 CHAPTER XIV of AMONG THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE DRAWN This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Nemo. AMONG THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE DRAWN By Walter Rowlands Kain Just return from seeing Kain and Richard. By Jove, he is a soul. Life, nature, truth. Without exaggeration or diminution, Campbell's Hamlet is perfect. But Hamlet is not nature. Richard is a man, and Kain is Richard. Byron Timor, 1814 The part of Richard III seems to have been associated with Kain from his earliest days. Mrs. Charles Kemble was wont to relate the following anecdote about him. One morning, before their rehearsal commenced, I was crossing the stage when my attention was attracted to the sounds of loud applause issuing from the direction of the green room. I inquired the cause and was told that it was only little Kain reciting Richard III in the green room. My informant said that he was very clever. I went into the green room and saw the little fellow facing an admiring group and reciting lustily. I listened, and in my opinion, he was very clever. Speaking of a time not much later, Hawkins, one of his biographers, says, of all the Shakespearean characters which Edmund studied at this time, no one appears to have engaged so large a share of his attention as Richard III. Upon the very spirit and essence of this character, his already strong, conceptive power fastened from the very first with swift, sure, and unerring instinct. And, if we receive the testimony of Miss Tidswell, there is no doubt that even at thirteen years of age he had arrived at a fine comprehension and brilliant realization of the Crookback King. His rehearsals were almost unintermittent. At one time he might have been found practicing the courtship scene in a garret in the house of a bookseller named Roche, situate in a court running from Bridges Street to Drury Lane, Lady Anne being represented by a scotch lassie, whose subsequently acquired some distinction as the successor to Mrs. Davenport in the line of characters, which belonged to the latter, at a theatre in Scotland, Mrs. Robertson. At another, we find him rehearsing the combat scene in Mrs. Price's back parlor in Green Street to the Richmond of Master Ray, the son of the matron at St. George's Hospital, the Mantua Maker's Yard Measures serving for the swords of the furious antagonist on the agitated field of Bosworth. When about fifteen years old, King, while traveling with Richardson's company, was honored by a command to recite before George III at Windsor, and his rendering of portions of Richard III and others of Shakespeare's plays was much approved by his majesty. Ten years later, after experiencing an even greater number of ups and downs, then generally fell to the lot of a strolling player in the early years of the nineteenth century, at times very near starvation, and at others playing Richard and Harlequin on the same night. For the princely salary of twenty-five shillings a week, Harlequin, usually meeting with most acceptance, King found himself in the spring of 1813 in Guernsey. He was now twenty-five years of age. On his first appearance in the island he played Hamlet, which performance was harshly criticized by the local journal. The effect of the stricture upon the unruly and indiscriminating rabble, which usually graced the interior of the Guernsey theater, may be readily conceived. Too courageous to bow before the inevitable tempest, Keane made his appearance and Richard III. Shouts of derisive laughter, followed by a storm of sibilation, broke from all parts of the house as he came on the stage. For a time his patience was proof against an opposition which he hoped to subdue by the merits of his acting, but as no sign of abatement appeared, he boldly advanced to the front, and with an eye that seemed to emit bright and deadly flashes, applied to them with tremendous emphasis the words of his part. Unmannered dogs, stangy when I command. For a moment the audience were taken aback by this unexpected resistance. All became as noiseless as the gathering storm, before the tempest and the clamour only revived when a stalwart fellow in his shirtsleeves yelled out from the back of the pit a demand for an apology. Apology, cried the little man, and his form dilated with excitement. Take it from this remark, the only proof of intelligence you have yet given is in the proper application of the words I have just uttered. The uproar, which succeeded this retort, rendered the interference of the manager imperative. Keane was hurried off the stage, and the part given to an outsider, immeasurably less talented than his predecessor, but who stood high in favour with the discerning and enlightened audience in front. But, despite such happenings as this, the time was near at hand when the genius of Edmund Keane was to be recognized in full. From the following November he was engaged by Arnold, the manager of Jury Lane, who had seen him play Octavian in the mountaineer in the mountaineer's at Dorchester. Appearing first to Jury Lane on January 22nd, 1814, in Shylock, with the greatest success, Keane was now called upon to dissolve the association of Garrick's name with the interpretation of Richard III. And this object, according to honest John Bannister, who somewhat reluctantly admitted that in the brilliance of Keane's Richard, he almost forgot his old master David. He was completely successful. In the masterly manner in which he represented the last of the Plantagenets achieved a triumph second only to that which he subsequently won in Othello and Lear, Mrs. Richard Trench wrote in her correspondence. He gave probability to the drama by throwing the favourable light of Richard's higher qualities on the character, particularly in the scene with Lady Anne. Hawkins speaks of the scene with Lady Anne, the nauseousness of which had been much increased by Cambone Cook. The former whined it in a way not at all attractive to the ear. The latter was harsh, coarse, and unkingly. Not so keen. An enchanting smile played upon his lips. A courteous humility bowed his head. His voice, the horse with cold, was yet modulated to a tone which no common female mind ever did or ever could resist. Gentle, yet self-respected. Insinuating, yet determined. Humble, yet overawing. He presented an exterior by which the mere human senses must, from their very constitution, be subjected and enthralled. Cook in this scene was anxious, hurried, and uncertain. A keen's love-making was confident, easy, and unaffected. Earnest and expressive, and managed with such exquisite skill that a close observer might have distinguished it from real tenderness, however well calculated to have imposed on the credulity of Lady Anne. Hazlet said, It was an admirable exhibition of smooth and smiling villainy, and George Henry Lewis, who did not see keen until years later, wrote, Who can ever forget the exquisite grace with which he leaned against the side scene while Anne was railing at him, and the chuckling mirth of his poor fool, what pain she takes to damn herself. It was thoroughly feline, terrible, yet beautiful. Keen played Richard twenty-five times during his first season at Jure Relayne. Shylock, fifteen times. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 of Among the Great Masters of the Drama This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sonja Among the Great Masters of the Drama by Walter Rowlands MacReady Farewell, MacReady. Since this night we part, go, take thine honours home, rank with the best, Garrick, and stately a Campbell, and the rest, who made a nation purer through their art. Tennyson Keen was present at MacReady's debut on the London stage, which took place at Covent Garden in September 1816, the play being The Distressed Mother. In this MacReady performed Orestes, and Keen honestly avowed that he had never seen such a complete representation of the character. One of MacReady's finest impersonations, perhaps his best, was Werner, in Byron's tragedy of that name, brought out in 1830. This work, written in Italy and published in 1822, is taken entirely from a story entitled The German's Tale, which forms one of Lee's Canterbury tales. The main idea of this gloomy work is the horror of an erring father, who detected in wrong by his son, has defended his sin, and thus weakened the son's notions of right on finding that the letter has committed the crime of murder. The veteran playwright and poet Westland Marston gives us, among his recollections of actors, an excellent summary of MacReady's acting as Werner. He says, Amiable censors have not been wanting to allege that his success in Werner was chiefly due to the resemblance between the hero of the drama and himself, in point of morbid pride and sensitiveness. This theory, however, by no means accounts for the impressive melancholy which he wore when Werner's honors were restored, or above all, for that display of a father's love and agony in the Fifth Act, which must be ranked among his supreme effects. But to whatever cause his exhibition of pride and bitter quarrelous impatience in the First Act would you, it is hard to conceive of there being more intense and incisive. The rising of the curtain discovered the fugitive nobleman, indignant at his cruel fate, stalking to and fro like some captured wild animal in his cage. The gaunt look of recent sickness was in his face. The fretful irritability, which it causes, repeatedly broke forth, spite of his affection for his wife, in his tones and gestures, while through the veil of poverty, disease and mental suffering gleamed the forlorn haughtiness of bearing which bespoke his inerradicable pride of birth. The quick apprehensions and suspicions which spring from nerves wasted alike with disease and grief were admirably conveyed, first by his alarm when he hears the knocking of the Intendant, and again by the air of feline weariness and distrust with which he scant Gabor on his entrance and subsequently. At length Strahlenheim enters, who seeks to usurp Werner's domain and for that evil end to secure his person. Werner at once recognizes him, and the former has at length a dim suspicion that the man before him is his intended victim. When at length Strahlenheim turns to him, after conversing with the Intendant and Gabor, the furtive and apprehensive gaze with which Mick Reddy had watched his oppressor, gave way to irrepressible hatred. Nothing could be more curtly repellent than his tones in answer to Strahlenheim's questions. Strahlenheim, have you been here long? Werner, with abrupt surprise, long? Strahlenheim, I sought an answer, not an echo. Werner, rapidly and morosely. You may seek both from the walls. I am not used to answer those whom I know not. A little later, when Strahlenheim observes, your language is above your station. Werner's answer, is it, contained a transition from ironical humility to scorn and loathing, which it was surprising so brief a phrase could express. Not less striking when he feared his passion might betray him, was the sudden change in the words that follow to root and caustic indifference. Tis well that it is not beneath it, as sometimes happens to the better clad. In the second act it will be remembered that Werner, made desperate by the plain suspicions of Strahlenheim, who has power to arrest and imprison him, commits a robbery on his foe, in the dead of night, to gain the means of escape. Subsequently Werner and his wife are discovered by their long-lost son Ulrich. The joy of the parents has scarcely found