You can find many other figures that will make you laugh, but you can find no other figure that makes you laugh with such good reason. It seems incredible that Shakespeare, with his all-embracing mind and his perfect instinct of art, should deliberately have chosen to lessen his own masterpiece of humour. For Shakespeare rejoiced in Falstaff, even while he respected and recorded the inexorable justice of the moral law that decrees and eventually accomplishes his destruction. There is no one of his characters whose history he has traced with such minute elaboration. The conception is singularly ample. You may see Falstaff, as Shallow saw him, when he was a boy and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; you may see him all along the current of his mature years; his highway robberies on Gadshill; his bragging narrative to Prince Henry; his frolicsome, paternal, self-defensive lecture to the prince; his serio-comic association with the ragamuffin recruits at Coventry; his adroit escape from the sword of Hotspur; his mendacious self-glorification over the body of Harry Percy; his mishaps as a suitor to Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page; his wonderfully humorous interviews with the Chief-Justice and with Prince John of Lancaster; his junketings with Justice Shallow in Gloucestershire, and his rebuff and consternation at his first and last meeting with King Henry V.; and finally you may see him, as Mrs. Quickly saw him, on his death-bed, when "'a cried out God! God! God! three or four times," and when "his nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled o' green fields."

A good and faithful study of King Henry IV., and especially of the second part of that play, is essential for a right appreciation of Falstaff. Those scenes with the Chief-Justice are unmatched in literature. The knight stands royally forth in them, clothed with his entire panoply of agile intellect, robust humour, and boundless comic effrontery. But the arrogant and expeditious Falstaff of The Merry Wives—so richly freighted with rubicund sensuality, so abundant in comic loquacity, and so ludicrous in his sorry plights—is a much less complex person, and therefore he stands more level than the real Falstaff does with the average comprehension of mankind. The American stage, accordingly, by which more than by the printed book he has become known to our people, has usually given its preference to the Falstaff of the comedy. The Merry Wives was first acted in New York on October 5, 1788 at the John Street theatre, with Harper as Falstaff. On April 1, 1807 it was produced at the old Park, and the Falstaff then was John E. Harwood. The same stage offered it again on January 16, 1829, with Hilson as Falstaff. A little later, about 1832, James H. Hackett took up the character of Falstaff, and from that time onward performances of The Merry Wives occurred more frequently in different cities of America. Nor was the historical play neglected. On August 7, 1848 a remarkably fine production of the comedy was accomplished at the Astor Place Operahouse, New York, with Hackett as Falstaff, who never in his time was equalled in that character, and has not been equalled since. Another Falstaff, however, and a remarkably good one, appeared at Burton's theatre on August 24, 1850, in the person of Charles Bass. On March 14, 1853 The Merry Wives was again given at Burton's theatre, and Burton himself played Falstaff, with characteristic humour; but Burton never acted the part as it stands in Henry IV. Hackett, who used both the history (Part I.) and the comedy, continued to act Falstaff almost to the end of his life and Hackett did not die till 1871. A distinguished representative of Falstaff in the early days of the American theatre—the days of the renowned Chestnut in Philadelphia—was William Warren (1767-1832), who came from England in 1796. In recent years the part has been acted by Benedict De Bar and by John Jack. The latest Falstaff in America was that embodied by Charles Fisher, who first assumed the character on November 19, 1872, at Daly's theatre, and whose performance was picturesque and humorous.

On the English stage the historical play of Henry IV. was exceedingly popular in Shakespeare's time. The first Falstaff, according to Malone, whom everybody has followed as to this point, was John Heminge (1555-1630). After him came John Lowin (1572-1654), who is thought to have acted the part in the presence of Charles I. His successor seems to have been Lacy, who died in 1681. Next came Cartwright, and in 1699 or 1700 the great Betterton (1635-1710) assumed the fat knight, acting him in both parts of the history and in the comedy. Genest records twenty-two revivals of the first part of Henry IV. upon the London stage, at five different theatres, between 1667 and 1826; fifteen revivals of the second part between 1720 and 1821; and sixteen revivals of The Merry Wives of Windsor between 1667 and 1811. Many English actors have played Falstaff since Betterton's time, an incomplete though sufficiently ample list of them comprising Estcourt, 1704; F. Bullock, 1713; J. Evans and J. Hall, 1715; Mills, 1716; Quin, "dignity and declamation," 1738; Berry, 1747; Love (whose true name was James Dance), 1762; Shuter, 1774; John Henderson, one of the greatest actors that ever lived, 1774; Mrs. Webb (once only), 1776; Ryder, 1786; Palmer, 1788; King, 1792; Fawcett, 1795; Stephen Kemble, who was so fat that he could play it without stuffing or bladder, 1802; Blissett, 1803; George Frederick Cooke, 1804; Bartley, 1812; Charles Kemble, 1824; Dowton, 1824; Elliston, 1826; and Samuel Phelps, 1846. The latest representative of Falstaff in England was H. Beerbohm-Tree, who, although a man of slender figure, contrived to simulate corpulence, and who manifested in his acting a fine instinct as to the meaning of the character and considerable resources of art in its expression, although the predominant individuality and the copious luxuriance of Falstaff's rosy and juicy humour were not within his reach. Upon the American stage the part is practically disused; and this is a pity, seeing that a source of great enjoyment and one of the most suggestive and fruitful topics that exist in association with the study of human nature are thus in a great degree sequestered from the public mind. Still it is better to have no Falstaff on the stage than to have it encumbered with a bad one; and certainly for the peculiar and exacting play of Henry IV. there are now no actors left: at least they are not visible in America.



XVII.

ADA REHAN.

In browsing over the fragrant evergreen pages of Cibber's delightful book about the stage, and especially in reflecting upon the beautiful and brilliant women who, drawn by his magic pencil, dwell there, perpetual, in life, colour, and charm, the reflective reader may perhaps be prompted to remember that the royal line of stage beauties is not extinct, and that stage heroines exist in the present day who are quite as well worthy of commemoration as any that graced the period of Charles the Second or of good Queen Anne. Our age, indeed, has no Cibber to describe their loveliness and celebrate their achievements; but surely if he were living at this hour that courtly, characteristic, and sensuous writer—who saw so clearly and could portray so well the peculiarities of the feminine nature—would not deem the period of Ellen Terry and Marie Wilton, of Ada Rehan and Sarah Bernhardt and Genevieve Ward, of Clara Morris and Jane Hading, unworthy of his pen. As often as fancy ranges over those bright names and others that are kindred with them—a glittering sisterhood of charms and talents—the regret must arise that no literary artist with just the gallant spirit, the chivalry, the sensuous appreciation, the fine insight, and the pictorial touch of old Cibber is extant to perpetuate their glory. The hand that sketched Elizabeth Barry so as to make her live forever in a few brief lines, the hand that drew the fascinating and memorable portrait of Susanna Mountfort ("Down goes her dainty diving body to the ground, as if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own attractions")—what might it not have done to preserve for the knowledge of future generations the queens of the theatre who are crowned and regnant to-day! Cibber could have caught and reflected the elusive charm of such an actress as Ada Rehan. No touch less adroit and felicitous than his can accomplish more than the suggestion of her peculiar allurement, her originality, and her fascinating because sympathetic and piquant mental and physical characteristics.

