENR V IR VING. success would have been comparatively small. ** In these," says one, " as in all his other merits and most of his defects, nature seems to have foiescen the circumstances in which he would be placed, and to have provided him with all that could be helpful to him. There are some men to whom the gifts of even the most malignant fairies are in course of time transmuted into blessings. They seem to have bribed the constellations at their birth, to have ' corrected fortune ' in cut- ting of the cards of life, to have cogged the dice in their game of fate." So, you see, that if Mr. Irving had only been a cross-grained curmudgeon, if he had been grasping and niggardly, if he had combined in his own person some of the worst faults of famous actors in the past, if, in a word, he had not been a high-bred gentleman as well as a great artist, then the success of his talents might have corresponded exactly with a foot-rule measurement. As it is, his open-handed and hospitable nature makes friends of people who ought to be soured by his mannerisms, and pro- vokes Diogenes to declare that nearly all the sources of critical intelligence are adulterated by " chicken and champagne." This is almost as .^rood as the shibboleth which is the latest out- UNSPOILED B Y FOR TUNE. 2 7 5 come of a severe and unbiassed judgment of Mr. Irving. *' He indicates rather than attains the highest possibilities ; " as if any finite intelligence ever did attain the highest possibilities. What !Mr. Irving's art indicates is a world of imagination into which, but for him, many playgoers would never have entered. What he has attained is a higher point of dramatic interpretation than any of his English-speaking contemporaries can claim — a higher point, indeed, in more than one of his tragic impersonations than has probably ever been at'.ained before. " At that time," said a brother actor, speaking •of ]\Ir. Irving as a very young man, " he was recognised only by the few ; by the many his mannerisms were considered drawbacks to him ; but his ways were just the same then as now. There was the same conviction of success about him that exists now in its realisation." There is something more than this. Mr. Irving is wholly unspoiled by good fortune. His head has never been turned. He has never made stepping-stones of friends and then forgotten them. His social conquests have never weaned him from his absorb- ing love of his art. It is no secret that, did he Avish it, Mr. Irving might now bear a title. There Avas a strong disposition in very high places to 276 HENRY IRVIN^ extend to the head of a noble profession this, recognition of great public services. But Mr. Irving preferred to remain a commoner for reasons, which were sufficiently explained in the speech to> his fellow-actors, to which reference has already- been made. "There is a mode of rewarding actors which has been much talked of lately — the con- ferring of titles. Grateful as we would be for the motive which would dictate such an honour, the acceptance, I believe, would be a mistake. Titles for painters, if you like — they paint at home ; for writers — they write at home ; for musicians — they compose at home. But the actor plays his part in the presence of the public, amongst his colleagues, without whom he is powerless ; and tO' give him any distinction which others would not enjoy would be prejudicial to his success, and fatal, I believe, to his popularity." Mr. Irving' s. motive for preserving the democracy of the play- Sll must be respected even by those who think that an honour conferred upon an English actor by his Sovereign would give the final blow to the social prejudice against which the dramatic profession has had so long to struggle. " In the long run of popular remembrance, the best reward to be hoped for by those of us who- THE REWARD OF GREAT DEEDS. 277 most succeed is to be cited to unbelieving persons Avhen we are dead, as illustrations of the vast superiority of bj^-gone actors to any one who may be seen on the stage of the day." In one of his €ssays Mr. Irving has thus described the common lot of the foremost in his profession. Those who are grateful to him — and their name is legion — for his services to the English stage, for his ser- vices to the study of Shakespeare, for his services in beating down bigotry, and widening the domain of culture, have no doubt that, in the long run of popular remembrance, his great deeds will be held up as a high and stimulating example to all who pursue his noble art with an earnest spirit and with an unflagging zeal. APPENDIX. List of Parts Played by 1\Ir. Irving ix London Since October 6, 1866. Character. Play. Doricourt The Belle's Stratagem. Rawdon Scudamore {Original) Hunted Down. Harry Dornton Joseph Surface Charles Surface Count Falcon [Original) Charles Arundel Robert Audley Felix Featherley Henry Thorncote Charles Torrens Robert Macaire Charles Mowbray {Original) Ferment Road to Ruin. School for Scandal