utterance when Ulrich tells them that he had, on the previous day, saved the life of Strahlenheim, and that he is now in quest of the villain who had robbed him. To give any conception of McRady's acting at this point, I must quote the dialogue. Werner, agitatedly, who taught you to mouth that name of villain? Ulrich, what more noble name belongs to common thieves? Werner, who taught you thus to brand an unknown being with an infernal stigma? Ulrich, my own feelings taught me to name a ruffian from his deeds. Werner, who taught you long-sword and ill-found boy that it would be safe for my own son to insult me? Ulrich, I named a villain. What is there in common with such a being and my father? Werner, everything, that ruffian is thy father. Josephine, oh my son, believe him not, and yet her voice falters. Ulrich starts, looks earnestly at Werner, and then says slowly, and you avow it. Werner, Ulrich, before you dare despise your father, learn to divine and judge his actions. Young, rash, new to life, and reared in luxury's lap, is it for you to measure passion's force or misery's temptation? Wait, not long, it cometh like the night and quickly. Wait, wait till like me your hopes are blighted, till sorrow and shame are handmaids of your cabin, famine and poverty your guests at table, despair your bed-fellow, then rise, but not from sleep, and judge. Should that day ever arrive, should you see then the serpent who hath coiled himself round all that is dear and noble of you and yours, lies lumbering in your path, with but his folds between your steps and happiness, when he, who lives but to tear from you name, lands, life itself, lies at your mercy, with chance your conductor, midnight for your mantle, the bare knife in your hand, and earth asleep, even to your deadliest foe, and he, as to Wer, inviting death by looking like it, while his death alone can save you. Thank your God, if then, like me content with petty plunder, you turn aside. I did so. From the cry of remonstrance with which the above passage opens, even to its close, while the complexity of emotion, struggling and, at the same time, blending with each other, did make ready portray. The strife between wrathful pride and agony, at having to confess and extenuate his guilt to his idolized and just regained sun, the increasing and, at last, breathless rapidity with which he piled up the circumstances of his desperate temptation and venial sin, till finally pride, self-abasement, and self-indication were swallowed up and swept away by a master touch of paternal love and anguish, as shaken, convulsed, with extended arms and bowed head, he appealed to Eurick with the words, I did so. All these with their harrowing pathos and subduing power live in my memory, as if they were of yesterday. More than forty years have not weakened their effect. The ball-tail in the third act of Stahlheim's murder by an unknown hand, of Werner's dread, lest he should be suspected of the crime, and of his escape from the spot, supply little that is of dramatic interest. The fourth act also, which shows Werner restored to his estates and to his title of Count Seagendorf, moves slowly and eventlessly. The fifth act, however, brings the great situation of the tragedy, when Gabor, suspected by Werner of being the murderer of Stahlheim, asserts that Eurick is the guilty one. Eurick confesses the deed and defends it, saying to his father, If you condemn me, yet remember who has taught me once too often to listen to him, who proclaimed to me that there were crimes made venial by the occasion. Marston says, the greatness of MacReady's acting here reached its climax. MacLeiess's picture of MacReady as Werner depicts him in the beginning of the first act. The painter, born in Ireland in 1811, went to London at the age of sixteen and studied in the royal academy schools. He was but two years older when his Malvolio was hung on the walls of the academy, of which body he was made a full member in 1840. Dying in 1870, after declining the presidency of the royal academy, he left behind him many important works, notably the great frescoes of the death of Nelson and the meeting of Wellington and Blücher after Waterloo in the Houses of Parliament. His paintings of the banquet scene in Macbeth and the play scene in Hamlet are famous. CHAPTER XVI OF AMONG THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE DRAMA This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. AMONG THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE DRAMA by Walter Rowlands CHAPTER XVI DEJAZE QUOTE By those who have seen her, not one trait in her matchless representations will ever be forgotten. End quote. Gossip of the century. Has any equally famous actress a record as extraordinary as that of Madame Deja Zay, who, making her first appearance on the boards at the age of five, did not leave them for seventy years. Born in 1797 or 1798, authorities differ. She retired from the stage in 1874, but being as generous as she was gifted, returned to it for one night in October 1875, to aid in a benefit given to a needy actor and died on the first day of December in that year. An able American critic, Edward H. House, wrote of her in 1867. I, of course, had not the opportunity of seeing Deja Zay in her best days, but I am told, and indeed it is evident, that she preserves the chief characteristics of her style to the present time. What that style is, it is by no means easy to describe. She is undoubtedly a soubrette, but to those who are familiar only with the American or English stage, the term soubrette is synonymous with that of singing chambermaid, and suggests nothing beyond the boisterousness, the profusion and the riotous excesses of action and manner which are good humoredly accepted by our easy public, but which are at best very low methods of theatrical expression. Although in exceptional cases, like that of Mrs. John Wood, they may be made effective and profitable. The French soubrette is a very different and a very superior being under any circumstances, but it was Deja Zay who first conceived the idea of elevating her considerably above the French standard, as she found it fifty years ago. At the outset of her career it was evident that she had resolved to relieve at least her own roles from their weight of heavy humor, and to decorate them with all the delicacy and lightness which they could properly receive. She was so successful in this endeavor, with characters already accepted by and familiar to the public, that in a short time she had persuaded many of the best authors of the day to remodel their works to harmonize with her new interpretations, and presently to write with exclusive view to the development of the new and captivating style she had established. From that moment the Deja Zay soubrette was a line of character sui generis. The relief French, in the best artistic sense, its imitation has hardly been attempted by actresses of other countries. In fact, to make it successful, the best natural French qualities of spirit, grace, and refinement are indispensable. The person who, in England, can most nearly approach the Deja Zay standard is probably Miss Marie Wilton, although she usually finds it convenient to confine herself to a lower level. Some delightful indications of ability in the same direction were given here years ago by Miss Agnes Robertson at the beginning of her American career, but she was addicted to occasional bursts of sentiment, an element which does not enter largely into the Deja Zay composition. Perhaps, after all, the pleasantest illustrations of the French artist's manner have been given, unconsciously, of course, by Mrs. John Drew in her naive representations of young men and lads, a line which this lady appears now to have abandoned. The esteem in which Deja Zay is held by the Parisians long ago ceased to be based on artistic considerations alone. It is impossible to overstate the personal fondness with which she is regarded by the habitué of her theatre, and indeed by the public generally. Much of the tenderness shown her is perhaps due to her age. She is well past seventy, and shows few signs of being burdened by her years, and more undoubtedly to the reputation which has accompanied her through life of her amiability, her benevolence, and her strict professional integrity. Her friends declare that throughout her fifty or sixty years of public service she has gained nothing but the affection of those who surrounded her, and they add, indeed, that this is true in a literal sense, owing to her profuse charities in youth, and her inability to resist even now, the appeals which are too frequently urged for her sympathy and aid. Whatever may be the causes, it is certain that no one else upon the Paris stage is petted and caressed as she is. Anybody who has observed the fervor with which, during the last few years, every appearance of that fine old actor Mr. Holland has been greeted by New York audiences may understand the spirit in which Deshaussais' welcomes are offered, but to the extent of their hardiness even Mr. Holland's receptions afford no parallel. She is the oldest member of her craft, and has been the best in her own line. In some respects, moreover, she actually remains the best. It is pleasant to review the incidents of a career so uninterrupted in brilliancy and popularity, and which has never been disturbed from beginning to end by any circumstance whose recollection either the public or the artist would wish to obliterate. It was about ten years ago that I first saw Deshaussais, and she was then somewhat beyond the age of sixty. It was the first night of her resumption of Jean-Té Bernard, and half the fautee were filled with the best-known representatives of literature and art. Most eager among these, I remember, was Victorianne Sardoux, who at that time lost no opportunity of testifying his gratitude to the friend who had exerted herself so assiduously in assisting him to the position he had recently gained. On the evening in question, Deshaussais' reception was an event to be remembered. Her first step upon the scene was the signal for loud outcries of welcome, not only from orchestra and parterre, but also from the more decorous boxes, whence proceeded shrill feminine tones, agreeably diversifying the chorus. Hats and handkerchiefs were waved, and for five minutes the business of the stage was suspended in order that the audience might have its jubilee out. And when quiet at last returned, it was curious to observe how the house continued to beam with silent, though not less expressive, delight at the reappearance of the dear old favorite. On all sides little phrases of compliment and endearment were murmured. What grace, younger than ever. Well done, petite. Ah la malinia. Pleasantly conscious of the favor lavished upon her, she glided through the representation with truly astonishing elasticity and buoyancy. Her attitudes and movements were literally like those of a young girl. Her face closely viewed betrayed advancing age, but by no means to the extent that would have been expected. Her eyes flashed as brilliantly as those of her youngest supporters upon the stage, and I am sure that few of them could rival her life and supple form. Altogether her appearance was that of a woman of about thirty-five. It is difficult to believe that her acting could ever have been more thoroughly artistic. The timid flirtations of Bernard, his innocent wickedness, his immature attempts at gallantry, the affected bravery of his soldier life, the jaunty endeavors to