Ada Rehan, born at Limerick, Ireland, on April 22, 1860, was brought to America when five years old, and at that time she lived and went to school in Brooklyn. No one of her progenitors was ever upon the stage, nor does it appear that she was predisposed to that vocation by early reading or training. Her elder sisters had adopted that pursuit, and perhaps she was impelled toward it by the force of example and domestic association, readily affecting her innate latent faculty for the dramatic art. Her first appearance on the stage was made at Newark, New Jersey, in 1873, in a play entitled Across the Continent, in which she acted a small part, named Clara, for one night only, to fill the place of a performer who had been suddenly disabled by illness. Her readiness and her positive talent were clearly revealed in that effort, and it was thereupon determined in a family council that she should proceed; so she was soon regularly embarked upon the life of an actress. Her first appearance on the New York stage was made a little later, in 1873, at Wood's museum (it became Daly's theatre in 1879), when she played a small part in a piece called Thorough-bred. During the seasons of 1873-74-75 she was associated with the Arch Street theatre, Philadelphia,—that being her first regular professional engagement. (John Drew, with whom, professionally, Ada Rehan has been long associated, made his first appearance in the same season, at the same house.) She then went to Macaulay's theatre, Louisville, where she acted for one season. From Louisville she went to Albany, as a member of John W. Albaugh's company, and with that manager she remained two seasons, acting sometimes in Albany and sometimes in Baltimore. After that she was for a few months with Fanny Davenport. The earlier part of her career involved professional endeavours in company with the wandering stars, and she acted in a variety of plays with Edwin Booth, Adelaide Neilson, John McCullough, Mrs. Bowers, Lawrence Barrett, John Brougham, Edwin Adams, Mrs. Lander, and John T. Raymond. From the first she was devotedly fond of Shakespeare, and all the Shakespearian characters allotted to her were studied and acted by her with eager interest and sympathy. While thus employed in the provincial stock she enacted Ophelia, Cordelia, Desdemona, Celia, Olivia, and Lady Anne, and in each of those parts she was conspicuously good. The attention of Augustin Daly was first attracted to her in December 1877, when she was acting at Albaugh's theatre in Albany, the play being Katharine and Petruchio (Garrick's version of the Taming of the Shrew), and Ada Rehan appearing as Bianca; and subsequently Daly again observed her as an actress of auspicious distinction and marked promise at the Grand Opera House, New York, in April 1879. Fanny Davenport was then acting in that theatre in Daly's strong American play of Pique—one of the few dramas of American origin that aptly reflect the character of American domestic life—and Ada Rehan appeared in the part of Mary Standish. She was immediately engaged under Daly's management, and in May 1879 she came forth at the Olympic theatre, New York, as Big Clemence in that author's version of L'Assommoir. On September 17, 1879, Daly's theatre (which had been suspended for about two years) was opened upon its present site, the southwest corner of Thirtieth Street and Broadway, and Ada Rehan made her first appearance there, enacting the part of Nelly Beers in a play called Love's Young Dream. The opening bill on that occasion comprised that piece, together with a comedy by Olive Logan, entitled Newport. On September 30 a revival of Divorce, one of Daly's most fortunate plays, was effected, and Ada Rehan impersonated Miss Lu Ten Eyck—a part originally acted (1873) by Fanny Davenport. From that time to this (1892) Ada Rehan has remained the leading lady at Daly's theatre; and there she has become one of the most admired figures upon the contemporary stage. In five professional visits to Europe, acting in London, Paris, Edinburgh, Dublin, Berlin, and other cities, she pleased judicious audiences and augmented her renown. Daly took his company of comedians to London for the first time in 1884, where they fulfilled an engagement of six weeks at Toole's theatre, beginning July 19. The second visit to London was made two seasons later, when they acted for nine weeks at the Strand theatre, beginning May 27, 1886. At that time they also played in the English provinces, and they visited Germany—acting at Hamburg and at Berlin, where they were much liked and commended. They likewise made a trip to Paris. Their third season abroad began at the Lyceum theatre, London, May 3, 1888, and it included another expedition to the French capital, which was well rewarded. Ada Rehan at that time impersonated Shakespeare's Shrew. It was in that season also that she appeared at Stratford-upon-Avon, where Daly gave a performance (August 3, 1888) in the Shakespeare Memorial theatre, for the benefit of that institution. The fourth season of Daly's comedians in London began on June 10, 1890, at the Lyceum theatre, and lasted ten weeks; and this was signalised by Ada Rehan's impersonation of Rosalind. The fifth London season extended from September 9 to November 13, 1891.

This is an outline of her professional story; but how little of the real life of an actor can be imparted in a record of the surface facts of a public career! Most expressive, as a comment upon the inadequacy of biographical details, is the exclamation of Dumas, about Aimee Desclee: "Une femme comme celle-la n'a pas de biographie! Elle nous a emus, et elle en est morte. Voila toute son historie!" Ada Rehan, while she has often and deeply moved the audience of her riper time, is happily very far from having died of it. There is deep feeling beneath the luminous and sparkling surface of her art; but it is chiefly with mirth that she has touched the public heart and affected the public experience. Equally of her, however, as of her pathetic sister artist of the French stage, it may be said that such a woman has no history. In a civilisation and at a period wherein persons are customarily accepted for what they pretend to be, instead of being seen and understood for what they are, she has been content to take an unpretentious course, to be original and simple, and thus to allow her faculties to ripen and her character to develop in their natural manner. She has not assumed the position of a star, and perhaps the American community, although favourable and friendly toward her, may have been somewhat slow to understand her unique personality and her superlative worth. The moment a thoughtful observer's attention is called to the fact, however, he perceives how large a place Ada Rehan fills in the public mind, how conspicuous a figure she is upon the contemporary stage, and how difficult it is to explain and classify her whether as an artist or a woman. That blending of complexity with transparency always imparts to individual life a tinge of piquant interest, because it is one denotement of the temperament of genius.

The poets of the world pour themselves through all subjects by the use of their own words. In what manner they are affected by the forces of nature—its influences of gentleness and peace or its vast pageants of beauty and terror—those words denote; and also those words indicate the action, upon their responsive spirits, of the passions that agitate the human heart. The actors, on the other hand, assuming to be the interpreters of the poets, must pour themselves through all subjects by the use of their own personality. They are to be estimated accordingly by whatever the competent observer is able to perceive of the nature and the faculties they reveal under the stress of emotion, whether tragic or comic. Perhaps it is not possible—mind being limited in its function—for any person to form a full, true, and definite summary of another human creature. To view a dramatic performance with a consciousness of the necessity of forming a judicial opinion of it is often to see one's own thought about it rather than the thing itself. Yet, when all allowance is made for difficulty of theme and for infirmity of judgment, the observer of Ada Rehan may surely conclude that she has a rich, tender, and sparkling nature, in which the dream-like quality of sentiment and the discursive faculty of imagination, intimately blended with deep, broad, and accurate perceptions of the actual, and with a fund of keen and sagacious sense, are reinforced with strong individuality and with affluent and extraordinary vital force. Ada Rehan has followed no traditions. She went to the stage not because of vanity but because of spontaneous impulse; and for the expression of every part that she has played she has gone to nature and not to precept and precedent. The stamp of her personality is upon everything that she has done; yet the thinker who looks back upon her numerous and various impersonations is astonished at their diversity. The romance, the misery, and the fortitude of Kate Verity, the impetuous passion of Katharine, the brilliant raillery of Hippolyta, the enchanting womanhood of Rosalind—how clear-cut, how distinct, how absolutely dramatic was each one of those personifications! and yet how completely characteristic each one was of this individual actress! Our works of art may be subject to the application of our knowledge and skill, but we ourselves are under the dominance of laws which operate out of the inaccessible and indefinable depths of the spirit. Alongside of most players of this period Ada Rehan is a prodigy of original force. Her influence, accordingly, has been felt more than it has been understood, and, being elusive and strange, has prompted wide differences of opinion. The sense that she diffuses of a simple, unselfish, patient nature, and of impulsive tenderness of heart, however, cannot have been missed by anybody with eyes to see. And she crowns all by speaking the English language with a beauty that has seldom been equalled.



XVIII.

TENNYSON'S COMEDY OF THE FORESTERS.

"Besides, the King's name is a tower of strength." Thousands of people all over the world honour, and ought to honour, every word that falls from the pen of Alfred Tennyson. He is a very great man. No poet since the best time of Byron has written the English language so well—that is to say, with such affluent splendour of imagination; such passionate vigour; such nobility of thought; such tenderness of pathos; such pervasive grace, and so much of that distinctive variety, flexibility, and copious and felicitous amplitude which are the characteristics of an original style. No poet of the last fifty years has done so much to stimulate endurance in the human soul and to clarify spiritual vision in the human mind. It does not signify that now, at more than fourscore, his hand sometimes trembles a little on the harp-strings, and his touch falters, and his music dies away. It is still the same harp and the same hand. This fanciful, kindly, visionary, drifting, and altogether romantic comedy of Robin Hood is not to be tried by the standard that is author reared when he wrote Ulysses and Tithonus and The Passing of Arthur—that imperial, unapproachable standard that no other poet has satisfied.

"Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day."

