ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE.

CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR FITNESS FOR STAGE-REPRESENTATION.

tained the principal parts. It seemed to embody and realise conceptions which had hitherto assumed no distinct shape. But dearly do we pay all our life after for this juvenile pleasure, this sense of distinctness. When the novelty is past, we find to our cost that instead of realising an idea, we have only materialised and brought down a fine vision to the standard of flesh and blood. We have let go a dream, in quest of an unattainable substance.

connection that absolute mastery over the Never let me be so ungrateful as to forget heart and soul of man, which a great dra- the very high degree of satisfaction which I matic poet possesses, has with those low received some years back from seeing for the tricks upon the eye and ear, which a player first time a tragedy of Shakspeare performed, by observing a few general effects, which in which those two great performers sussome common passion, as grief, anger, &c., usually has upon the gestures and exterior, can so easily compass. To know the internal workings and movements of a great mind, of an Othello or a Hamlet for instance, the when and the why and the how far they should be moved; to what pitch a passion is becoming; to give the reins and to pull in the curb exactly at the moment when the drawing in or the slackening is most graceful; seems to demand a reach of intellect of a vastly different extent from that which is employed upon the bare imitation of the signs of these passions in the countenance or gesture, which signs are usually observed to be most lively and emphatic in the weaker sort of minds, and which signs can after all but indicate some passion, as I said before, anger, or grief, generally; but of the motives and grounds of the passion, wherein it differs from the same passion in low and vulgar natures, of these the actor can give no more idea by his face or gesture than the eye (without a metaphor) can speak, or the muscles utter intelligible sounds. But such is the instantaneous nature of the impressions which we take in at the eye and ear at a play-house, compared with the slow apprehension oftentimes of the understanding in reading, that we are apt not only to sink the play-writer in the consideration which we pay to the actor, but even to identify in our minds, in a perverse manner, the actor with the character which he represents. It is difficult for a frequent play-goer to disembarrass the idea of Hamlet from the person and voice of Mr. K. We speak of Lady It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help Macbeth, while we are in reality thinking of being of opinion that the plays of Shakspeare Mrs. S. Nor is this confusion incidental are less calculated for performance on a alone to unlettered persons, who, not possess- stage, than those of almost any other dramatist ing the advantage of reading, are necessarily whatever. Their distinguishing excellence is dependent upon the stage-player for all the a reason that they should be so. There is pleasure which they can receive from the so much in them, which comes not under drama, and to whom the very idea of what the province of acting, with which eye, and an author is cannot be made comprehensible tone, and gesture, have nothing to do. without some pain and perplexity of mind: The glory of the scenic art is to personate the error is one from which persons other-passion, and the turns of passion; and the wise not meanly lettered, find it almost im- more coarse and palpable the passion is, the possible to extricate themselves. more hold upon the eyes and ears of the

How cruelly this operates upon the mind, to have its free conceptions thus cramped and pressed down to the measure of a straitlacing actuality, may be judged from that delightful sensation of freshness, with which we turn to those plays of Shakspeare which have escaped being performed, and to those passages in the acting plays of the same writer which have happily been left out in the performance. How far the very custom of hearing anything spouted, withers and blows upon a fine passage, may be seen in those speeches from Henry the Fifth, &c. which are current in the mouths of schoolboys, from their being to be found in Enfield's Speaker, and such kind of books! I confess myself utterly unable to appreciate that celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet, beginning "To be or not to be," or to tell whether it be good, bad or indifferent, it has been so handled and pawed about by declamatory boys and men, and torn so inhumanly from its living place and principle of continuity in the play, till it is become to me a perfect dead member.

The character of Hamlet is perhaps that by which, since the days of Betterton, a succession of popular performers have had the greatest ambition to distinguish themselves. The length of the part may be one of their reasons. But for the character itself, we find it in a play, and therefore we judge it a fit subject of dramatic representation. The play itself abounds in maxims and