Do. Idalia. .My Aunt's Advice. Lady Audley's Secret Widow Well Won. Only a Clod. Serious Family. Robert Macaire. Tale of Procida. School of Reform. APPENDIX, The 0'Hoolagha.n {Original) Petruchio Bob Gassit {Original) Bill Sikes {Original) V-OOI ••• ••• ••• ••• Faulkland Redburn {Original) Robert Arnold {Original) Brown ... Young Marlow De Neuville Victor Dubois ... John Peerybingle Colonel Fitzherbert {Original) Compton Kerr {Original) ... Reginald Chevenix {Original) Alfred Skimmington {Original) Digby Grant {Original) Frank Friskly Colonel Kirk ... Landry Barbeau Jingle {Original) Mathias {Original) Jeremy Diddler Charles I. {Original) Eugene Aram {Original) Richelieu Philip {Original) Hamlet ... Macbeth Rapid Thaw. Katherine and Petruchio. Dearer than Life. Oliver Twist. London Assurance. The Rivals. Lancashire Lass. Not Guilty. Spitalfield's Weaver. She Stoops to Conquer. Plot and Passion. Ici On Parle Fran(,-ais. Dot. All For Money. Formosa. Uncle Dick's Darling Love or Money. Two Roses. Boots at the Swan. Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. Fanchette. Pickwick. The Bells. Raising the Wi:ic' Charles I. Eugene Aram. Richelieu. Philip. Hamlet. Macbeth. APPEND IX. 2:1 Othello J- 1*^ ^ ••• ••• ••• Tristan' Philip of Spain Richard Dubosc \ Lesurques I Louis ... Vanderdecken {Original) Claude Melnotte Sir Edward Mortimer Shylock Louis 1 k abien Synorix {Original) ... Modus Romeo Benedick Othello. Do. King Rene's Daughtei. Queen Mary. King Richard IIL Lyons Mail. Louis XL Vanderdecken. Lady of Lyons. Iron Chest. Merchant of V^enice. Corsican Brothers. The Cup. The Hunchback. Romeo and Juliet. Much Ado About Nothing. Mr. Edwin Booth on the English Stage. Before Mr. Irving's visit to America, Mr. Booth, yielding to the unappeasable interviewer, ex- pressed an interesting opinion of Mr. Irving both as an actor and a stage-manager. " Do you think," said the interviewer, '* that ' Mr. Irving also played this character in " lolanthe," Mr. Wills's dramatic version of the Danish poem. 282 APPENDIX. Mr. Irvin<^ is as ^reat an artist as our English cousins would have us believe?" "He is a thorough artist," said Mr. Booth ; *' and his earn- estness, his scholarly taste, his intellectuality, are as plainly seen m his acting as his sense of the picturesque is shown in his stage settings. He is an actor of great natural. ability and much polish ; his mannerisms are marked, and at first distract your attention, particularly in his peculi- arities of voice, but one soon becomes accustomed to them, and forgets them in the enjoyment of his admirable acting. As a stage-manager, he is de- spotic. He sits on the stage during rehearsals, watching every movement and listening to every word. If he sees anything to correct or alter, he rises and points out the fault, giving the proper form, when the scene is repeated. He commands all points, with an understanding that his will is absolute law, that it is not to be disputed, whether it concerns the entry of a mere messenger who bears a letter, or whether it is the reading of an important line by Miss Terry. From first to last he rules his stage with an iron will, but as an offset to this he displays a patience that is marvellous." Mr. Booth then proceeded to compare the thea- APPENDIX. ?S3- trical taste of English audiences with that of American audiences, very much to the advantage of the latter. Speaking of the attitude of English audiences toward Shakespeare, he complained of " the lack of sympathy, that quick appreciation of every line uttered, which at once makes itself felt across the footlights when to those acting; upon the stage and to those listening from the benches the play is equally familiar, and every scene is thoroughly anticipated, comprehended, and enjoyed. I do not say that the English people lack intelligence to comprehend or admire their great poet. I mean that they are not thoroughly accustomed to hearing him spoken from the stage. " After my London engagement I was to go to Manchester, Liverpool, and through the provin- cial circuit, and I proposed to go to certain cities and towns, relying on good stock scenery which I wanted prepared, and such as would do on any American tour. My English manager at once ridiculed the idea. ' Shakespeare, my dear sir,' he said, * will not draw a handful of people unless presented as Mr. Irving gives it at the Lyceum.