But though the passion be subdued and the splendour faded, the deep current of feeling flows on and the strong and tender voice can still touch the heart and charm the ear. That tide of emotion and that tone of melody blend in this play and make it beautiful. The passion is no longer that of Enone and Lucretius and Guinevere and Locksley Hall and Maud and The Vision of Sin. The thought is no longer that of In Memoriam, with its solemn majesty and infinite pathos. The music is no longer that of The May Queen and the Talking Oak and Idle Tears. But why should these be expected? He who struck those notes strikes now another; and as we listen our wonder grows, and cannot help but grow, that a bard of fourscore and upward should write in such absolute sympathy with youth, love, hope, happiness, and all that is free and wandering and martial and active in the vicissitudes of adventure, the exploits of chivalry, and the vagabondish spirit of gypsy frolic. The fact that he does write in that mood points to the one illuminative truth now essential to be remembered. The voice to which we are privileged to listen, perhaps for the last time, is the voice of a great poet—by which is meant a poet who is able, not through the medium of intellect but through the medium of emotion, to make the total experience of mankind his own experience, and to express it not only in the form of art but with the fire of nature. The element of power, in all the expressions of such a mind, will fluctuate; but every one of its expressions will be sincere and in a greater or less degree will be vital with a universal and permanent significance. That virtue is in Alfred Tennyson's comedy of Robin Hood, and that virtue will insure for it an abiding endurance in affectionate public esteem.

The realm into which this play allures its auditor is the realm of Ivanhoe—the far-off, romantic region of Sherwood forest, in the ancient days of stout king Richard the First. The poet has gone to the old legends of Robin Hood and to the ballads that have been made upon them, and out of those materials—using them freely, according to his fancy—he has chosen his scene and his characters and has made his story. It is not the England of the mine and the workshop that he represents, and neither is it the England of the trim villa and the formal landscape; it is the England of the feudal times—of gray castle towers, and armoured knights, and fat priests, and wandering minstrels, and crusades and tournaments; England in rush-strewn bowers and under green boughs; the England in which Wamba jested and Blondel sung. To enter into that realm is to leave the barren world of prose; to feel again the cool, sweet winds of summer upon the brow of youth; to catch, in fitful glimpses, the shimmer of the Lincoln green in the sunlit, golden glades of the forest, and to hear the merry note of the huntsman commingled, far away, with "horns of Elfland faintly blowing." The appeal is made to the primitive, elemental, poetical instinct of mankind; and no detail of realism is obtruded, no question of probability considered, no agony of the sin-tortured spirit subjected to analysis, no controversy promoted and no moral lesson enforced. For once the public is favoured with a serious poetical play, which aims simply to diffuse happiness by arousing sympathy with pleasurable scenes and picturesque persons, with virtue that is piquant and humour that is refined, with the cheerful fortitude that takes adversity with a smile, and with that final fortunate triumph of good over evil which is neither ensanguined with gore nor saddened with tears, nor made acrid with bitterness. The play is pastoral comedy, written partly in blank verse and partly in prose, and cast almost wholly out of doors—in the open air and under the greenwood tree—and, in order to stamp its character beyond doubt or question, one scene of it is frankly devoted to a convocation of fairies around Titania, their queen.

The impulse that underlies this piece is the old, incessant, undying aspiration, that men and women of the best order feel, for some avenue of escape, some relief, some refuge, from the sickening tyranny of convention and the commonplace, and from the overwhelming mystery with which all human life is haunted and oppressed. A man who walks about in a forest is not necessarily free. He may be as great a slave as anybody. But the exalted imagination dwells upon his way of life as emancipated, breezy, natural, and right. That way, to the tired thinker, lie peace and joy. There, if anywhere—as he fancies—he might escape from all the wrongs of the world, all the problems of society, all the dull business of recording, and analysing, and ticketing mankind, all the clash of selfish systems that people call history, and all the babble that they call literature. In that retreat he would feel the rain upon his face, and smell the grass and the flowers, and hear the sighing and whispering of the wind in the green boughs; and there would be no need to trouble himself any more, whether about the past or the future. Every great intellect of the world has felt that wild longing, and has recorded it—the impulse to revert to the vast heart of Nature, that knows no doubt, and harbours no fear, and keeps no regret, and feels no sorrow, and troubles itself not at all. Matthew Arnold dreamily and perhaps austerely expressed it in The Scholar Gypsy. Byron more humanly uttered it in four well-remembered lines, of Childe Harold:

"Oh, that the desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair spirit for my minister, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating nothing, love but only her."

Robin Hood, as technical drama, is frail. Its movement, indeed, is not more indolent than that of its lovely prototypes in Shakespeare, As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream. With all the pastorals Time ambles. But, on the other hand, Tennyson's piece is not a match for either of those Shakespearean works, in massiveness of dramatic signification or in the element of opportunity for the art of acting. Character, poetry, philosophy, humour, and suggestion it contains; but it contains no single scene in which its persons can amply put forth their full histrionic powers with essentially positive dramatic effect. Its charm resides more in being than in doing, and therefore it is more a poem than a play, and perhaps more a picture than a poem. It is not one of those works that arouse, agitate, and impel. It aims only to create and sustain a pleased condition; and that aim it has accomplished. No spectator will be deeply moved by it, but no spectator will look at it without delight. While, however, Robin Hood as a drama is frail, it is not destitute of the dramatic element. It depicts a central character in action, and it tells a representative love story—a story in which the oppressive persecutor of impoverished age is foiled and discomfited, in which faithful affection survives the test of trial, and in which days of danger end at last in days of blissful peace. Traces of the influence of Shakespeare—exerted by his pastoral comedies and by the Merry Wives of Windsor—are obvious in it. There is no imitation; there is only kinship. The sources that Scott explored for some of the material used in Ivanhoe also announce themselves. Many stories could be derived from the old Robin Hood ballads. The poet has only chosen and rearranged such of their incidents as would suit his purpose—using those old ballads with perfect freedom, but also using them with faultless taste.

Robin Hood was born at Locksley, in the county of Nottingham, about 1160, when Henry the Second was king. His true name was Robert Fitzooth—a name that popular mispronunciation converted into Robin Hood—and he was of noble lineage. Old records declare him to have been the Earl of Huntingdon. He was extravagant and adventurous, and for reasons that are unknown he preferred to live in the woods. His haunts were chiefly Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire, and Barnsdale, in Yorkshire. Among his associates were William Scadlock, commonly called Scarlet; Much, a miller's son; Friar Tuck, a vagabond monk; and Little John, whose name was Nailor. Robin Hood and his band were kind to the poor; but they robbed the rich and they were specially hard on the clergy. There is a tradition that a woman named Maid Marian went with Robin into the forest, but nothing is known about her. Robin lived till the age of eighty-seven, and he might have lived longer but that a treacherous relative, the prioress of Kirkley—to whose care he had entrusted himself in order that he might be bled—allowed him to bleed to death. At the time indicated in Tennyson's comedy—the year 1194, which was the year of King Richard's return from captivity in Germany—he was thirty-four years old. It is the year of Ivanhoe, and in the play as in the novel, the evil agent is the usurper Prince John.