prove himself a man of the world, and the mischievous persistence of his last love suit were all expressed with inimitable grace and humor. The faculty of inventing impromptu bi-play, always one of her best gifts, was everywhere conspicuous, and was recognized at each new point by bursts of laughter and applause. Of course it was inevitable that at certain moments some evidence of time's changes should assert itself, but even these were made the occasion for demonstrations of encouragement and goodwill. When about to sing a rather difficult song, she would advance to the romp, nod saucily as if to say, You think I can't do it, but you shall see. Then, pluckily assail her bravuras, comically tripping among the torturous cadences, and at the end receive her applause with an odd little air of pride, indicating entire indifference as to the lost notes, or perhaps a satisfied conviction that everything had gone better than she had expected, or the public deserved. I really believe the audience cried brava, quite as heartily, in jacose acknowledgment of her pretty vanities as in appreciation of her innumerable charms and graces. I have since lost few opportunities of witnessing Déjà Zé's performances, and within my own recollection I find no change in her. Her exact age is nowhere recorded, but judging from the date of her first appearance, she must now be about seventy-five. Fancy that, young comedians of England and America, who fade away and retire, either into obscurity or a new line of business at half her age, and still the same jacan spirit, the same combined daintiness and breadth of style, the same exuberant versatility as at the commencement of her history. Déjà Zé played youthful male parts even better than she did feminine ones. Bonaparte, when a student at Breanne, the Duke de Reichstadt, Louis XV, the youthful Richelieu, the Marquis de Lausanne, and the young Voltaire, are some of the characters in which she gained uncounted plaudits. One of her best performances was the Prends de Comté in Sardu's Les Prêts Sans Chevé. The plot of the play is a slight one, merely consisting of a series of schoolboy escapades by the young nobleman who sets the whole village in an uproar by his freaks and gallantries. One of these scenes, where the Prince has snatched a kiss from the village coquette, freakette, and, being indignantly repulsed, craves forgiveness, forms the subject of our illustration. End of Chapter 16. Chapter 17 of Among the Great Masters of the Drama. This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Catherine Phipps. Among the Great Masters of the Drama by Walter Rowlands. Forrest. The First and Greatest of American Tragedians. Lawrence Barrett. The Life of Edwin Forrest has furnished material for three biographies, one by Alger, one by Rhys, and one by Lawrence Barrett. Of later date than any of these is an interesting volume written by Gabriel Harrison, who died in 1902, aged 84. For many years an actor and manager, Harrison had supported Charles Keane, the elder Wallach, and Forrest, and also possessed artistic and literary ability, having written and published several works. From his book on Forrest is taken the following account of the great actor's rendition of Virginia's. None that ever saw Forrest as Virginia's could forget his entrance before the Tribune, bearing Virginia upon his arm, his firm step showing the calm resolution within his heart, his manner of holding her close up to his side, one arm around her slender waist, and the other hand grasping her hand. It was the thousand tendrils of paternal love reaching everywhere toward his child, like the ivy with its myriad clingings to the object it would hold on to. Who could forget the Roman dignity of his figure? Who could forget the silence that pervaded the theatre, the motionless actors on the stage, waiting to be thrilled by his artistic work? The silence was profound. It was like the silence that pervades that sphere when noises cannot exist. It was the ominous prelude to the action of something great. Never did an audience before wait so long and patiently for the actor to say his words. When Virginia's first addressed the Tribune, does no one speak? I am defendant here. Is silence my opponent? Fit opponent to plead a cause to foul for speech? The clear pure tones of his voice were like vibrations struck from perfect chords by an orpheus and found an echo in the hearts of his audience. Each, now, in turn, anxiously listened for the words of the shrinking and abashed Claudius. How intense and graphic was Mr. Forrest's biplay when he finds that nothing but the death of his daughter by his own hand could save her from the pollution of the heartless December? For a moment despair and perplexity were upon his face. But when he discovered the knife upon the butcher's stall, his facial expression, electrical as the lightning that elumes the murky clouds, pictured the outline of the true intensity of the fearful storm. The poet cannot express with words what the tragedian expressed in a single look, the consolation in the thought of his child's death rather than her dishonour by Claudius. The smile that followed as he looked into Virginia's face was full of pathos as he moved toward the butcher's stall to reach the knife. He's patting her on the shoulder as he changed her position from his right to his left arm, that he might reach the knife, the taking of the knife, the hiding of it under the folds of his toga, the fondness he expressed in his words, my dear daughter. And his quick and fervent kisses upon her upturned lips, striving to press them into her very soul, the gush of tears that wet his words. There is one only way to save thine honour, tis this. And quick as the motion of the human arm could do it, the knife was pressed into her heart, the storm had broken, its lightning had wreathed its searing folds around the instrument of death, the blood streamed from the fatal blade, the daughter's blood stained the father's hand, and then the thunder tones of his mighty voice crashed through the theatre in exclamations. Lo apious, with this innocent blood, I do devote thee to the infernal gods. Make way there, if they dare this desperate weapon that is wet with my daughter's blood, let them. Thus, thus it rushes amongst them, away, away there, away! The reckless manner in which he rushed through the guards of lictus, the shrieks of servia, when she saw Virginia fall to the stage, the groups of friends that gathered around the prostrate virgin, the bloody knife on high flashing from right to left as Virginia's cut his way through the ranks of soldiers, formed a picture of dramatic terror that thrilled the audience and excited them to wild shouting and waving of handkerchiefs. Round after round of applause followed the descent of the curtain, and repeatedly was the actor forced to acknowledge the overwhelming approbation of the crowded house. No less perfect was his portrayal of the delirious scene in the fifth act, his demented look, the calling of his Virginia, Virginia! It was a call dictated by a dethroned mind, a sound that seemed to come from a mysterious vault. There was a half wakefulness in it, like the utterance of thoughts in dreams. It had the touch of pity and was manifold in its meaning. It was a reverting form of sound that turned back to the place where it came from, and fell dead where it was born. Then came the awful picture as he kneeled over the strangled body of Apius Claudius, the sigh he gave that burst the spell that bound him, as Isilius placed within his hands the urn that contained the ashes of his daughter, the folding of the sacred chalice to his heart, the relaxation of his limbs, and falling to the stage exhausted. All were of one masterpiece. Chapter 18 of Among the Great Masters of the Drama This is a Librebox recording. All Librebox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librebox.org. Among the Great Masters of the Drama by Walter Rollins. Chapter 18 William Warren He played many parts in his time, but he played none better than that of William Warren, W.T.W. Ball. It is a coincidence, which may be noted, that our greatest tragedian and our greatest comedian both made their first appearance in Philadelphia, and in the same character, young, normal, in Holmes' tragedy of Douglas, Forrest's debut being in 1820 and Warren's in 1832. More than 50 years after, in 1883, William Warren played his last part. This was at the Boston Museum when he appeared as old eckles in cast. Over 30 years have gone by since the writer first had the delight of seeing William Warren act in comedy. The place was, of course, the Boston Museum. The piece was The Serious Family, and Warren played Edmenadab Sleek. His inimitable, unctuous manner in this part is as unforgotten as the pathos of his Jacques Valvel. The centenarian of 100 years old, a play produced at the museum the same year. From that time until his retirement, I saw him in many other parts, both grave and gay, notably as Captain Cuddle and Mr. Maccabre, but was unluckily prevented from witnessing any of his unsurpassed impersonations in the older standard comedies. Our illustration shows Warren as Herr Weigl, the old shoemaker, and my son, a work adapted from L. Orange's Mein Leopold. One of Boston's ableist dramatic critics, the lamented George Bryant Woods, wrote the following admirable estimate of Warren's art. We cannot go into minute analysis of the elements of this great comedian skill where we called upon to name the foremost attributes of his power. We should select his forbearance, his dignity, the delicacy of his humor, the sympathy and magnetism of his pathos, and above all the faithfulness to detail and to duty which mark all that he does. Never does he take advantage of his fame or of the fondness of his audience to put himself forward when some necessary question of the play is to be considered, yet never does he lapse into tamedess or inattention, though he be lost in the background or hidden in a multitude. No minor actor ever need complain that an opportunity of his own was sacrificed to one of Mr. Warren's points. No author could ever claim that a part or a plot was marred by anything lacking or anything overdone on his part. To pass for a moment into detail, in illustration of some of the qualities we have noted, Sir Peter Teasel is a comic character, but there is a moment of pure tragedy in it when the testy, noble old gentleman, discovers his wife hidden behind the screen in the library of Joseph Surface. How grandly Mr. Warren interprets the depth of emotion in the soul which is stirred at that instant. There never was a keener appreciation of humor that belongs to Mr. Warren, but Sir Harcourt Courtly is not a humorous man, and it is worth long and repeated study to see how seriously he goes through the play in that part. How far he is from apparent consciousness of any of the fun going on about him, how saturated with the supreme consciousness of his own superiority which belongs to the character. There have been very few actors who could impart so much meaning to one or two words, and this with never an indulgence in exaggeration for effect, with the severest and driest of simplicity. In the first scene of Sardu's comedy of Ferdinand, one of the lady frequenters of a gay gaming house in Paris, commenting upon the scandalous behavior of an acquaintance, remarks parenthetically, Now I don't set up for a prude. Certainly not, says the courteous advocate to whom she is speaking. It is the slightest thing in the world, a parenthesis