* It is not that we are unaccustomed to equally elegant presentations of the drama, for we have 2S4 APPENDIX. had famous revivals in America, in which silks and satins and precious stones have been used with lavish profusion, and in which all that money, ingenuity, and the painter's art can do has been done to set the stage with regal splen- dour. But these spectacles have been short-lived with us, lasting only till the eye tired of the ^brilliant show ; but thereafter with ordinary scenic •setting and a good company the play itself has 'drawn, season after season, large and enthusiastic ■audiences. * The play's the thing,' after all with American audiences, if it is well played. *' I find the largest and most refined as well as most demonstrative audiences that 1 draw present at the performances" of, say, 'Richard III.,' or * Hamlet,' or ' Macbeth,' although I have fre- quently changed my bills to plays other than from my Shakespearian repertory, in order to test the public taste. The managers of the theatres where 1 have played, whose business interest it is to keep their fingers on the pulse of the public and note any change, have uniformly requested me, when for a needed relief I have urged an abandonment of Shakespeare for a few nights, not to do so, as I should abandon that which was most profitable to them, because most to the APPENDIX. z.%% people's taste. This I have found not alone in the great cities, but throughout the country. J^Iy Shakespearian nights have been my greatest successes, financially and popularly, during my late season, and in New York and Galveston — two cities as wide apart in all ways as two cities, could be — I found the same result. Were my- judgment wrong in this the public would soon convince me of my error, for you cannot compel Americans to come to the theatre to see that for which they do not care. They never hiss a per- formance, and uniformly treat actors with cour- tesy, but they will obstinately remain away from. a play they do not care for, and effectually kill it by neglect. Consequently were there not a. genuine admiration for Shakespeare in America, I should be obliged to do as Mr. Irving does in England — that is, to resort to such plays as ' The Bells,' ' The Courier of Lyons,' ^iz., which are; melodramas." There are one or two considerations which Mr.. Booth has overlooked. He forgets that when he he played in "Othello" at the Lyceum, Lon- doners did not flock to that theatre to feast their- eyes on the scenery, of which nobody took any particular notice. They went to see a great play .2SC APPENDIX. most admirably acted. \\v. Booth's English manager showed curious ignorance of the facts. That I'egal splendour is not needed to make Shakespeare a theatrical success in England is ■shown by the circumstance that, with scenery which cost next to nothing, Mr. Irving originally played Hamlet for two hundred nights in Lon- •don, and for another hundred or more in the provinces. Shakespearian nights at the Lyceum and in the principal cities of England and Scot- land are Mr. Irving's greatest successes — witness the unequalled popularity of " Hamlet," " Much Ado About Nothing," and "The Merchant of Venice." It follows from this that Mr. Irving is not obliged to resort to such plays as " The Bells," "The Courier of Lyons," and other melodramas. These are produced because they ;give scope to one side of his art, not because they are indispensable to his exchequer. "Shakespeare as Mr. Irving presents it at the Lyceum " is some- thing wholly different fi*om the " famous revivals in America " described by Mr. Booth ; and the pride of English audiences in the national dramatist need " moult no feather. appendix. 287 Mr. Irving's Macbeth. An admirable article \>v Mr. Edward R. Russell, in the Fortnightly Review lor October, 1883, gives ••a very clear insight into iMr. Irving's much-de- bated conception of Macbeth. •' The Macbeth of Mr. Irving," says Mr. Russell, ■*' is one of the latest illustrations of a progress •which has been all in one direction. The great actors of the clissical type, some before Garrick and some after, did much to secure for Shake- ■speare the rank among classics which was his due, iDut they did little to bring out the qualities which .are more peculiarly Shakespeare's own. This has l)een done more effectually by Garrick, by Kean, "by Macready, and by Irving, all of whom have 'been carped at as melodramatic, or as something •equivalent. These artists, more than critics or commentators, have enlarged and rendered more truthful the prevailing conceptions of Shakespeare's •characters; and these are found to be permanently •enriched by subtle and profound reflections, car- ried out in details of similar spirit, rather than by that rotund and nobly proportioned grandeur which is sometimes assumed to be the highest •intellectual achievement of theatrical art." 28S APPENDIX. Mr. Russell proceeds to argue that the con- tinual mistake of dramatic interpreters of the Kemble school, and some of their predecessors, was the supposition that Shakespeare's characters are always sublime. There was a tradition that Macbeth was a hero and Lady Macbeth a splendidil woman ; and the magnificence of Mrs. Siddons^ wholly obscured the true conception which stared every reader in the face as he pored over the- Shakespearian text. Macbeth was not a noble: and generous man, but a moral coward, though, brave in the field, as moral cowards have ofteni been. His wife was a strong-nerved and deter- mined woman, who would have scorned to con- template a villainy she dared not commit, and who was so unheroic as to brace her spirits with, drink before the murder of Duncan. There is. nothing splendid in her conduct or that of her husband. " Following from scene to scene, and from speech to speech, the wickedness of Macbeth, as. his wife sustains his spirits for the fulfilment of the guilt which is his chosen role, it seems in- credible — now that Irving has given us the cue for truer thought on the subject — that it should be levelled at any actor as a reproach that he: APPENDIX. 