Fifteen characters take part in this comedy. Act first is called "The Bond and the Outlawry." The action begins in a garden before Sir Richard Lea's castle—or rather the dialogue begins there, by which the basis of the action is revealed. Maid Marian is Marian Lea, the daughter of Sir Richard. Walter Lea, the son of Sir Richard, has been captured by the Moors, and in order to pay the boy's ransom Sir Richard has borrowed a large sum of money from the Abbot of York. That debt must presently be paid; but Sir Richard does not see his way clear to its payment, and if he does not pay it he must forfeit his land. The Sheriff of Nottingham, a wealthy suitor for the hand of Marian, is willing to pay that debt, in case the girl will favour his suit. But Marian loves the Earl of Huntingdon and is by him beloved; and all would go well with those lovers, and with Sir Richard, but that the Earl of Huntingdon is poor. Poor though he be, however, he makes a feast, to celebrate his birthday, and to that festival Sir Richard and his daughter are bidden. Act first displays the joyous proceedings of that good meeting and the posture of those characters toward each other. The Sheriff of Nottingham intrudes himself upon the scene, accompanied by Prince John, who is disguised as a friar. The Prince has cast a covetous eye upon Marian, and, although he outwardly favours the wish of the Sheriff, he is secretly determined to seize her for himself. The revellers at Huntingdon's feast, unaware of the Prince's presence, execrate his name, and at length he retires, in a silent fury. Robin gives to Marian a remarkable ring that he has inherited from his mother. Later a herald enters and reads a proclamation from Prince John, declaring the Earl of Huntingdon to be a felon, and commanding his banishment. Robin cannot forcibly oppose that mandate, and he therefore determines to cast in his lot with Scarlet and Friar Tuck and other "minions of the moon," and thenceforward to live a free and merry life under the green boughs of Sherwood Forest. A year is supposed to pass. Act second, called "The Flight of Marian," begins with a song of the Foresters, in the deep wood—"There is no land like England." That is a scene of much gentle beauty, enhanced by Robin Hood's delivery of some of the finest poetry in the play, and also by the delicious music of Sir Arthur Sullivan. Robin descants upon freedom, and upon the advantage of dwelling beneath the sky rather than beneath a groined roof that shuts out all the meaning of heaven. There is a colloquy between Little John, who is one of Robin's men, and Kate, who is Marian's maid. Those two are lovers who quarrel and make it up again, as lovers will. Kate has come to the forest, bringing word of the flight of her mistress. Prince John has tried to seize Marian, and that brave girl has repulsed and struck him; and she and her father have fled—intending to make for France, in which land the old knight expects to find a friend who will pay his debt and save his estate. While Robin is considering these things he perceives the approach of Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham, and, thereupon, he takes refuge in the hut of an old witch and disguises himself in some of her garments. Prince John and the Sheriff, who are in pursuit of Sir Richard and Marian, find Robin in this disguise, and for a time they are deceived by him; but soon they penetrate his masquerade and assail him—whereupon some of his people come to his assistance, and he is reinforced by Sir Richard Lea. Prince John and his party are beaten and driven away. Sir Richard is exhausted, and Robin commits him to the care of the Foresters. Marian, arrayed as a boy, and pretending to be her brother Walter, has been present at this combat, as a spectator, and a sparkling scene of equivoke, mischief, and sentiment ensues between Marian and Robin. That scene Tennyson wrote and inserted for Ada Rehan, to whose vivacious temperament it is fitted, and whose action in it expressed with equal felicity the teasing temper of the coquette and the propitious fondness of the lover. Robin discovers Marian's identity by means of the ring that he gave her, and, after due explanation, it is agreed that she and her father will remain under his protection. Act third is called "The Crowning of Marian," and is devoted to pictures, colloquies, and incidents, now serious and now comical, showing the life of the Foresters and the humorous yet discriminative justice of their gypsy chief. Sir Richard Lea is ill and he cannot be moved. The outlaws crown Marian, with an oaken chaplet, and declare her to be their queen. Robin Hood vindicates his vocation, and in a noble speech on freedom—deriving his similes from the giant oak tree, as Tennyson has ever loved to do—declares himself the friend of the poor and the servant of the king; the absent Richard of the Lion Heart, for whose return all good men are eager. Various beggars, friars, and other travellers are halted on the road, in practical illustration of Robin's doctrine; comic incidents from the old ballads are reproduced; and so the episode ends merrily of these frolics in the wood. At that point a delicious fairy pageant is introduced, presenting Queen Titania and her elves and illustrating at once the grievance of the fairies against the men whose heavy feet have crushed their toads and bats and flowers and mystic rings, and Marian's dream of love. Sir Arthur Sullivan's music is here again used, and again it is felt to be characteristic, melodious, and uncommonly sweet and tender. Act fourth begins in a forest bower at sunrise. Marian and Robin meet there and talk of Sir Richard and of his bond to the Abbot of York—soon to fall due and seemingly to remain unpaid. Robin has summoned the Abbot and his justiciary to come into the forest and to bring the bond. King Richard, unrecognised, now arrives, and in submission to certain laws of the woodland he engages in an encounter of buffets, and prevails over all his adversaries. At the approach of the Abbot, however, fearing premature recognition, the monarch will flit away; but his gypsy friends compel him to accept a bugle, upon which he is to blow a blast when in danger. The Abbot and his followers arrive, and Robin Hood offers the money to redeem Sir Richard's bond; but, upon a legal quibble, the Abbot declines to receive it—preferring to seize the forfeited land. Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham appear, and Robin and his Foresters form an ambuscade. Sir Richard Lea has been brought in, upon his litter, and Marian stays beside him. Prince John attempts to seize her, but this time he is frustrated by the sudden advent of King Richard—from whose presence he slinks away. The myrmidons of John, however, attack the King, who would oppose them single-handed; but Friar Tuck snatches the King's bugle and blows a blast of summons—whereupon the Foresters swarm into the field and possess it. John's faction is dispersed, Marian is saved, the absent Walter Lea reappears, Sir Richard is assured of his estate, the Abbot and the Sheriff are punished, and Robin Hood and Maid Marian may wed—for now the good King Richard has come again to his own.

The lyrics in the piece possess the charm of fluent and unaffected sweetness, and of original, inventive, and felicitous fancy, and some of them are tenderly freighted with that indescribable but deeply affecting undertone of pathetic sentiment which is a characteristic attribute of Tennyson's poetry.

The characters in the comedy were creatures of flesh and blood to the author, and they come out boldly, therefore, on the stage. Marian Lea is a woman of the Rosalind order—handsome, noble, magnanimous, unconventional, passionate in nature, but sufficient unto herself, humorous, playful, and radiant with animal spirits. Ada Rehan embodied her according to that ideal. The chief exaction of the part is simplicity—which yet must not be allowed to degenerate into tameness. The sweet affection of a daughter for her father, the coyness yet the allurement of a girl for her lover, the refinement of high birth, the blithe bearing and free demeanour of a child of the woods, and the predominant dignity of purity and honour—those are the salient attributes of the part. Ada Rehan struck the true note at the outset—the note of buoyant health, rosy frolic, and sprightly adventure—and she sustained it evenly and firmly to the last. Every eye was pleased with the frank, careless, cheerful beauty of her presence, and every ear was soothed and charmed with her fluent and expressive delivery of the verse. In this, as in all of the important representations that Ada Rehan has given, the delightful woman-quality was conspicuously present. She can readily impersonate a boy. No actress since Adelaide Neilson has done that so well. But the crowning excellence of her art was its expression of essential womanhood. Her acting was never trivial and it never obtruded the tedious element of dry intellect. It refreshed—and the spectator was happier for having seen her. Many pleasant thoughts were scattered in many minds by her performance of Maid Marian, and no one who saw it will ever part with the remembrance of it.



XIX.

ELLEN TERRY: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

It was perhaps an auspicious portent, it certainly is an interesting fact, that the first play that was ever acted in America at a regular theatre and by a regular theatrical company was Shakespeare's comedy of The Merchant of Venice. Such at least is the record made by William Dunlap, the first historian of the American theatre, who names Williamsburg, Virginia, as the place and September 5, 1752 as the date of that production. It ought to be noted, however (so difficult is it to settle upon any fact in this uncertain world), that the learned antiquarian Judge C.P. Daly, fortified likewise by the scrupulously accurate Ireland, dissents from Dunlap's statement and declares that Cibber's alteration of Shakespeare's Richard the Third was acted by a regular company in a large room in Nassau Street, New York, at an earlier date, namely, on March 5, 1750. All the same, it appears to have been Shakespeare's mind that started the dramatic movement in America. The American stage has undergone great changes since that time, but both The Merchant of Venice and Richard the Third are still acted, and in the Merchant, if not in Richard, the public interest is still vital. In New York, under Edwin Booth's management, at the Winter Garden theatre, January 28, 1867, and subsequently at Booth's theatre, and in London, under Henry Irving's management, at the Lyceum theatre, November 1, 1879, sumptuous productions of the Merchant have brilliantly marked the dramatic chronicle of our times. Discussion of the great character of Shylock steadily proceeds and seems never to weary either the disputants or the audience. The sentiment, the fancy, and the ingenuity of artists are often expended not only upon the austere, picturesque, and terrible figure of the vindictive Jew, but upon the chief related characters in the comedy—upon Bassanio and Portia, Gratiano and Nerissa, Lorenzo and Jessica, the princely and pensive Antonio, the august Duke and his stately senators, and the shrewd and humorous Gobbo. More than one painting has depicted the ardent Lorenzo and his fugitive infidel as they might have looked on that delicious summer night at Belmont when they saw "how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," and when the blissful lover, radiant with happiness and exalted by the sublime, illimitable, unfathomable spectacle of the star-strewn firmament, murmured, in such heaven-like cadence, of the authentic music of heaven.