within a parenthesis, but in the utterance of those two words there is a gleam of genius as brilliant, but as indescribable as a flash of heat lightning. Take again, as a concluding example, Mr. Warren's performance of Jesse Ruel in Old Heads and Young Hearts, how admirable, yet how free from any suspicion of grotesqueness is the makeup from the innocent, round, venerable face, with its halo of thin white hair, to the threadbare elbow of the country minister's coat sleeve, how touching, how unforced is the simplicity of his bearing and conduct, how the voice ripples and trembles with the emotion which comes alike from a gentle heart and a pulpit training, how modestly the actor refrains from pressing himself upon the attention while the tangled threads of the two ingenious plot are woven together, how far beyond praise is the transition of the final situation from merriment through hysterical laughter to tears, and with what matchless and impressive dignity a model for the thousand commonplace ministers of actual life is uttered the concluding address of the old clergyman to the audience. Eulogy is not our trade, we aim ever in these sketches to give a discriminative view of the leading characteristics of the subjects we discuss, but in treating a genius like Mr. Warren's so delicate, so brilliant, so true, combined with such artistic conscience, such freedom from conceit, such a respect for itself, forbidding ignoble artifice to heighten its attraction. We care not to repress the enthusiasm with which our tribute finds words. These discriminating sentences were worthily supplemented by Henry A. Clapp, who said, Mr. Warren's style as a dramatic artist is so broad and full as to be exceedingly hard to describe. Devoid of eccentricities and extravagances, it lacks like a perfectly proportioned building, those salient peculiarities which at once catch even the unobservant eye. A deformed cripple can be much more easily depicted than an Apollo. To his professional work he has brought the true, plastic temperament of the actor, a rich native sense of humor, the power of keen and delicate observation, an absolute sense of proportion, a strong, educated intelligence, varied culture, and that devoted love for his art which has made unresting industry mere delight. The flower of all these gifts and virtues is a style of acting which unites exceptional vividness, force, sensibility, and effectiveness with a fine reserve, and an unfailing observance of the modesty of nature, an exquisitely exact adaptation of means to ends, supplemented by precise knowledge of the need of every moment, is Mr. Warren's most distinguishing trait. But there is nothing mechanical in his practices. No observable interval between intent and result. On the contrary, his playing shows that perfect infusion of thought and act which makes analysis of his art impossible until his art has first wrought its due effect upon the feelings of the spectator. Next to the fine precision and justness which characterizes Mr. Warren's style, the versatility of his power denotes his distinction as an artist. His range as a comedian is, as we have said above, simply unequaled. And to the interpretation of every variety of character, he brings that exquisite sensibility and clearness of insight, that mobility of nature and fullness of understanding which make his work vital, natural, and satisfying. For pathos, his gift is scarcely less remarkable than for humor, the touch showing at times perhaps not his greatest facility, but the method being always imaginative and the feeling pure and genuine. Nor is it upon the deep and broad lines only that Mr. Warren excels. In the art of swift and subtle insinuation, in the display of mixed or conflicting emotions, he has no rival upon the art stage. One of the greatest, if not the greatest, artists in the line of makeup we ever had on our Boston stage was unquestionably William Warren. In this, as in the matter of costume, he was well nigh perfect. Of the many parts he played in this city, something like 500, no two were made up alike. Each was a distinct and separate creation of his own. It would seem almost impossible that so much variety could be given to the human countenance, but by the mighty actor brought illusions perfect triumphs come, and in his illusions Mr. Warren was indeed the mighty actor. End of chapter 18. Chapter 19 of Among the Great Masters of the Drama This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Aaron Stone. Among the Great Masters of the Drama by Walter Rollins, Charlotte Cushman. Salve Aragina, art and song dismissed by thee shall miss thee long and keep thy memory green, our most illustrious queen, R. H. Stoddard. Of all the characters assumed by Charlotte Cushman, Hamlet and Romeo, Rosalind and Beatrice, Bianca and Mrs. Holler, Lady Macbeth and Queen Catherine, Nancy Sykes and Meg Marilias, the last named is probably the one with which her name will be most associated with in the public mind. Miss Emma Stubbins, Charlotte Cushman's intimate friend and biographer, gives the following account of the character. She says, it may not be inappropriate to recall some remembrances of the part which more than any other is identified with her name and may be said to have been her own special creation, that of Meg Marilias. I have sought in vain among the newspaper files of the period for the absolute date of her first performance of this character, but other evidence settles it as having been in the year 1840-41, during Brahms' first and only engagement in New York and at the Park Theatre. Her own account of it may be mentioned that there is one very ancient newspaper cutting, which is, however, without name or date, in which the fact of her assumption of the part at a moment's notice is thus alluded to. Many years ago, Miss Charlotte Cushman was doing at the Park Theatre what in stage parlance is called General Utility Business. That is, the work of three ordinary performers filling the gap when anyone is sick, playing one's part and the others on occasion, never refusing to do whatever allowed it to her. As may be supposed, one who held this position had as yet no position to be proud of. One night, Guy Manoring, a musical piece, was announced. It was produced by Mr. Brahm, the great English tenor, who played Harry Betrum. Mrs. Chippendale was cast for Meg Merleas, but during the day was taken ill, so the obscure Utility Actress, this Miss Cushman, was sent for and told to be ready in the part by the night. She might read it on the boards if she cannot commit it. But the Utility Woman was not used to reading her parts. She learned it before nightfall and played it after nightfall. She played it so as to be enthusiastically applauded. At this half-day's notice, the part was taken up which is now so famous among dramatic portraitures. It was in consequence of Mrs. Chippendale's illness that she was caught upon the very day of the performance to assume the part. Study, dress, etc. had to be an inspiration of the moment. She had never especially noticed the part, as it had been heretofore performed. There was not probably much to attract her. But as she stood at the side seat, book in hand, awaiting her moment of entrance, her ear caught the dialogue going upon the stage between two of the gypsies, in which one says to the other, alluding to her, Meg, why she is no longer what she was, she dotes, etc., evidently giving the impression that she is no longer to be feared or respected, that she is no longer in her right mind. With the words, a vivid flash of insight struck upon her brain. She saw and felt by the powerful dramatic instinct with which she was endowed the whole meaning and intention of the character, and no doubt from that moment it became what it never ceased to be, a powerful, original, and consistent conception in her mind. She gave herself with her usual concentrated energy of purpose to this conception, and flashed it once upon the stage in the startling, weird, and terrible manner which we all so well remember. On this occasion, it so astonished and confounded Mr. Brahm, little accustomed heretofore to such manifestations, that he went to her after the play to express his surprise and his admiration. I had not thought that I had done anything remarkable, she says, and when the knock came at my dressing room door, and I heard Brahm's voice, my first thought was, now what have I done? He is surely displeased with me about something. For in those days, I was only the utility actress, and had no prestige of position to carry me through. Imagine my gratification when Mr. Brahm said, Ms. Cushman, I have come to thank you for the most veritable sensation I have experienced for a long time. I gave you my word. When I turned and saw you in that first scene, I felt a cold chill run all over me. Where have you learned to do anything like that? From this time, the part of Meg grew and strengthened. Meg, behind the scenes, was quite as remarkable as before them. It was a study for an artist, and has been so to many, to witness the process of preparation for this notable character. The makeup, as they call it in the parlance of the theatre, a regular, systematic, and thoroughly artistic performance, wrought out with the same instinctive knowledge which was so manifest in all she did. Ms. Cushman, a distinguished lady artist once said to her, as she wonderingly watched the process whereby the weird hag grew out of the pleasant and genial liniments of the actress. How do you know where to put in those shadows and make those lines which so accurately give the effect of age? I don't know, was the answer. I only feel where they ought to come. The costume, Meg, is another subject upon which much of the interest might be written. How it gradually grew, as all artistic things must, from the strangest materials. A bit picked up here, another there, seemingly a mass of incoherent rags and tatters, but full of method and meaning. Every scrap of it put together with reference to antecedent experiences. The wind, the storm, the outdoor life of hardship, the tossing and tampering it received through its long warnings, and which to an artist's eye is beyond price, seemingly a bundle of rags, and yet a royal garment, for the truly queenly character of the old gypsy ennobled every thread of it. How many of those who felt this quality in the wearer noticed how the battered head dress was arranged in vague and shadowy semblance to a crown? The gnarled and twisted branch she carried, suggesting the emblem of command? End of Chapter 19. Chapter 20 of Among the Great Masters of the Drama. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sonja. Among the Great Masters of the Drama by Walter Rowlands. Rachelle. We possess the most marvellous actress, although still only a child, that this generation has seen on the stage. This actress is Mademoiselle Rachelle. Jules Jeannin. Rachelle, of whom the celebrated French critic wrote these words on her debut at the Théâtre Français in 1838, was a Jewess. The despised but marvellous race from when she sprang has given Spinoza to philosophy, Heinrich Heine to literature, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Rubinstein to music, Achille Fou, the Pereires and the Rothschilds to finance, Beaconsfield to statesmanship, Sir Moses Montefiore and Baron Hirsch to philanthropy, Joseph Israels and Margan Tokolsky to art, and Rachelle and Sarah Bernard to the stage. Apart from her genius, Rachelle owed most to her teacher, Sanson, Teacher of Elocution and Professor at the Conservatoire, all her great parts having been studied under him. Sanson, of real talent as an author and actor, was a genius as a teacher. His pupils included Madame Plessis, Favard, Madeleine and Augustine Brohan, Rose-Cherry, Joacin, Stella Colla and Amy Desclay. For the earlier generation, he had been an active servant of the French stage. He had been the scholar of Fleury and the Elder Baptiste. He had acted with Mademoiselle Marseille and Madame Dorval. More than all, he had heard from Talma's own lips the great tragedy and opinions on the art, of which he was such a renowned exponent. The youthful Rachelle in her turn received and profited by these invaluable traditions, imparted to her with enthusiasm by Sanson, who was always justly proud of his illustrious pupil. When her success was an accomplished fact and enormous audiences greeted her nightly, Sanson never tired of recalling with pleasure the hours spent in teaching Rachelle, whose perception and precision were alike remarkable. Of education she had received but very little, and it was necessary for her teacher to recount to her the history and character of the person she was to represent before beginning the regular lesson, in which her interest was indefatigable. From her first appearance at the Théâtre Français, until her retirement from the stage, Rachelle never essayed a new part or revived an old one without the aid of her old master, Sanson. Sometime in the early fifties, Salvini saw Rachelle act several times in Rome, and in his autobiography, has recorded his impressions of that incomparable French actress, as he calls her. He says, she was the very quintessence of the art of Rosius. To render due praise to her qualities of mind, as well as to those of face and form, it would be necessary to coin new epithets in the Italian tongue. Expression, attitude, the mobile restraint of her features, grace, dignity, affection, majesty, all in her was nature itself. Her eyes like two black car bunkers, and her magnificent raven hair added splendor to a face full of life and feeling. When she was silent, she seemed almost more eloquent than when she spoke. Her voice at one sympathetic, harmonious, and full of variety expressed the various passions with correct intonation and exemplary measure. Her motions were always statuesque, and never seemed studied. At the time of which Salvini speaks, his great career lay before him, with Rachelle the opposite was the case. Her last appearance on any stage occurred during her American tour, when ill and suffering, she acted Adrienne LeCouvreur, on December 17, 1855, at Charleston, South Carolina. Jerome, in his portrait of Rachelle, now in the Museum of the Théâtre Français, has portrayed her as the veritable spirit of those classic tragedies in which her genius sought to its zenith. Théophile Gauthier wrote of the canvas in these words. The portrait of Rachelle is at once a portrait and a personification. Tragedy is seen in the Tragedienne. The muse in the actress, who draped in crimson and orange, stands before a severe Doric portico. The somber passions, the fatalities, the tragic furies, contract her pale visage. It is Rachelle on her sinister side, fierce and violent. This powerful picture, exhibited at the Salon of 1861, does honor to the artist, who, born in 1824, has filled a long life with worthy work, and depicted many great historic figures. Caesar, Cleopatra, Dante, Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Extraordinary honors have been given to Jerome, both as painter and sculptor. He is represented in the United States in many public and private galleries. Recording by Thessene. Among the great masters of the drama, by Walter Rowland. Ristori, she is the greatest female artist I have ever seen. Charlotte Cushman. In May, 1855, Ristori, who had just made her debut in Paris and scored a genuine triumph, witnessed Rachelle's performance of Camille in Racine's Les Horrises, and praised the great tragedian with that stint. Rachelle, in turn, saw Ristori act, but otherwise the two never met. An anonymous writer in Putnam's monthly has made an interesting comparison of Rachelle and Ristori, from which the following is selected. The presence of two artists of such transcendent merits, such as Rachelle and Ristori at the same time on the Parisian stage, could not fail to divide the theatre-loving public into two rival camps, each party decrying the pretensions of the other and claiming the palm of superiority for its favourites. But these hostilities have been a short duration, for it was soon felt that the genius of the two great tragedians, equally unquestionable in point of fact, was of characters so opposite as to make it impossible to establish a comparison between them. Nature has been equally generous to both, though in a different way, and both possess in an equal degree the science, sentiment, and resources of their art. But the nature of their geniuses, being essentially different, they arrive through opposite methods at the production of opposite effects. Thus, even in the performance of the same part, Schiller's Mary Stuart, in which Rachelle has also frequently appeared, the peculiar talent of each artist imparts so different a character to the same impersonation that it is impossible to establish anything like a qualitative comparison between them. It is now generally admitted by critics and public that we cannot, by any received canons of art, this side which is the greater talent of the two. The preference accorded to one or the other being the result of personal idiosyncrasy and the tastes of the spectator. Rachelle may be defined as an animated statue, the most perfect incarnation ever seen of plastic art as it has come down to us in the immortal creations of the old Greek sculptors, the contour of a small low-browed head, the pale oval of her face, the symmetric proportions of her form are all in the highest degree classical and statuistic, and she wears her tunic as naturally as though she had worn it from her childhood. Through persevering study aided by the peculiarity of her mental structure, she has so thoroughly imbued herself with the traditions and spirit of ancient Greece that every attitude and gesture is as classically correct as her appearance, and in her acting she attains with the same completeness, the same conventional ideal. In her delineations of the fears her as the softer emotions, she never falls short of, never exceeds the sobriety of that average of expression which is the neplus ultra of sculptural truth. No weakness, no exaggeration deforms the harmonious outline of her creations, the fire of her eye, the exquisite modulations of her voice, the majesty and grace of her movement, the magnificent burst of tragic fury regulated by her profound intelligence of her part serve to fill up this outline, but are never permitted to exceed it. For Rachel it may be said that nature, the nature of this outer world and humanity does not exist. With her art has taken the place of nature, an art whose elements perfectly coordinated constitute a world by itself with its own laws and its own coherence and its own denizens life, interest and beauty. But this world is not our world, its women are not women, but goddesses or demons. Its terrors do not move us, its tears do not melt, nor its smiles warm us. It is true that in the character of Adrian LeCovre, in a play founded on the history of the famous actress of that time, Louis XV, and in that of Mademoiselle de Bellile, a young girl of noble birth, an unsullied purity exposed to odious and ungrounded suspicions. Rachel has proven that she can be human when she will, while as the lesbian of Monsieur Bernard's graceful drama, she has shown that she possesses, would she but use them a charm and beauty equal to her power. But parts of this description are rare in her performances, though highly successful would probably never have won for her the preeminent position that she has attained in the classical creations with which she has identified her name. Yet in witnessing her interpretations of Camille, Emily, Fede, Hermione, etc., we feel that we are in the presence not of any passion or emotion but of a most perfect representation of passion and emotion. In these purely intellectual appeals to our intelligence, we are conscious of receiving a high artistic gratification and follow with admiring wonder at these magnificent exhibitions of plastic bar. But they produce no illusion, excite no emotion. We recognise the transcendent art of the actress. But for us, the art remains art, the actress and actress. If Rachel be the high priestess of art, compelling us to follow her into a region of purely ideal, Lara Storie is the interpreter of nature in the broad sphere of human life and emotion. Her creations, no less artistically perfect, are to those of Rachel as is the woman Eve, to the eve of the sculptor. They live, breathe, move for the same life that pulses in our veins and beats in our bosoms, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. They stir our hearts with the touch of nature and waken and answering vibration in the innermost fibres of our consciousness. Whatever the sentiment she is portraying, Lara Storie says and does just what we would say and do in the same situation. Her joy, her sorrow, her anger, hope, pity or revenge are all real human emotions, exactly such as we ourselves should feel under the same circumstances. Her smile and chance are her tears afflict and her indignation rouses us for they are our own. While Rachel, as in Mary Stewart, compels the most capricious, pathetic and touching phases of human feeling to assume the proportions of the conventional ideals she has made her own, Lara Storie, as in Mira and in Kamma. While Rachel, as in Mary Stewart, compels the most capricious, pathetic and touching phases of human feeling to assume the proportions of the conventional ideals she has made her own, Lara Storie, as in Mira and in Kamma, avails herself even of the introduction of the supernatural element to deepen the purely human pathos of her part. Rachel, subordinating nature to art, so chastens every detail of a character that no distortion ever impales its classic contour. Lara Storie, pressing all the resources of art into the service of nature, models every portion of her acting so faithfully upon the reality of life that in her most impetuous, most pathetic or even most terrible delineations she never misses, never oversteps the truth. Among the great masters of the drama, by Walter Rollins, Fector. Fector is the most youthful, most ardent, most enthusiastic, most insinuating of artists. What variety of talents? What unpretending skill and conception? What marvelous, thrilling, electric execution? Alexander Dumas, the Younger. Charles Fector acted Hamlet for the first time in London in the spring of 1861, and made so great an impression that the play ran for 115 nights. It was nine years later when he produced it in the United States. As a boy of 15, the writer saw Fector play Hamlet at the Old Globe Theatre in Boston in the winter of 1870-71. I will not venture to speak on the merits of that remarkable performance in face of the numerous estimates by more competent critics which are extant, but will confine myself to quoting from them. Charles Dickens, the actor's close friend, wrote, Perhaps no innovation in art was ever accepted with so much favour by so many intellectual persons, pre-committed to and preoccupied by another system as Mr. Fector's Hamlet. I take this to have