289 makes Macbeth craven and abject. What is the man else ? What greatness has he except in the field, in vivid eloquence, and in a desperate death at bay ? It is no weakness to shrink from crime. To recoil from a misdeed which promises wealth or power is to many a nature a task requiring vast strength of moral principle. No one would call r.Iacbeth a coward for being horrified at the thought of murder. But Macbeth was meanly wicked, because his mind did not revolt from the deed but only from its accompaniments and consequences. " When Irving, as Macbeth, goes off with his wife, saying, in a half -vacant, half- desperate manner, that the false face must hide what the false heart doth know, the spectator feels as he looks at him that his face will never be false enough to hide his trouble, and that Lady Mac- beth will have the intolerable responsibility of keeping up a curtain of fair show before the hor- rible realities which will presently and for long years be the basis of their greatness." And this is only one of many thoughtful points. With this reflective actor it is often in another scene than that in which they occur that the words of any particular passage receive their finest illustration. 20 290 APPENDIX. Sometimes there is great strength in his absten- tion from usual effects. For instance, previous Macbeths have made a great point by a complete change of manner, at the words v^hen Banquo's ghost vanishes, ' Why so, Being gone, I am a man again.' Mr. Irving, on the other hand, delivers these words in the anxious tone of a man who ought to feel relieved, but in reality does not. This is much truer. It may probably be taken as a rule that sudden absolute changes of manner, which leave no trace of the previous tone of feeling, are unnatural and melodramatic, except where there is an entire change of the material circumstances ; and even then they are not always true to life. So here is one among many instances of this actor being less instead of more melodramatic than others. But there is equal power in his enactments of each scene as it passes. In the dagger scene we perceive the profound meaning which, in a man of Macbeth's mould, lay in his previous undertaking to ' bend up each corporal agent to his terrible feat.' According to the notions which seem to prevail among a majority of critics, any such effort should be unnecessary. APPENDIX. 291 If he \vere going to battle, and were in danger of immediate death, his corporal energies would need no bracing; why should noble Macbeth become physically unstrung at the task of killing a weak old man in his sleep ? Shakespeare knew better, and Irving, as was said of him in Hamlet, ' will not go out of the character.' As he enters alone, and begins to follow the dagger in the air, which — significant phrase — marshals him the way that he was going, his gait is that of a sick man roused from his couch and feebly staggering to his feet amidst the swayings of an earthquake. As at length he creepingly approaches the door of the king's chamber, at the words, * Thou sure and firm set earth,' his feet, as it were, feel for the ground, as if he were walking with difficulty a step at a time on a reeling deck. When he returns after committing the murder, we see at once, if we are calm enough, what Irving has added to the achievements of his greatest prede- cessors in this scene. Hazlitt, whose comments on Macbeth are not altogether worthy of him, said of Edmund Kean, that he left it in doubt whether he was a king committing a murder, or a man committing a murder to be king, but that as a lesson in. common humanity his acting was 292 APPENDIX. heart - rending. * The hesitation,' says Hazlitt,, * the bewildered look, the manner in which his voice clung to his throat and choked his utter- ance, his agony and tears, the force of nature overcome by passion, beggared description.' This, must have sufficiently surprised the Kemble school. Irving has partly added, partly sub- stituted, an idea of tremendous physical prostra- tion, essential to the character of one whose bravery all leaves him when he is wickedly en- gaged. He reels, he totters, he can barely support himself. One fears that he will smear his wife's, arms, or stain his own clothes, with the bloody daggers, as he half holds them in a sort of para- lytic clutch, with all intelligent grip and manage- ment gone out of his fingers. His very articulation is as if his teeth were loosened and his tongue swollen. He flounders and all but faints in forlorn wretchedness and horror. His body sways as if already hanging on a gibbet. He is slowly dragged off the stage, moaning, more dead than alive. **To understand this it is not enough to feel the situation. We must know the true Macbeth. We must see, as his wife has seen from the first, that he is capable of suggesting and devising crime but not of insensibility in committing it. APPENDIX. 