It is not to be denied that lovely words are spoken to Jessica, and that almost equally lovely words are spoken by her. Essayists upon the Merchant have generally accepted her without a protest—so much do youth and beauty in a woman count in the scale when weighed against duty and integrity. There is no indication that Shylock was ever unjust or unkind to Jessica. Whatever he may have been to others he seems always to have been good to her; and she was the child of that lost Leah of his youthful devotion whom he passionately loved and whom he mourned to the last. Yet Jessica not only abandoned her father and his religion, but robbed him of money and jewels (including the betrothal ring, the turquoise, that her mother had given to him), when she fled with the young Christian who had won her heart. It was a basely cruel act; but probably some of the vilest and cruelest actions that are done in this world are done by persons who are infatuated by the passion of love. Mrs. Jameson, who in her beautiful essay on Portia extenuates the conduct of Jessica, would have us believe that Shylock valued his daughter far beneath his wealth, and therefore deserved to be deserted and plundered by her; and she is so illogical as to derive his sentiments on this subject from his delirious outcries of lamentation after he learned of her predatory and ignominious flight. The argument is not a good one. Fine phrases do not make wrong deeds right. It were wiser to take Jessica for the handsome and voluptuous girl that certainly she is, and to leave her rectitude out of the question. Shakespeare in his drawing of her was true to nature, as he always is; but the student who wants to know where Shakespeare's heart was placed when he drew women must look upon creatures very different from Jessica. The women that Shakespeare seems peculiarly to have loved are Imogen, Cordelia, Isabella, Rosalind, and Portia—Rosalind, perhaps, most of all; for although Portia is finer than Rosalind, it is extremely probable that Shakespeare resembled his fellow-men sufficiently to have felt the preference that Tom Moore long afterward expressed:

"Be an angel, my love, in the morning, But, oh! be a woman to-night."

When Ellen Terry embodied Portia—in Henry Irving's magnificent revival of The Merchant of Venice—the essential womanhood of that character was for the first time in the modern theatre adequately interpreted and conveyed. Upon many play-going observers indeed the wonderful wealth of beauty that is in the part—its winsome grace, its incessant sparkle, its alluring because piquant as well as luscious sweetness, its impetuous ardour, its enchantment of physical equally with emotional condition, its august morality, its perfect candour, and its noble passion—came like a surprise. Did the great actress find those attributes in the part (they asked themselves), or did she infuse them into it? Previous representatives of Portia had placed the emphasis chiefly, if not exclusively, upon morals and mind. The stage Portia of the past has usually been a didactic lady, self-contained, formal, conventional, and oratorical. Ellen Terry came, and Portia was figured exactly as she lives in the pages of Shakespeare—an imperial and yet an enchanting woman, dazzling in her beauty, royal in her dignity, as ardent in temperament as she is fine in brain and various and splendid in personal peculiarities and feminine charm. After seeing that matchless impersonation it seemed strange that Portia should ever have been represented in any other light, and it was furthermore felt that the inferior, mechanical, utilitarian semblance of her could not again be endured. Ellen Terry's achievement was a complete vindication of the high view that Shakespearean study has almost always taken of that character, and it finally discredited the old stage notion that Portia is a type of decorum and declamation.

Aside from Hazlitt, who thought that Portia is affected and pedantic, and who did not like her because he did not happen to appreciate her, the best analytical thinkers about Shakespeare's works have taken the high view of that character. Shakespeare himself certainly took it; for aside from her own charming behaviour and delightful words it is to be observed that everybody in the play who speaks of her at all speaks her praise. It is only upon the stage that she has been made artificial, prim, and preachy. That misrepresentation of her has, perhaps, been caused, in part, by the practice long prevalent in our theatre of cutting and compressing the play so as to make Shylock the chief figure in it. In that way Portia is shorn of much of her splendour and her meaning. The old theatrical records dwell almost exclusively upon Shylock, and say little if anything about Portia. In Shakespeare's time, no doubt, The Merchant of Venice was acted as it is written, the female persons in it being played by boys, or by men who could "speak small." Alexander Cooke (1588-1614) played the light heroines of Shakespeare while the poet was alive. All students of the subject are aware that Burbage was the first Shylock, and that when he played the part he wore a red wig, a red beard, and a long false nose. No record exists as to the first Portia. The men who were acting female characters upon the London stage when that institution was revived immediately after the Restoration were Kynaston, James Nokes, Angel, William Betterton, Mosely, and Floid. Kynaston, it is said, could act a woman so well that when at length women themselves began to appear as actors it was for some time doubted whether any one of them could equal him. The account of his life, however, does not mention Portia as one of his characters.

Indeed the play of The Merchant of Venice, after it languished out of sight in that decadence of the stage which ensued upon the growth of the Puritan movement in England, did not again come into use until it was revived in Lord Landsdowne's alteration of it produced at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1701, and even then it was grossly perverted. Forty years later, however, on St. Valentine's Day 1741, at Drury Lane, when Macklin regenerated the character of Shylock, the original piece was restored to the theatre. Women in the meantime had come upon the stage. The garrulous and delightful Pepys, who had seen Kynaston play a female part, records in his marvellous Diary that he first saw women as actors on January 3, 1661. Those were members of Killigrew's company, which preceded that of Davenant by several months, if not by a year; and therefore the common statement in theatrical books that the first woman that ever appeared on the English stage was Mrs. Sanderson, of Davenant's company, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, is erroneous: and indeed the name of the first English actress is as much unknown as the name of the first Portia. When Macklin restored Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice to the stage it is not likely that the character of Portia was dwarfed, for its representative then was Kitty Clive, and that actress was a person of strong will. With Clive the long list begins of the Portias of the stage. She was thirty years old when she played the part with Macklin, and it is probable that she played it with dignity and certain that she played it with sparkling animation and piquant grace. The German Ulrici, whose descriptive epithets for Portia are "roguish and intellectual," would doubtless have found his ideal of the part fulfilled in Clive. The Nerissa that night was Mrs. Pritchard, then also thirty years old, but not so famous as she afterward became.

The greatest actress on the British stage in the eighteenth century undoubtedly was Margaret Woffington (1719-1760). Sarah Siddons, to whom the sceptre passed, was only five years old when Woffington died. Both those brilliant names are associated with Portia. Augustin Daly's Life of Woffington—the best life of her that has been written, and one of the most sumptuous books that have been made—contains this reference to her performance of that part: "All her critics agree that her declamation was accurate and her gesture grace and nature combined; but in tragic or even dramatic speeches her voice probably had its limits, and in such scenes, being overtaxed, told against her. As Portia she appeared to great advantage; but when Lorenzo says, 'This is the voice, or I am much deceived, of Portia,' and Portia replies, 'He knows me, as the blind man knows the cuckoo, by the bad voice,' the audience laughed outright, and Woffington, conscious of her deficiency, with great good-humour joined with them in their merriment." The incident is mentioned in the Table Talk (1825) of Richard Ryan, to which book Daly refers. Mrs. Siddons made her first appearance on the London stage as Portia December 29, 1775, and conspicuously failed in the part on that occasion, but she became distinguished in it afterward; yet it is probable that Mrs. Siddons expressed its nobility more than its tenderness, and much more than its buoyant and glittering glee, which was so entirely and beautifully given by Ellen Terry. After Peg Woffington and before Mrs. Siddons the most conspicuous Portia was Mrs. Dancer, whom Hugh Kelley, in his satirical composition of Thespis, calls a "moon-eyed idiot,"—from which barbarous bludgeon phrase the reader derives a hint as to her aspect. Some of the tones of Mrs. Dancer's voice were so tender that no one could resist them. Spranger Barry could not, for he married her, and after his death she became Mrs. Crawford. Miss Maria Macklin, daughter of the first true Shylock of the stage, acted Portia, April 13, 1776, with her father. She is recorded as an accomplished woman but destitute of genius—in which predicament she probably was not lonesome. On June 11, 1777 Portia was acted at the Haymarket by Miss Barsanti, afterward Mrs. Lister, an actress who, since she excelled in such parts as were customarily taken by Fanny Abington (the distinct opposite of Portia-like characters), must have been unsuited for it. The names of Miss Younge, Miss Farren, Miss E. Kemble, Miss Ryder, Mrs. Pope, Miss De Camp, and Miss Murray are in the record of the stage Portias that comes down to 1800. Probably the best of all those Portias was Mrs. Pope.

The beautiful Mrs. Glover played Portia in 1809 at the Haymarket theatre. Mrs. Ogilvie played it, with Macready as Shylock (his first appearance in that part), on May 13, 1823. Those figures passed and left no shadow. Two English actresses of great fame are especially associated with Portia—Ellen Tree, afterward Mrs. Charles Kean, and Helen Faucit, now Lady Martin; and no doubt their assumptions of the part should be marked as exceptions from the hard, didactic, declamatory, perfunctory method that has customarily characterised the Portia of the stage. Lady Martin's written analysis of Portia is noble in thought and subtle and tender in penetration and sympathy. Charlotte Cushman read the text superbly, but she was much too formidable ever to venture on assuming the character. Portia is a woman who deeply loves and deeply rejoices and exults in her love, and she is never ashamed of her passion or of her exultation in it; and she says the finest things about love that are said by any of Shakespeare's women; the finest because, while supremely passionate, the feeling in them is perfectly sane. It is as a lover that Ellen Terry embodied her, and while she made her a perfect woman, in all the attributes that fascinate, she failed not, in the wonderful trial scene, to invest her with that fine light of celestial anger—that momentary thrill of moral austerity—which properly appertains to the character at the climax of a solemn and almost tragical situation.