been the case, as it unquestionably was in London, not because of its picturesqueness, not because of its novelty, not because of its many scattered beauties, but because of its perfect consistency with itself. As the animal painter said of his favourite picture of rabbits, that there was more nature about those rabbits than you usually found in rabbits, so it may be said of Mr. Fector's Hamlet, that there was more consistency about that Hamlet than you usually found in Hamlet. Its great and satisfying originality was in its possessing the merit of a distinctly conceived and executed idea. From the first appearance of the broken glass of fashion and mold of form, pale and worn with weeping for his father's death, and remotely suspicious of its cause, to his final struggle with Horatio for the fatal cup, there were cohesion and coherence in Mr. Fector's view of the character. De Vriand, the German actor, had some years before in London fluttered the theatrical doves considerably by such changes as being seated when instructing the players, and like mild departures from established usage. But he had worn in the main the old nondescript dress, and had held forth in the main in the old way, hovering between sanity and madness. I do not remember whether he wore his hair crisply curled short, as if he were going to an everlasting dancing master's party at the Danish court, but I do remember that most other Hamlets, since the great Campbell, have been bound to do so. Mr. Fector's Hamlet, a pale, woe-begone Norseman with long, flaxen hair, wearing a strange garb never associated with the part upon the English stage, if ever seen there at all, and making a peratical swoop upon the whole fleet of little theatrical prescriptions without meaning, or, like Dr. Johnson's celebrated friend, with only one idea in them, and that a wrong one, never could have achieved in its extraordinary success but for its animation by one pervading purpose, to which all changes were made intelligibly subsurient. The bearing of this purpose on the treatment of Ophelia, on the death of Polonius, and on the old student fellowship between Hamlet and Horatio was exceedingly striking, and the difference between picturesqueness of stage arrangement for mere stage effect, and for the elucidation of a meaning was well displayed in there having been a gallery of musicians at the play, and in one of them passing on his way out, with his instrument in his hand, when Hamlet, seeing it, took it from him to point his talk with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. This leads me to the observation with which I have all along desired to conclude, that Mr. Fector's romance and picturesqueness are always united to a true artist's intelligence and a true artist's training in a true artist's spirit. George Henry Luz declared Fector's Hamlet to be one of the very best he had ever seen. Wilkie Collins said in 1882, From McCready downward, I have, I think, seen every Hamlet of any note and mark during the last five and thirty years. The true Hamlet I first saw, when Fector stepped on the stage. These words, if they merely expressed my own opinion, it is needless to say would never have been written. But they expressed the opinion of every unprejudiced person under fifty years of age with whom I have met. For that reason, let the words stand. That excellent actor, Herman Vezin, unfortunately, but little known to his fellow Americans because of his long residence in London, who had supported Fector in Hamlet, wrote, He played Hamlet and took the town by storm. His appearance, his easy grace, his freedom from the vice of mouthing, his unstilted style delighted all but the most bigoted adherence of the stagy school of acting. I sat in the stalls at one of the rehearsals and was much struck by his manner of always thinking the thought of Hamlet before he spoke the words. I said to him, you're going to make a great hit in this part. None of his Shakespearean attempts equalled his Hamlet. Fector will rank high in the role of great actors who have excelled in that character. Dutton Cook said, I've perhaps seen a score of Hamlets, including the Hamlets of McCready, of Charles Kemble, of Emile de Vrent, and Salvini. It seems to me that Fector's Hamlet ranks with the worthiest of these. William J. Hennessey, born in Ireland in 1839, was brought to America 10 years later and remained here until 1870 when he went to London, where his studio now is. While in the United States, he held the deservedly high rank as an illustrator, his work including the admirable series of drawings of Edwin Booth and his chief characters. Since his return to England, he has confined himself to painting in oil and watercolors. He is a member of the National Academy of Design. Chapter 23 of Among the Great Masters of the Drama This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Catherine Phipps. Among the Great Masters of the Drama by Walter Rowlands. Jefferson Mr. Jefferson is an actor of exquisite art. As a comedian, he would hold his own beside the finest comic artists of France, M. Rainier, M. Go, M. Cochelin, Brander, Matthews. A certain likeness exists between Fector and Jefferson. Both were artists as well as actors. Fector's father, who was a talented sculptor, wished his son to follow in the same path and for some years, Charles studied modelling with great success, but at last his love for the drama became too strong to be resisted and he abandoned the studio for the stage. Another French actor, Etienne Malang, who won fame in romantic parts such as Fector Shonin, Monte Cristo was one of them, was also a sculptor of genuine attainments. His two sons, Lucien and Gaston Malang, are painters of great merit, some of whose works have been reproduced in the illustrations of this series. The elder Malang, who was likewise a talented painter, when a young man out of an engagement joined a strolling company on the point of embarking at Haavre for Guadeloupe, where he arrived in the summer of 1830. The first essays of the Motley Troop were tolerably successful, but a sudden rising of the blacks and an attempt made by them to take possession of the places in the theatre reserved for the whites compelled the governor to interfere and order the house to be closed. Thus, thrown upon their own resources, the ladies of the company were reduced to give lessons in dancing and their male associates in fencing, whereas Malang, who knew nothing of either accomplishment, remembered that he had formally been a scene painter and boldly announced his readiness to take likenesses at all prices and in all sizes. It is presumable that at the period in question, the art of portrait painting in Guadeloupe was in its infancy. For no sooner had the advertisement appeared than our hero's studio was crowded with applicants, mostly natives, and doubtless attracted by the modesty of the charges which varied according to the dimensions of the work, from Tensu to two Franks. A precious lot of ugly scoundrels they were, observed Malang, long afterward, while recounting some of his early adventures and a pretty caricature I made of them, but they paid down on the nail so that before six months had elapsed I had put by a sufficient sum to defray the cost of my passage and started in the first homebound vessel that sailed from the port. In 1852, when acting the title role in Benvenuto Cellini, he muddled on the stage, in a few minutes a figure of Hebe, which Napoleon III, who was present on the occasion, requested might be reserved for him and gave it a place of honour in the Tuileries. This tour de force was followed in Salvatore Rosa by a masterly sketch of a rocky landscape which Malang dashed off on canvas with similar rapidity and renewed on each successive performance of the drama. Mrs. Siddons, it is recorded, used the sculptor's tools successfully, but Sarah Bernhardt is doubtless the best known actress who has also won distinction in art. As long ago as 1876, she gained an honourable mention at the Paris Salon, with a group entitled After the Tempest, and many will remember the collection of her paintings and sculptures which she brought with her on her first visit to America in 1880, and which were exhibited in several cities. A prominent English actor, J. Forbes Robertson, has painted many pictures, including one of the church scene from Much Ado About Nothing, as acted by Irving's company at the Lyceum Theatre, and Whedon Grossmuth, a brother of the monologist George Grossmuth, is also both a well-known actor having played Jacques Stroppe to Henry Irving's Robert Macare and an artist whose works have been shown at the Royal Academy. The writer remembers visiting an exhibition in London in 1880, where all the works of art on view were either of actors or by them. Many names familiar to British or American theatre-goers appear in the catalogue. C. J. Matthews, William Wignold, W. H. Kendall, Henry Neville, Genevieve Ward, E. H. Sodden, George Conquest, Harry Poulton, Ella Deets, Curl Bellew, Wilson Barrett, Fred Vokes, Howard Paul, and Ada Swanborough. Three paintings by Joseph Jefferson were shown, a seacoast at Sundown, a scotch lock, and a lake scene in America, the last named being lent by the actor's son-in-law, the late B. L. Farjan, novelist. All the pictures by Matthews in this collection were landscapes, and, as these titles suggest, it is in landscape painting that the genial rip delights to spend such leisure hours as can be spared from acting and fishing. Some of his best pictures have, for their subject, the cypress swamps of Louisiana, where Mr. Jefferson earns a large plantation, but his brush is not by any means limited to such scenes. And when the actor is seen no more upon our stage, he will leave behind him not only the memory of a famed comedian, a fellow of infinite jest, but also that of an artist endowed with both sympathy and imagination. End of chapter 23. Chapter 24 of Among the Great Masters of the Drama. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Among the Great Masters of the Drama by Walter Rollins. Chapter 24. Salvini. Salvini is above all rules and beyond all comparison. W. E. Henley. Some years since, Salvini, after much persuasion, consented to commit to writing his reasons for interpreting, as he has, the various Shakespearean characters played by him. The paper was published in a leading Italian weekly, and from a translation by Ms. Helen Zimmern, the following extracts, referring to Salvini's Macbeth, are taken. He says first, Before undertaking the study of the characters of Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello, I consulted the legends whence the poet had obtained his themes. I had all the English and German commentaries and criticisms translated for me, and read the Italian, French, and Spanish ones. The two first were obscure, and so extraordinarily at variance among themselves that I could not form an exact criterion. The Italians sinned from the same cause, and from their pretensions to be an infallible judgment. The French were vague, airy, and full of gallic fantasticalities. The descendants of Cervantes and Lope de Vega persuaded me most, but, all things considered, I resolved to interrogate no other commentator on these English works but Shakespeare himself. Oh, artists of the dramatic world, do not confuse your minds by seeking for the sources of his various characters. It is from his well alone that you can quench your ardor to know. Go direct to him. Study him in every phrase with diligent patience. Do not tire. When you think you have done, recommence. Persevere. Shakespeare is never studied too much. Macbeth's character, according to the Italian actor, is the absolute antithesis of that of Hamlet. If Hamlet may be defined as force of thought above action, the conception of Macbeth may be defined as that of force of action above thought. It is always Shakespeare who leads me to observe these things by his own words. Thus he makes his protagonists say in the second act, words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. I go and it is done. And in the third, strange things I have in head that will to hand, which must be acted ere they can be scanned. And again in the fourth act he says, the flighty purpose never is or took unless the deed go with it. To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done. It seems to me that my definition has no need of further commentary. Macbeth, he points out, is a man who would have hesitated at nothing. Had noble deeds been required for him to attain his end, he would have flooded the kingdom with them. If he hesitated a second before murdering Duncan, it was that he revolted at the thought of assassination, of killing without opposition. When he sees the specter, what he craves is peace from such disturbances, not expiation. The upshot of his conversation with the doctor proves, according to Senior Salvini, that he does not repent of what he has done, but that the visions disturb him, and that he defies them, combats them, and conquers them with his strong spirit. He is grand, this sanguinary, ambitious man, but superstition is his Achilles heel, and by it he fails. If I sought a comparison with a similar character, I should cite the son of Pope Alexander VI, the famous Duke Valentino Caesar Borgia, who, like Macbeth, could find no other means to maintain his power but poison and arms. But he committed low deeds and obscenities not imputable to Macbeth, and therefore the usurper of the scotch throne for all his ferocity appears more majestic. When I read this grand tragedy for the first time, I expected to see the senambulist scene of the wife, followed by one of the husband, and it was quite difficult to persuade myself of the contrary. It seems extravagant this effect produced on my mind, but yet it seems to me justifiable. The senambulist scene takes place at the beginning of the fifth act, and up to then, neither the waiting maid nor the doctor has given a hint of such a condition. No one expects it or has reason to foresee it. It is Lady Macbeth who has ever been the strong one, who has called him a coward, laughed at his hallucinations, never a single word of remorse or repentance from her lips. How, then, comes this resolute woman suddenly to falsify the terrible but grand impression the audience has gained of her up to now? And why has the author, ever rigidly observant to maintain his characters the same, from beginning to end, made an exception for Lady Macbeth? Is it illness that makes her weak and vacillating? It may be, but this scene seems to me originally composed for Macbeth, and afterward changed for the benefit of some actor—actresses were not then employed—who perhaps did not think the part he had to sustain sufficient. I thank him from my heart for having taken it from Macbeth. The burden of this role is sufficiently exorbitant. An original idea, certainly, on Senor Salvini's part. These quotations from Salvini's essay show something of the care and study that the great tragedian expends on his wonderful impersonations. End of Chapter 24 Quite With eyes in which are Hamlet's awe and cardinal Rich Lou's suble light looks from this frame. Thomas Bailey Aldrich on Sargent's Portrait of Booth On a memorable occasion, Salvini and Booth acted together for a few nights at the Academy of Music, New York. In the spring of 1886, the Italian tragedian playing Othello and the ghost in Hamlet to Booth's Iago and Hamlet, Booth first played Rich Lou in Sacramento, California, in 1856. When he was but 23 years of age, it was the most successful part among those he presented on his first visit to London in 1861, and at the time of his second engagement in the English capital in 1880, the Athenaeum printed this flattering notice of the performance. Mr. Booth's Rich Lou is an admirably conscientious, thoughtful, and artistic performance. In this character, the significance of Mr. Booth's method is revealed, and the reputation it has won for him in the United States becomes comprehensible to the English public. Almost for the first time in recent days, the full value of an artistic method has been made apparent by an English-speaking actor to an English audience. Those actors who, like Mr. Irving, Fetcher, or even Sr. Salvini, have won warmest recognition, have done so apparently on the strength of personal gifts and of a species of magnetic or sympathetic influence, which enabled them to dispense with apparent method and, in certain instances, overleap it. In the case of Sr. Salvini, what looked like nature was probably an outcome of highest art, with Mr. Irving, and in a certain degree with Fetcher, what was best was a direct outcome of individuality, through a direct inspiration. Mr. Irving attained the really splendid effect, which is witnessed in Hamlet when he springs, after the play scene, into the throne vacated by the king, or that not less fine effect in Rich Lou when, after the departure of the baffled murderers, he puts his head through the curtains of his bedroom by much slower, and it may be sure processes Mr. Booth reaches a result not less fine. Mr. Booth's Rich Lou is a sustained and an exquisite performance. At one or two points, it displays electrical passion, and it is throughout admirable in finish. Those passages in which Rich Lou confronts the cowering minion of the king and defies him to touch the woman around whom he has thrown the protection of the church are naturally the favorites with the plague or far higher, however, than the merit of these passages is that of the grace, beauty, and completeness of the whole. All that was seen was the fierce, subtle, and indomitable prolet in the very guise in which he has been conceived by Lord Lytton. The appearance was singularly like the best known pictures of Rich Lou, and the character of the astute on Scribbler's Man was presented to the life. William Winter, the close friend and biographer of Booth, thus wrote of his Rich Lou, Booth's personation of Rich Lou has by many acute critics been accounted his best work of art. The character is one that assimilates, at many points, with Edwin Booth's temperament, and one that is marvelously well adapted to catch the sympathies of mankind. Appearing as the soldier priest, the tragedy in has never failed to win the popular heart. No piece of acting is better known in this generation, and accept it to be Jefferson's matchless performance of Rip Van Winkle. No piece of acting is more admired. Booth's Rich Lou is one of the most powerful, symmetrical, and picturesque works of dramatic art with which the stage is adorned. It may not reproduce the cardinal of history. That result was not essential. It certainly does embody the cardinal of the drama. That Booth looks, the character is a matter of course, his weird, thoughtful, spiritual face in his slender, priest-like figure, made up with the concomitance of age and clothed in the requisite and accurate ecclesiastical garments. Combined in a perfect presentment of the fiery soul in the aged and puny body, the physical realization could not be improved. Edwin Clarence Steadman wrote of the famous Curse Scene at the end of the Fourth Act of Rich Lou. We moderns who so feebly catch the spell which made the Church of Rome sovereign of sovereigns for a thousand years, have it cast upon us in the scene where the cardinal, deprived of temporal power and defending his beautiful ward from royalty itself, draws around her that Church's awful circle and cries to Baradis, set but a foot within that holy ground and on my head, yea, though it wore a crown, I launched the Curse of Rome. Booth's expression of this climax is wonderful. There is perhaps nothing of its own kind to equal it upon the present stage. Well may the King's haughty parasites cower and shrink aghast from the ominous voice, the finger of doom, the arrows of those lurid, unbearable eyes. John Collier's vivid realization of the actor in this episode of Bulwer's drama, Painted in London, was given by Edwin Booth to his friend William Bispam, who afterward presented it to the Players Club, which Booth's magnificence founded, and of which he was the first president. The artist, born in London in 1850, was a pupil of Pointer, Lawrence, and Alma Tadeema. Among the many portraits of men of Mark, painted by Collier, are those of Darwin, Huxley, whose daughter he married, Rudyard Kipling, and Henry Irving. His subject pictures are numerous, and include the last voyage of Henry Hudson, belonging to the National Gallery of British Art, the death of Cleopatra, Leitem Nestra, Cersei, and in the Forest of Arden, End of Chapter 25. Chapter 26 of Among the Great Masters of the Drama. This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Catherine Phipps. Among the Great Masters of the Drama, by Walter Rowlands. John McCullough. His friends are glad to remember him, not merely as the best Roman actor seen this many a day, but the strong and hearty man who smile brightened even dull London town, and the warm grasp of whose hand was that of one whose name was truth. Clinton Stewart. On a certain Washington's birthday, some 25 years since, the writer saw John McCullough play Coriolanus at the Boston Theatre, after the high Roman fashion, as Cleopatra says, and worthily indeed the Tragedian placed before us the noble figure of Shakespeare's hero. The excellent review of McCullough's performance which appeared in the Boston Daily Advertiser at the time, and was, presumably, written by Mr Henry A. Clapp, well deserves reprinting, and I give it here. In his impersonation of Caus Marcius last night, Mr McCullough may be said to have met the high expectations which had been formed by all who saw him in Virginia's. He looks and moves almost an ideal Roman of the ancient type, with the gait and bearing of one belonging to a race of conquerors. In this tragedy, he conceives his part clearly, and plays it with the directness, force, and self-consistency of one entirely possessed by his idea. His Caus Marcius has the magnificent and simple dignity of one born to wear the patrician toga. His pride is almost passionate in its intensity. But this trade also is perfectly simple. He's free from the least touch of self-distrust, or the self-consciousness which is bread of self-distrust. He has the very virtue of modesty, and loves no praise but that of his mother. To these qualities, so curiously mixed of good and evil, must be added his stern incorruptibility, his domestic purity, his lofty courage and truth, and his unflinching loyalty to his convictions. And the picture remains entirely incomplete if we omit to name a violence of temper so extreme that under its gusts of passion, every other power and faculty of his nature is swayed like a reed in the wind. Mr. McCullough presents all this, and more than all this, with exceptional force, and, as we have said, with rare directness and simplicity. In few words, his assumption seems a creation, and not a composition. We may select for special praise his fierce haughtiness and scarcely restrained fury of disgust in his first encounters with the plebeian