293 " The true Macbeth, as portrayed by our latest great actor, is neither a generous hero nor an in- sensate criminal. He is a man who, though not 'devoid of moral feeling, is without operative con- science — a man who, innocent of cruel tastes or malignant resolve to be a villain, is always, and iknows he is always, open to the suggestions and invitations of his besetting passion — a man ever ready to meet such cues to wickedness half-way — and not capable, even when racked by fear and misery, of entertaining the idea that moral con- siderations are to veto any act which he considers for his interest." A Scottish Clergyman's First Visit to A Theatre. The Rev. Dr. Kay, of Edinburgh, after witness- ing Mr. Irving's performance of Hamlet at the New Lyceum Theatre in that city, contributed a graphic account of his experiences to the Scotsman •of September 21, 1883. **When I enter the theatre I do not find the traditional glare and brilliancy which I have been accustomed to associate in my own mind with the theatre. Elegance, excellent taste, ornament 294 APPENDIX. subdued rather than multipHed — that was what I found ; and it occurred to me that were some of our churches as well and elegantly finished inside, the eye would be refreshed when the ear grew sluggish. A glance at the inmates of the house was to me somewhat disappointing. For man}'' years I had been told that the frequenters of the theatre were anything but respectable. I have somewhere in my desk a * track,' which professes to photograph them ; but the photograph must have been taken under the unfavourable circum- stances which result in a man having two noses, and a lady having a bad squint ; or, what is worse, the one hand that of a child, and the other that of an ogress. The ' dress circles ' looked very much like the folk who meet of an evening in Moray Place, a region devoted to fashion, and happily altogether free from grog-shops. Speak- ing of drawing-rooms, that at the Lyceum is exquisite. I advise all young ladies who are about to set up house to visit it ; in doing so they need not go into the play. The pit : I am sure I saw Charles Lamb there — a thinnish man, with a Jewish-like, brownish face, no whiskers, and an elderly sedate-looking lady, whom he seemed to have in safe keeping. I took it to be his sister. APPENDIX. 295 And the galleiy : a gentleman near me spoke of the 'gods,' and I, in my simplicity, turned my eyes up, not towards, but io, the ceiling, and have, just at this moment, a faint reminiscence of a crick in the neck got through the elevated nature of my investigations. Being advised to look a little lower, I then saw the ' gods,' and remark- ably well-behaved ' gods ' they were, too. I picked out a butcher's lad, whom I have seen passing up and down our street daily ; but his familiar and distracting whistle had ceased, and I could see the glitter of a tear as Ophelia strewed the stage with the rosemary and the rue. ' Oli power of genius,' thought I, ' that can bring a tear to the eye of a rubicund butcher's boy ; ' but she did it, and so wrought upon him that the red handkerchief, which is the ' badge of all his tribe,' was brought into frequent use. *' Passing from the audience to the stage, I need scarcely say that a more delightful evening, or one more entirely free from evil, so far as the acting and actors were concerned, could not have been spent anywhere. ' Free from evil ' is too negative ; I therefore say * more instructive and interesting.' First of all, Mr. Irving's Hamlet, of which I have read many criticisms, challenges 296 APPENDIX. my attention. I begin to comprehend wherein lies the mighty force of that interpretation, which leads me to say to myself — ' Here are two poets, Shakespeare and Irving, both of them makers, creators of something new.' I am no longer reading about Hamlet ; I am seeing him. I look and watch, and watch and look, for what some critics have called ' his mannerism,' but I cannot see it. I endorse all of praise which has been bestowed upon the representation of Hamlet by Mr. Irving, and begin to act as critic myself. Among minute things, which yet betray the master, and the result of incessant study, I note how the left hand begins to speak. There is a nimble deftness about it which I have never suspected to belong to the left hand ; a motion of it is half a sentence. I see how the sinuous motion of the limbs, as he lies at the feet of Ophelia, tells more than half of the story which issues in the abrupt breaking up of the court, as it witnesses Gonzago. I declare that