On the American stage there have been many notable representatives of the chief characters in The Merchant of Venice. In New York, when the comedy was done at the old John Street theatre in 1773, Hallam was Shylock and Mrs. Morris Portia. Twenty years afterward, at the same house, Shylock was played by John Henry, and Portia by Mrs. Henry, while the brilliant Hodgkinson appeared as Gratiano. Cooper, whose life has been so well written by that ripe theatrical scholar Joseph N. Ireland, in one of the books of the Dunlap Society, assumed Shylock in 1797 at the theatre just then opened in Greenwich Street. The famous Miss Brunton (then Mrs. Merry), was the Portia, and the cast included Moreton as Bassanio, Warren as Antonio, Bernard as Gratiano, and Blissett as Tubal. How far away and how completely lost and forgotten those once distinguished and admired persons are! Yet Cooper in his day was idolised: he had a fame as high, if not as widely spread, as that of Henry Irving or Edwin Booth at present. William Creswick—lately dead at an advanced age in London—was seen upon the New York stage as Shylock in 1840; Macready in 1841; Charles Kean in 1845. With the latter, Ellen Tree played Portia. Charles W. Couldock enacted Shylock on September 6, 1852, at the Castle Garden theatre, in a performance given to commemorate the alleged centenary of the introduction of the drama into America. The elder Wallack, the elder Booth, Edwin Forrest, G.V. Brooke, George Vandenhoff, Wyzeman Marshall, and E.L. Davenport are among the old local representatives of the Jew. Madam Ponisi used to play Portia, and so did Mrs. Hoey.

In December 1858, when The Merchant of Venice was finely revived at Wallack's theatre, with the elder Wallack as Shylock, the cast included Lester Wallack as Bassanio, John Brougham as Gratiano, A. W. Young—a quaintly comic actor, too soon cut off—as Launcelot Gobbo, Mary Gannon—the fascinating, the irresistible—as Nerissa, and handsome Mrs. Sloan as Jessica. The eminent German actor Davison played Shylock, in New York, in his own language; and many German actors, no one of them comparable with him, have been seen in it since. Lawrence Barrett often played it, and with remarkable force and feeling. The triumphs won in it by Edwin Booth are within the remembrance of many playgoers of this generation. When he last acted the Jew Helena Modjeska was associated with him as Portia. Booth customarily ended the piece with the trial scene, omitting the last act; and indeed that was long the stage custom; but with the true Portia of Ellen Terry and a good cast in general the last act went blithely and with superb effect. The comedy was not written for Shylock alone. He is a tremendous identity, but he is not the chief subject. The central theme is Portia and her love. That theme takes up a large part of the play,—which is like a broad summer landscape strewn with many-coloured flowers that flash and glitter in the sun, while slowly a muttering thunder-storm gathers and lowers, and presently sweeps overhead, casting one black shadow as it passes, and leaving the fragrant and glistening plain all the brighter and sweeter for the contrast with its defeated menace and vanishing gloom.



XX.

RICHARD MANSFIELD AS RICHARD THE THIRD.

The ideal of Richard that was expressed by this actor did not materially differ from that which has been manifested by great tragic actors from Garrick to Booth. He embodied a demoniac scoffer who, nevertheless, is a human being. The infernal wickedness of Richard was shown to be impelled by tremendous intellect but slowly enervated and ultimately thwarted and ruined by the cumulative operation of remorse—corroding at the heart and finally blasting the man with desolation and frenzy. That, undoubtedly, was Shakespeare's design. But Richard Mansfield's expression of that ideal differed from the expression to which the stage has generally been accustomed, and in this respect his impersonation was distinctive and original.

The old custom of playing Richard was to take the exaggerated statements of the opening soliloquy in a literal sense, to provide him with a big hump, a lame leg, and a fell of straight black hair, and to make him walk in, scowling, with his lower lip protruded, and declare with snarling vehemence and guttural vociferation his amiable purpose of specious duplicity and miscellaneous slaughter. The opening speech, which is in Shakespeare's juvenile manner—an orotund, verbose manner, which perhaps he had caught from Marlowe, and which he outgrew and abandoned—was thus utilised for displaying the character in a massed aspect, as that of a loathsome hypocrite and sanguinary villain; and, that being done, he was made to advance through about two-thirds of the tragedy, airily yet ferociously slaying everybody who came in his way, until at some convenient point, definable at the option of the actor, he was suddenly smitten with a sufficient remorse to account for his trepidation before and during the tent-scene; and thereafter he was launched into combat like a meteoric butcher, all frenzy and all gore, and killed, amid general acclamation, when he had fenced himself out of breath.

That treatment of the character was, doubtless, in part a necessary consequence of Shakespeare's perfunctory adoption of the Tudor doctrine that Richard was a blood-boltered monster; but in a larger degree it was the result of Cibber's vulgar distortion of the original piece. The actual character of the king,—who seems to have been one of the ablest and wisest monarchs that ever reigned in England—has never recovered, and it never will recover, from the odium that was heaped upon it by the Tudor historians and accepted and ratified by the great genius of Shakespeare. The stage character of the king has been almost as effectually damned by the ingenious theatrical claptrap with which Cibber misrepresented and vulgarised Shakespeare's conception, assisted by the efforts of a long line of blood-and-thunder tragedians, only too well pleased to depict a gory, blathering, mugging miscreant, such as their limited intelligence enabled them to comprehend. The stage Richard, however, may possibly be redeemed. In Cibber he is everything that Queen Margaret calls him, and worse than a brute. In Shakespeare, although a miscreant, he is a man. The return to Shakespeare, accordingly, is a step in the right direction. That step was taken some time ago, although not maintained, first by Macready, then by Samuel Phelps, then by Edwin Booth, and then by Henry Irving. Their good example was followed by Richard Mansfield. He used a version of the tragedy, made by himself,—a piece indicative of thoughtful study of the subject as well as a keen intuitive grasp of it. He did not stop short at being a commentator. Aiming to impersonate a character he treated Shakespeare's prolix play in such a manner as to make it a practicable living picture of a past age. The version was in five acts, preserving the text of the original, much condensed, and introducing a few lines from Cibber. It began with a bright processional scene before the Tower of London, in which Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV., was conspicuous, and against that background of "glorious summer" it placed the dangerous figure of the Duke of Gloster. It comprised the murder of Henry VI., the wooing of Lady Anne,—not in a London street, but in a rural place, on the road to Chertsey; the lamentation for King Edward IV.; the episode of the boy princes; the condemnation of Hastings,—a scene that brilliantly denotes the mingled artifice and savagery of Shakespeare's Gloster; the Buckingham plot; the priest and mayor scene; the temptation of Tyrrel; the fall of Buckingham; the march to battle; the episode of the spectres; and the fatal catastrophe on Bosworth Field. Enough of the story was thus related to satisfy the Shakespeare scholar.

The notable peculiarity was the assumption that there are considerable lapses of time at intervals during the continuance of the story. The effort to reconcile poetry with history produced little if any appreciable practical result upon the stage,—seeing that an audience would not think of lapses of time unless those lapses were mentioned in the play-bill. An incessant continuity of action, a ceaseless rush and whirl of events, is the essential life of the play. No auditor can feel that Richard has waited twelve years before making any movement or striking any blow, after his aspiration that heaven will take King Edward and leave the world for him "to bustle in." That word "bustle" is a favourite word with Richard. And furthermore there is no development of his character in Shakespeare's play: there is simply the presentation of it, complete and rounded at the outset, and remaining invariably and inflexibly the same to the close.