spectators the performer obviously possesses. For this reason, scolding scenes, scenes where two persons talk themselves into a fit of fury, and then in a surprising manner talk themselves out of it again, have always been the most popular upon our stage. And the reason is plain, because the spectators are here most palpably appealed to, they are the proper judges in this war of words, they are the legitimate ring that should be formed reflections beyond any other, and therefore round such "intellectual prize-fighters." we consider it as a proper vehicle for conTalking is the direct object of the imitation veying moral instruction. But Hamlet himhere. But in all the best dramas, and in self-what does he suffer meanwhile by being Shakspeare above all, how obvious it is, that dragged forth as the public schoolmaster, to the form of speaking, whether it be in give lectures to the crowd! Why, nine parts soliloquy or dialogue, is only a medium, and in ten of what Hamlet does, are transactions often a highly artificial one, for putting the between himself and his moral sense; they reader or spectator into possession of that are the effusions of his solitary musings, knowledge of the inner structure and work- which he retires to holes and corners and the ings of mind in a character, which he could most sequestered parts of the palace to pour otherwise never have arrived at in that form forth; or rather, they are the silent meditaof composition by any gift short of intuition. tions with which his bosom is bursting, We do here as we do with novels written in reduced to words for the sake of the reader, the epistolary form. How many improprieties, who must else remain ignorant of what is perfect solecisms in letter-writing, do we put passing there. These profound sorrows, these up with in Clarissa and other books, for the light-and-noise-abhorring ruminations, which sake of the delight which that form upon the the tongue scarce dares utter to deaf walls whole gives us ! and chambers, how can they be represented But the practice of stage representation by a gesticulating actor, who comes and reduces everything to a controversy of mouths them out before an audience, making elocution. Every character, from the boisterous blasphemings of Bajazet to the shrinking timidity of womanhood, must play the orator. The love dialogues of Romeo and Juliet, those silver-sweet sounds of lovers' tongues by night! the more intimate and sacred sweetness of nuptial colloquy between an Othello or a Posthumus with their

married wives, all those delicacies which are so delightful in the reading, as when we read of those youthful dalliances in Paradise

"As beseem'd

Fair couple link'd in happy nuptial league,
Alone;"

by the inherent fault of stage representation,
how are these things sullied and turned from
their very nature by being exposed to a large
assembly; when such speeches as Imogen
addresses to her lord, come drawling out of
the mouth of a hired actress, whose court-
ship, though nominally addressed to the
personated Posthumus, is manifestly aimed
at the spectators, who are to judge of her
endearments and her returns of love!

four hundred people his confidants at once! I say not that it is the fault of the actor so to do; he must pronounce them ore rotundo; he must accompany them with his eye; he must insinuate them into his auditory by some trick of eye, tone or gesture, or he fails. He must be thinking all the while of his appearance, because he knows that all the while the spectators are judging of it. And this is the way to represent the shy, negligent, retiring

Hamlet !

It is true that there is no other mode of conveying a vast quantity of thought and feeling to a great portion of the audience, who otherwise would never earn it for themselves by reading, and the intellectual'acquisition gained this way may, for aught I know, be inestimable; but I am not arguing that Hamlet should not be acted, but how much Hamlet is made another thing by being acted. I have heard much of the wonders which Garrick performed in this part; but as I never saw him, I must have leave to doubt whether the representation of such a

character came within the province of his natural indeed, they are grounded deep in art. Those who tell me of him, speak of nature, so deep that the depth of them lies his eye, of the magic of his eye, and of his out of the reach of most of us. You shall commanding voice: physical properties, hear the same persons say that George vastly desirable in an actor, and without Barnwell is very natural, and Othello is which he can never insinuate meaning into very natural, that they are both very deep; an auditory, but what have they to do with and to them they are the same kind of thing. Hamlet; what have they to do with intellect? At the one they sit and shed tears, because In fact, the things aimed at in theatrical a good sort of young man is tempted by a representation, are to arrest the spectator's naughty woman to commit a trifling peccaeye upon the form and the gesture, and so to dillo, the murder of an uncle or so, that is gain a more favourable hearing to what is all, and so comes to an untimely end, which spoken: it is not what the character is, but is so moving; and at the other, because a how he looks; not what he says, but how he blackamoor in a fit of jealousy kills his speaks it. I see no reason to think that if innocent white wife; and the odds are that the play of Hamlet were written over again ninety-nine out of a hundred would willingly by some such writer as Banks or Lillo, behold the same catastrophe happen to both retaining the process of the story, but totally the heroes, and have thought the rope more omitting all the poetry of it, all the divine due to Othello than to Barnwell. For of features of Shakspeare, his stupendous intel- the texture of Othello's mind, the inward lect; and only taking care to give us enough construction marvellously laid open with all of passionate dialogue, which Banks or its strengths and weaknesses, its heroic Lillo were never at a loss to furnish; I see confidences and its human misgivings, its not how the effect could be much different agonies of hate springing from the depths upon an audience, nor how the actor has of love, they see no more than the spectators it in his power to represent Shakspeare at a cheaper rate, who pay their pennies to us differently from his representation a-piece to look through the man's telescope of Banks or Lillo. Hamlet would still in Leicester-fields, see into the inward plot be a youthful accomplished prince, and must be gracefully personated; he might be puzzled in his mind, wavering in his conduct, seemingly cruel to Ophelia; he might see a ghost, and start at it, and address it kindly when he found it to be his father; all this in the poorest and most homely language of the servilest creeper after nature that ever consulted the palate of an audience; without troubling Shakspeare for the matter: and I see not but there would be room for all the power which an actor has, to display itself. All the passions and changes of passion might remain: for those are much less difficult to write or act than is thought; it is a trick easy to be attained, it is but rising or falling a note or two in the voice, a whisper with a significant foreboding look to announce its approach, and so contagious the counterfeit appearance of any emotion is, that let the words be what they will, the look and tone shall carry it off and make it pass for deep skill in the passions.