crowd, and the contemptuous irony with which he solicits their voices when he stands for counsel. In this last position, Mr. McCullough dwells too much, we think, upon the personal offensiveness of the ill-smelling crowd, though he makes his expressions of repulsion very effective, the overemphasis of one unpleasant idea detracting from the imaginative significance of the situation. For it is the patrician hauteur, rather than the patrician nose that is most displeased. In the early interviews with his wife and child, Mr. McCullough showed the fine sweetness and tenderness, which are so often and so beautifully displayed in his strong parts, and in his speech with his mother, there was added to these a grave, deep-reaching reverence, through which breathed the peculiar virtue of the ancient republic. It would be hard to exceed the cold, contemptuous dignity, with which he turned his back upon the people after his banishment. Mr. McCullough's once rather marked weakness for sudden explosiveness of speech seems to have been partially cured, and in the furious temper of Coriolanus, it finds justifiable opportunities and never, except in one instance, does it wholly fail to beget that temperance, which should give it smoothness. In carrying out a single part of such exceptional prominence, Mr. McCullough sometimes compels the critical observer to the thought that the artist has not such variety and imaginativeness of method as wholly to save him from the charge of sameness, but the test furnished by the character is a most severe one, and it is much to have presented the character of Caius Marcius Coriolanus with a sustained dignity, vitality, force, and artistic propriety which give it at once a place among one's best and most vivid experiences of the stage. Has done more than anyone else in America to present the higher drama under conditions of artistic completeness and to stimulate the literary and artistic development of a stage impressed with his own character and taste, W. M. LaFanne. One of the earliest attempts made by Lawrence Barrett to secure the public favor for new plays by native writers was his production of Mr. Hall's dramatization of his own charming counterfeit presentment, which he brought out in Cincinnati in October 1877. A more ambitious endeavor was a new play. The title of this was afterward changed to Yorick's Love, translated and adapted by Mr. Hall's from the Spanish of Joaquín Estebanes, the action of which takes place in the Globe Theater of Shakespeare's time. This was produced at Cleveland in October 1878. Another noteworthy production was William Young's Arthurian drama, inverse, entitled Pin Dragon, first seen in Chicago in November 1881, and a fourth was George Henry Boker's tragedy based on the story of Francesca da Remini, produced by Barrett at Philadelphia, September 1882. Other less important productions testified to the actor's high-minded desire to add meritorious works to his repertory, and his death at the comparatively early age of 53 was a distinct loss to the American stage, while Barrett's hairbell was undoubtedly one of his finest personations. The highest place among them is generally given to his performance of Cassius, in which he was often seen dividing the honors of the play with Booth and Davenport. When Barrett played Cassius in the memorable performance of Julius Caesar at Booth's Theater in the December of 1871, William Winter said in the Tribune, Mr. Barrett, who was welcomed with lively interest and applause, acted Cassius with splendid spirit and great effect. On a previous occasion we have expressed the opinion that this is a work of absolute genius. It will suffice now to remark that it easily bore away the richest honors of last night's performance. George Edgar Montgomery paid a tribute to the actor in these words. His Cassius is the most truthful and impressive Shakespearean performance that he has given us. And Edward A. Dithmar wrote, His splendid Cassius, a part for which he seems to have been made, has its full measure of admiration. It is not likely that the stage has ever known a finer performance of the subtle Roman. His best part, judged from every point of view, is Cassius. There is not a false tone in that vivid, forceful, thoroughly human portrayal. End of chapter 27. Masters of the Drama by Walter Rowlands Henry Irving and Ellen Terry I don't know that I remember having seen a greater performance by any actor, not even accepting McCready's Varna. It is wonderful. John Gilbert on Irving's Louis XI. She is as near absolute perfection as anyone can be. Sarah Bernhard on Ellen Terry. W. G. Willis' beautiful version of Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield was first produced at the Court Theatre on March 30th, 1878. The play achieved instant success. Herman Wiesen acting Dr. Primrose admirably and Ellen Terry, for whom the part had been written, winning a complete triumph as Olivia. Miss Terry has declared that it was her popularity in this part, which led Mr. Irving to engage her as leading lady for his company at the Lyceum Theatre, of which he became manager at that time. However, this may be. The fact remains that in December of the same year that saw the production of Olivia, Ellen Terry made her first appearance before a Lyceum audience, playing Ophelia to the hamlet of Henry Irving, thus beginning the remarkable series of dramatic successes, with which the world of theatre-goers is familiar. About seven years after the initial presentation of Olivia, it was most successfully revived at the Lyceum, with Ellen Terry in her original part, Irving as Dr. Primrose and William Terrace as Squire Thornhill. Clement Scott, the well-known critic, wrote of the revival. For seven years, the Olivia of Miss Ellen Terry has been laid up in lavender, and the picture of a loving and lovable woman with all her waywardness, trust, disappointment, and anguish is presented to us with an added sweetness and a deepening colour. The artist evidently has not put this admirable study of a true woman wholly out of her mind. She has not played the part for a long time on the stage, but she must often have thought of it. New ideas, fresh suggestions, innumerable delicate touches, never lost on the observant spectator, have been brought to bear on the new Olivia, who stands out as one of the most striking personations, as fine in perspective as in outline, as tender in thought as it is true in sentiment that the modern stage has seen. In the first act of the play, Miss Ellen Terry has little more to do than strike the keynote of the poem. She has to show how Olivia is the fairest of the old vicar's flock, the loveliest and most winsome of his many children, the loved companion of her brothers and sisters, her father's idol. But for all that, simple Parsons' daughter as she is, inexperienced in the world and its ways, she already shows how strong and absolute is the affectionate nature that is in her. She loves the young squire, not because he has a fine coat and winning manners, not because he is above her in social station, but because her nature leans towards someone who appears stronger in character, and less dependent on love than herself. We come to the second scene. Love, the master, has worked havoc in Olivia's heart. Gradually, but very delicately, Miss Terry shows how her father is forgotten for the sake of her lover. She hates Birchell because he dares to doubt the man she loves. She defends her Thornhill with a woman's desperation and a woman's unreason. He may have deceived other women, but he loves me. That is her argument, and it is urged with brilliant petulance. The second scene with Thornhill brings out some very subtle suggestions. It is as excellently played by Mr. Terry as by Miss Terry. Both are goaded on by destiny. For a moment she would hold back, and so would he. She cannot forget her father, nor he his honour. The man is not wholly reckless yet. There is a pause, but it is momentary. Selfishness prevails. The strong man conquers not the weak, but the loving woman. And once she has given her promise, we know that she will not turn back. Then comes that exquisite scene when, at the twilight hour, Olivia distributes her little presence to the loved ones, before she steals away from home to join the lover of her future life. Miss Terry's fine power of absolutely identifying herself with the situation, the real tears that course down her cheeks, the struggle to repress as much as to express, make this one of the most pathetic moments. It is, however, and the third act that Miss Terry's acting has most visibly improved. She has here emphasised the contrast between the happy married woman and the heartbroken, despairing dupe. The actress begins the scene with an access of gaiety. If Thornhill's love had grown more cold, hers has gained in force and impetuosity. Her object now is to retain her lover by her side. Her short life with him has intensified her affection. She coquets with him. She hangs close to his neck. She laughs and is merry. Suddenly and without warning comes the storm, which is to wreck her life. Her lover tells her that he has deceived her. She is not his wife. The announcement at first stunts her. She cannot believe or understand. She beats her brains to get at the truth. The realisation of her situation is awful. Father, mother, home, friends, contempt, humiliation, crowd before her eyes like ghastly spectres. The love has suddenly changed to savage hate and has Thornhill advances to comfort her. She strikes him on the breast and in that one word, devil, is summed up the unspeakable horror that afflicts her soul. But as yet, the act is not nearly over. The most beautiful passages of it have yet to come when her father returns to rescue the lamb that is on the road. Never before, to our recollection on the stage, has woman's grief been depicted with such infinite truth. Olivia has been beaten and sorely bruised. But in her father's arms, she is safe. She feels she is forgotten and at rest. Such acting as is contained in the Olivia of Ellen Terry, as fine in conception as it is impressive in effect, is seen very rarely on the stage of any country. Unquestionably also, the play is made doubly interesting by the reading of the vicar, given by Mr Henry Irving, a performance more carefully restrained and modulated, a study more innocent of trick and less disfigured by characteristics of marked style and individuality than anything he has attempted before. Mr Irving's vicar is a dignified, resigned and most pathetic figure who lingers on the mind long after the theatre is quitted. The best idea that came into the actor's mind and, in effect, the finest moment of his acting was in the scene where the vicar comes to rescue his daughter for a moment, troubled and travel-stained as he is. He breaks away from her and remembers that he has a duty to perform. He loves the child surpassingly well, but he is her father and she has erred. He has to summon up all his courage for a homily on her lost sense of duty. He nervs himself for what he conceives to be necessary and begins with tears starting in his eyes to tell Olivia of her grievous fault. But the old man breaks down over the effort of forced calm. The strain is too much for him. All at once he melts. He casts aside the manner of the priest and calling Olivia to his arms becomes her loving father once more. The effect of this was instantaneous. The house was astonished and delighted. As regards acting, it was a moment of true inspiration, a masterpiece of invention.