Mansfield, however, deduced this effect from his consideration of the flight of time: a contrast between Richard at nineteen and Richard at thirty-three, a contrast strongly expressive of the reactionary influence that an experience of evil deeds has produced upon a man who at first was only a man of evil thoughts and evil will. This imported into the performance a diversity of delineation without, however, affecting the formidable weight of the figure of Richard, or its brilliancy, or its final significance. The embodiment was splendid with it, and would be just as splendid without it. The presence of heart and conscience in that demoniac human creature is denoted by Shakespeare and must be shown by the actor. Precisely at what point his heaven-defying will should begin to waver is not defined. Mansfield chose to indicate the operation of remorse and terror in Richard's soul as early as the throne scene and before yet the king has heard that the royal boys have been murdered. The effect of his action, equally with the method of it, was magnificent. You presently saw him possessed of the throne for which he had so terribly toiled and sinned, and alone upon it, bathed in blood-red light, the pitiable personification of gorgeous but haunted evil, marked off from among mankind and henceforth desolate. Throughout that fine scene Mansfield's portrayal of the fearful struggle between wicked will and human weakness was in a noble vein of imagination, profound in its sincerity, affecting in its pathos, and pictorial in its treatment. In the earlier scenes his mood and his demeanour had been suffused with a cool, gay, mockery of elegant cynicism. He killed King Henry with a smile, in a scene of gloomy mystery that might have come from the pencil of Gustave Dore. He looked upon the mourning Lady Anne with cheerful irony and he wooed her with all the fervour that passion and pathos can engender in the behaviour of a hypocrite. His dissimulation with the princes and with the mayor and the nobles was to the last degree specious. One of his finest points was the temptation of Buckingham to murder the princes. There, and indeed at all points, was observed the absence of even the faintest reminiscence of the ranting, mouthing, flannel-jawed king of clubs who has so generally strutted and bellowed as Shakespeare's Gloster. All was bold and telling in the manner, and yet the manner was reticent with nature and fine with well-bred continence.

With the throne scene began the spiritual conflict. At least it then began to be disclosed; and from that moment onward the state of Richard was seen to be that of Orestes pursued by the furies. But Mansfield was right, and was consistent, in making the monarch faithful in his devotion to evil. Richard's presentiments, pangs, and tremors are intermittent. In the great, empty, darkening throne-room, with its shadowy nooks and dim corners, shapeless and nameless spectres may momentarily come upon him and shake his strong spirit with the sinister menace of hell. Along the dark plains, on the fateful night before the battle, the sad ghosts may drift and wander, moaning and wailing in the ghastly gloom; and in that hour of haunted desolation the doomed king may feel that, after all, he is but mortal man, and that his pre-ordered destruction is close at hand and not to be averted; but Richard never deceives himself; never palters with the goodness that he has scorned. He dies as he has lived, defiant and terrible.

Mansfield's treatment of the ghost scenes at Bosworth was novel, original, and poetic, and his death scene was not only a display of personal prowess but a reproduction of historical fact. With a detail like this the truth of history becomes useful, but in general the actor cannot safely go back of the Shakespearean scheme. To present Richard as he probably was would be to present a man of some virtue as well as great ability. Mansfield's acting revealed an amiable desire to infuse as much goodness as possible into the Shakespearean conception, but he obtained his chief success by acting the part substantially according to Shakespeare and by setting and dressing the play with exceptional if not altogether exact fidelity to the time, the places, and the persons that are implicated in the story.

Shakespeare's Richard is a type of colossal will and of restless, inordinate, terrific activity. The objects of his desire and his effort are those objects which are incident to supreme power; but his chief object is that assertion of himself which is irresistibly incited and steadfastly compelled by the overwhelming, seething, acrid energy of his feverish soul, burning and raging in his fiery body. He can no more help projecting himself upon the affairs of the world than the malignant cobra can help darting upon its prey. He is a vital, elemental force, grisly, hectic, terrible, impelled by volcanic heat and electrified and made lurid and deadly by the infernal purpose of restless wickedness. No actor can impersonate Richard in an adequate manner who does not possess transcendent force of will, combined with ambitious, incessant, and restless mental activity. Mansfield in those respects is qualified for the character, and out of his professional resources he was able to supply the other elements that are requisite to its constitution and fulfilment. He presented as Richard a sardonic, scoffing demon, who nevertheless, somewhere in his complex nature, retains an element of humanity. He embodied a character that is tragic in its ultimate effect, but his method was that of the comedian. His portrayal of Richard, except at those moments when it is veiled with craft and dissimulation, or at those other and grander moments, infrequent but awful and agonising, when it is convulsed with terror or with the anguish of remorse, stood forth boldly in the sunshine, a crystallised and deadly sarcasm, equally trenchant upon itself and all the world, equally scornful of things human and things divine. That deadly assumption of keen and mordant mockery, that cool, glittering, malignant lightness of manner, was consistently sustained throughout the performance, while the texture of it was made continuously entertaining by diversity of colour and inflection, sequent on changing moods; so that Richard was shown as a creature of the possible world of mankind and not as a fiction of the stage.

The part was acted by him: it was not declaimed. He made, indeed, a skilful use of his uncommon voice—keeping its tones light, sweet, and superficial during the earlier scenes (while yet, in accordance with his theory of development, Gloster is the personification of evil purpose only beginning to ripen into evil deed), and then permitting them to become deeper and more significant and thrilling as the man grows old in crime and haggard and convulsed in self-conflict and misery. But it was less with vocal excellence that the auditor was impressed than with the actor's identification with the part and his revelation of the soul of it. When first presented Gloster was a mocking devil. The murder of King Henry was done with malice, but the malice was enwrapped with glee. In the wooing of Lady Anne there was both heart and passion, but the mood was that of lightsome duplicity. It is not until years of scheming and of evil acts, engendering, promoting, and sustaining a condition of mental horror and torture, have ravaged his person and set their seal upon him, in sunken cheek and hollow eye, in shattered nerves and deep and thrilling voice, surcharged at once with inveterate purpose and with incessant agony, that this light manner vanishes, and the demeanour and action of the wicked monarch becomes ruthless, direct, and terrible. Whether, upon the basis of a play so discursive, so episodical, so irresolutely defined as Shakespeare's Richard the Third, that theory of the development of its central character is logically tenable is a dubious question. In Shakespeare the character is presented full-grown at the start, and then, through a confused tangle of historical events, is launched into action. Nevertheless in his practical application of it Mansfield made his theory effective by a novel, powerful, interesting performance. You could not help perceiving in Mansfield's embodiment that Gloster was passing through phases of experience—that the man changed, as men do change in life, the integral character remaining the same in its original fibre, but the condition varying, in accordance with the reaction of conduct upon temperament and conscience.

Mansfield deeply moved his audience in the repulse of Buckingham, in the moody menace of the absent Stanley, in the denunciation of Hastings, and in the awakening from the dream on the night before the battle. Playgoers have seldom seen a dramatic climax so thrilling as his hysterical recognition of Catesby, after the moment of doubt whether this be not also a phantom of his terrific dream. It was not so much by startling theatrical effects, however, as by subtle denotements, now of the tempest and now of the brooding horror in the king's heart, that the actor gained his victory. The embodiment lacked incessant fiery expedition—the explosive, meteoric quality that astounds and dazzles. Chief among the beauties was imagination. The attitude of the monarch toward his throne—the infernal triumph, and yet the remorseful agony and withering fear—in the moment of ghastly loneliness when he knows that the innocent princes have been murdered and that his imperial pathway is clear, made up one of the finest spectacles of dramatic illumination that the stage has afforded. You saw the murderer's hideous exultation, and then, in an instant, as the single ray of red light from the setting sun streamed through the Gothic window and fell upon his evil head, you saw him shrink in abject fear, cowering in the shadow of his throne; and the dusky room was seemingly peopled with gliding spectres. That treatment was theatrical, but in no derogatory sense theatrical—for it comports with the great speech on conscience; not the fustian of Cibber, about mutton and short-lived pleasure, but the speech that Shakespeare has put into Richard's mouth; the speech that inspired Mansfield's impersonation—the brilliant embodiment of an intellectual man, predisposed to evil, who yields to that inherent impulse, and thereafter, although intermittently convulsed with remorse, fights with tremendous energy against the goodness that he scorns and defies, till at last he dashes himself to pieces against the adamant of eternal law.



XXI.

GENEVIEVE WARD: FORGET ME NOT.