It is common for people to talk of Shakspeare's plays being so natural; that everybody can understand him. They are

of

and topography of the moon. Some dim thing or other they see; they see an actor personating a passion, of grief, or anger, for instance, and they recognise it as a copy the usual external effects of such passions ; or at least as being true to that symbol of the emotion which passes current at the theatre for it, for it is often no more than that: but of the grounds of the passion, its correspondence to a great or heroic nature, which is the only worthy object of tragedy,—that common auditors know anything of this, or can have

If this note could hope to meet the eye of any of the

Managers, I would entreat and beg of them, in the name
of both the Galleries, that this insult upon the morality
of the common people of London should cease to be
eternally repeated in the holiday weeks. Why are the
'Prentices of this famous and well-governed city, instead
of an amusement, to be treated over and over again with
a nauseous sermon of George Barnwell? Why at the
an uncle, I should not much like a nephew of mine to
end of their vistas are we to place the gallows!
have such an example placed before his eyes. It is
really making uncle-murder too trivial to exhibit it as

I

Were

done upon such slight motives;-it is attributing too much to such characters as Millwood:-it is putting things into the heads of good young men, which they

think anything of their lives, should fairly petition the Chamberlain against it.

would never otherwise have dreamed of. Uncles that

grossest and most hateful form; but they get applause by it: it is natural, people say; that is, the words are scornful, and the actor expresses scorn, and that they can judge of: but why so much scorn, and of that sort, they never think of asking.

any such notions dinned into them by the mere strength of an actor's lungs,-that apprehensions foreign to them should be thus infused into them by storm, I can neither believe, nor understand how it can be possible. We talk of Shakspeare's admirable observation of life, when we should feel, that So to Ophelia.-All the Hamlets that I not from a petty inquisition into those cheap have ever seen, rant and rave at her as if and every-day characters which surrounded she had committed some great crime, and him, as they surround us, but from his own the audience are highly pleased, because the mind, which was, to borrow a phrase of words of the part are satirical, and they are Ben Jonson's, the very sphere of hu- enforced by the strongest expression of manity," he fetched those images of virtue satirical indignation of which the face and and of knowledge, of which every one of us voice are capable. But then, whether recognising a part, think we comprehend in Hamlet is likely to have put on such brutal our natures the whole; and oftentimes appearances to a lady whom he loved so mistake the powers which he positively dearly, is never thought on. The truth is, creates in us, for nothing more than indi- that in all such deep affections as had genous faculties of our own minds, which only waited the application of corresponding virtues in him to return a full and clear echo of the same.

To return to Hamlet.-Among the distinguishing features of that wonderful character, one of the most interesting (yet painful) is that soreness of mind which makes him treat the intrusions of Polonius with harshness, and that asperity which he puts on in his interviews with Ophelia. These tokens of an unhinged mind (if they be not mixed in the latter case with a profound artifice of love, to alienate Ophelia by affected discourtesies, so to prepare her mind for the breaking off of that loving intercourse, which can no longer find a place amidst business so serious as that which he has to do) are parts of his character, which to reconcile with our admiration of Hamlet, the most patient consideration of his situation is no more than necessary; they are what we forgive afterwards, and explain by the whole of his character, but at the time they are harsh and unpleasant. Yet such is the actor's necessity of giving strong blows to the audience, that I have never seen a player in this character, who did not exaggerate and strain to the utmost these ambiguous features, these temporary deformities in the character. They make him express a vulgar scorn at Polonius which utterly degrades his gentility, and which no explanation can render palatable; they make him show contempt, and curl up the nose at Ophelia's father,-contempt in its very

subsisted between Hamlet and Ophelia, there is a stock of supererogatory love, (if I may venture to use the expression,) which in any great grief of heart, especially where that which preys upon the mind cannot be communicated, confers a kind of indulgence upon the grieved party to express itself, even to its heart's dearest object, in the language of a temporary alienation; but it is not alienation, it is a distraction purely, and so it always makes itself to be felt by that object: it is not anger, but grief assuming the appearance of anger,-love awkwardly counterfeiting hate, as sweet countenances when they try to frown but such sternness and fierce disgust as Hamlet is made to show, is no counterfeit, but the real face of absolute aversion,-of irreconcileable alienation. It may be said he puts on the madman; but then he should only so far put on this counterfeit lunacy as his own real distraction will give him leave; that is, incompletely, imperfectly; not in that confirmed, practised way, like a master of his art, or as Dame Quickly would say, "like one of those harlotry players."

I mean no disrespect to any actor, but the sort of pleasure which Shakspeare's plays give in the acting seems to me not at all to differ from that which the audience receive from those of other writers; and, they being in themselves essentially so different from all others, I must conclude that there is something in the nature of acting which levels all distinctions. And, in fact, who does not speak indifferently of the Gamester and of