the by-play of the features is inimitable and the elocution per- fect, save in one respect, which I now indicate. I was disappointed with the well-known ' soli- loquy ; ' and yet, had I either the time or the means to see Mr. Irving's Hamlet a second time, Al FEhDxX. -2.0^ 1 might change my mind about this point. What authority is there for emphasising the ' to ' in the sentence, ' To be, or not to be ? ' It seems to me that, in this well-known soliloquy, of which each man has his own ideal interpretation, Mr. Irving's manner is much too self-conscious. The words ought not to be spoken so loudly. He (Mr. Irving) wears to me the aspect of a man who ■wishes his audience to know that he is saying a liost of good things. I miss the absorbed air with ■which I have accustomed myself to think of Hamlet in this wonderful outpouring of the fruit •of a life-study. In a word, Hamlet should not meditate that he is meditating. Again, the tran- 'sitions from the feigned madness to the sharp, incisive common-sense of the Prince is at times too violent. I could wish the shading to be a little more gradual. There are times in which Ihe madness ought, as it seems to me, to run into Ihe sanity, and vice versa. The scene in which the Prince probes the guilty soul of the Queen is, from first to last, exquisite ; but in some parts, notably at the beginning of the interview, if such a thing could be compassable by the actor's art, of making love for his mother shine like a streak of light throur;h his anger, it would realise more 298 APPENDIX. perfectly, I think, the idea which Shakespeare had. To atone for what, I fear, is an imperti- nence in one who up till now has only read Hamlet, not seen him, let me say that, in one action in the ' grave ' scene, I saw what I con- ceive to be the perfection of the player's art — i.e.^ * to suggest.' As Mr. Irving returns Yorick's skull to the grave-digger, you should see with what infinite tenderness, nay, with what reverence, he handles the skull of the poor player. You are beginning to grow sentimental over it, and so is Hamlet, when the quick, short toss of the grave- digger recalls Hamlet and the audience to the fact that comedy may lie under the very ribs of death. " In the last scene everything is perfect. When I see the rapiers, I think (such a wayward creature is man) of the Masters Crummies, and how the little one beats the big one, and up and at it again is the mot d'ordre of the day. I smile as I contrast the two, the nimble, lightning-like flash of the tempered steel, with the one, two, three of transpontine conflicts. May I venture to suggest where a point could be made ? Why does Hamlet, in dying, and as he raises his face to the face of Horatio, his friend, not kiss him ? APPENDIX. 299 It seems to me the last touch which is wanting to a performance which the young among thfe audience will tell to their children as one of the highest efforts of human genius which they have ever seen. It is unlikely that I shall ever have the opportunity of saying 'Thank you' to Henry Irving for his work last night ; I do it now, and my whole heart goes with the words. "And Ophelia — aha, my masters, to have seen Miss Terry's Ophelia is to see the most per- fect personation of the character which can be seen in this year of grace, 1883. She realises for me what I have already conceived to be the true Ophelia. * Of course,' the reader will say, ' she may do that, and not be perfect ;: because your 'doxy is my 'doxy, it does not therefore follow that either, or both, is orthodoxy.'^ Certainly not, but this in reference to Miss Terry is not to be argued. In the words of the Scottish' song — 'She's a' my fancy painted her, She's charming, she's divine ! ' I do not know where I can address Shakespeare. Some of my friends v/ould be quite prepared tO' give me his address, but I am not sure but that the letter would find its way to ' the dead office." ICO AFFENDIX. If I could get parlance with him, I would say, * Do not, for any sake, litter the stage with jour dead bodies, as the denouement oi the finest tragedy that ever mortal man wrote.' " "ONWIN BROTHERS, THE CRESIIA*! TRHSP, CHIOVORTH AND LONDOH, NEW BOOKS FROM MR. U.WVIN'S LIST. New Work by Verxox Lee. EUPHORION: Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the Renais sance, s. d. ijy VtKNo.M Leb, Author ot " Ottilie," <^c. In I'uo Vols., crown Svo, cloth extra 21 o *^* Under the title of " Eiiphorion" the name given to the child of Faiist and Helena, is symbolised the Renaissance, born of Antiquity, atid fostered by the Uliddle Ages, as the child is of its parents. The work deals cliiefly luith Art and Literature, and •will almost certainly prove tJie greatest work that Vernon Lee has yet produced. New Novel from the Dutch. THE AMAZON: An i^sthetic Novel. By Carl Vosmaer. With a Preface by Professor George Kbers, and Frontispiece drawn specially for the Original Dutch Edition, by L. 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