In the season of 1880-81 Genevieve Ward made a remarkably brilliant hit with her embodiment of Stephanie De Mohrivart, in the play of Forget Me Not, by Herman Merivale, and since then she has acted that part literally all round the world. It was an extraordinary performance—potent with intellectual character, beautiful with refinement, nervous and steel-like with indomitable purpose and icy glitter, intense with passion, painfully true to an afflicting ideal of reality, and at last splendidly tragic: and it was a shining example of ductile and various art. Such a work ought surely to be recorded as one of the great achievements of the stage. Genevieve Ward showed herself to possess in copious abundance peculiar qualities of power and beauty upon which mainly the part of Stephanie is reared. The points of assimilation between the actress and the part were seen to consist in an imperial force of character, intellectual brilliancy, audacity of mind, iron will, perfect elegance of manners, a profound self-knowledge, and unerring intuitions as to the relation of motive and conduct in that vast network of circumstance which is the social fabric. Stephanie possesses all those attributes; and all those attributes Genevieve Ward supplied, with the luxuriant adequacy and grace of nature. But Stephanie superadds to those attributes a bitter, mocking cynicism, thinly veiled by artificial suavity and logically irradiant from natural hardness of heart, coupled with an insensibility that has been engendered by cruel experience of human selfishness. This, together with a certain mystical touch of the animal freedom, whether in joy or wrath, that goes with a being having neither soul nor conscience, the actress had to supply—and did supply—by her art. As interpreted by Genevieve Ward the character was reared, not upon a basis of unchastity but upon a basis of intellectual perversion. Stephanie has followed—at first with self-contempt, afterward with sullen indifference, finally with the bold and brilliant hardihood of reckless defiance—a life of crime. She is audacious, unscrupulous, cruel; a consummate tactician; almost sexless, yet a siren in knowledge and capacity to use the arts of her sex; capable of any wickedness to accomplish an end, yet trivial enough to have no higher end in view than the reinvestiture of herself with social recognition; cold as snow; implacable as the grave; remorseless; wicked; but, beneath all this depravity, capable of self-pity, capable of momentary regret, capable of a little human tenderness, aware of the glory of the innocence she has lost, and thus not altogether beyond the pale of compassion. And she is, in externals,—in everything visible and audible,—the ideal of grace and melody.

In the presence of an admirable work of art the observer wishes that it were entirely worthy of being performed and that it were entirely clear and sound as to its applicability—in a moral sense, or even in an intellectual sense—to human life. Art does not go far when it stops short at the revelation of the felicitous powers of the artist; and it is not altogether right when it tends to beguile sympathy with an unworthy object and perplex a spectator's perceptions as to good and evil. Genevieve Ward's performance of Stephanie, brilliant though it was, did not redeem the character from its bleak exile from human sympathy. The actress managed, by a scheme of treatment exclusively her own, to make Stephanie, for two or three moments, piteous and forlorn; and her expression of that evanescent anguish—occurring in the appeal to Sir Horace Welby, her friendly foe, in the strong scene of the second act—was wonderfully subtle. That appeal, as Genevieve Ward made it, began in artifice, became profoundly sincere, and then was stunned and startled into a recoil of resentment by a harsh rebuff, whereupon it subsided through hysterical levity into frigid and brittle sarcasm and gay defiance. For a while, accordingly, the feelings of the observer were deeply moved. Yet this did not make the character of Stephanie less detestable. The blight remains upon it—and always must remain—that it repels the interest of the heart. The added blight likewise rests upon it (though this is of less consequence to a spectator), that it is burdened with moral sophistry. Vicious conduct in a woman, according to Stephanie's logic, is not more culpable or disastrous than vicious conduct in a man: the woman, equally with the man, should have a social license to sow the juvenile wild oats and effect the middle-aged reformation; and it is only because there are gay young men who indulge in profligacy that women sometimes become adventurers and moral monsters. All this is launched forth in speeches of singular terseness, eloquence, and vigour; but all this is specious and mischievous perversion of the truth—however admirably in character from Stephanie's lips. Every observer who has looked carefully upon the world is aware that the consequences of wrongdoing by a woman are vastly more pernicious than those of wrongdoing by a man; that society could not exist in decency, if to its already inconvenient coterie of reformed rakes it were to add a legion of reformed wantons; and that it is innate wickedness and evil propensity that makes such women as Stephanie, and not the mere existence of the wild young men who are willing to become their comrades—and who generally end by being their dupes and victims. It is natural, however, that this adventurer—who has kept a gambling-hell and ruined many a man, soul and body, and who now wishes to reinstate herself in a virtuous social position—should thus strive to palliate her past proceedings. Self-justification is one of the first laws of life. Even Iago, who never deceives himself, yet announces one adequate motive for his fearful crimes. Even Bulwer's Margrave—that prodigy of evil, that cardinal type of infernal, joyous, animal depravity—can yet paint himself in the light of harmless loveliness and innocent gayety.

Forget Me Not tells a thin story, but its story has been made to yield excellent dramatic pictures, splendid moments of intellectual combat, and affecting contrasts of character. The dialogue, particularly in the second act, is as strong and as brilliant as polished steel. In that combat of words Genevieve Ward's acting was delicious with trenchant skill and fascinating variety. The easy, good-natured, bantering air with which the strife began, the liquid purity of the tones, the delicate glow of the arch satire, the icy glitter of the thought and purpose beneath the words, the transition into pathos and back again into gay indifference and deadly hostility, the sudden and terrible mood of menace, when at length the crisis had passed and the evil genius had won its temporary victory—all those were in perfect taste and consummate harmony. Seeing that brilliant, supple, relentless, formidable figure, and hearing that incisive, bell-like voice, the spectator was repelled and attracted at the same instant, and thoroughly bewildered with the sense of a power and beauty as hateful as they were puissant. Not since Ristori acted Lucretia Borgia has the stage exhibited such an image of imperial will, made radiant with beauty and electric with flashes of passion. The leopard and the serpent are fatal, terrible, and loathsome; yet they scarcely have a peer among nature's supreme symbols of power and grace. Into the last scene of Forget Me Not,—when at length Stephanie is crushed by physical fear, through beholding, unseen by him, the man who would kill her as a malignant and dangerous reptile,—Genevieve Ward introduced such illustrative "business," not provided by the piece, as greatly enhanced the final effect. The backward rush from the door, on seeing the Corsican avenger on the staircase, and therewithal the incidental, involuntary cry of terror, was the invention of the actress: and from that moment to the final exit she was the incarnation of abject fear. The situation is one of the strongest that dramatic ingenuity has invented: the actress invested it with a colouring of pathetic and awful truth.



XXII.

EDWARD S. WILLARD IN THE MIDDLEMAN AND JUDAH.

E.S. Willard accomplished his first appearance upon the American stage (at Palmer's theatre, November 10, 1890), in the powerful play of The Middleman, by Henry Arthur Jones. A representative audience welcomed the modest and gentle stranger and the greeting that hailed him was that of earnest respect. Willard had long been known and esteemed in New York by the dramatic profession and by those persons who habitually observe the changeful aspects of the contemporary stage on both sides of the ocean; but to the American public his name had been comparatively strange. The sentiment of kindness with which he was received deepened into admiration as the night wore on, and before the last curtain fell upon his performance of Cyrus Blenkarn he had gained an unequivocal and auspicious victory. In no case has the first appearance of a new actor been accompanied with a more brilliant exemplification of simple worth; and in no case has its conquest of the public enthusiasm been more decisive. Not the least impressive feature of the night was the steadily increasing surprise of the audience as the performance proceeded. It was the actor's way to build slowly, and at the opening of the piece the poor inventor's blind ignorance of the calamity that is impending is chiefly trusted to create essential sympathy. Through those moments of approaching sorrow the sweet unconsciousness of the loving father was expressed by Willard with touching truth. In this he astonished even as much as he pleased his auditors; for they were not expecting it.

One of the most exquisite enjoyments provided by the stage is the advent of a new actor who is not only new but good. It is the pleasure of discovery. It is the pleasure of contact with a rich mind hitherto unexplored. The personal appearance, the power of the eye, the variety of the facial expression, the tones of the voice, the carriage of the person, the salient attributes of the individual character, the altitude of the intellectual development, the quality of the spirit, the extent and the nature of those artistic faculties and resources that constitute the professional equipment,—all those things become the subject first of interested inquiry and next of pleased recognition. Willard is neither of the stately, the weird, the mysterious, nor the ferocious order of actor. There is nothing in him of either Werner, Manfred, or Sir Giles Overreach. He belongs not to either the tradition of John Kemble or of Edmund Kean. His personality, nevertheless, is of a distinctive and interesting kind. He has the self-poise and the exalted calm of immense reserve power and of tender and tremulous sensibility perfectly controlled. His acting is conspicuously marked by two of the loveliest attributes of art—simplicity and sincerity. He conceals neither the face nor the heart. His figure is fine and his demeanour is that of vigorous mental authority informed by moral purity and by the self-respect of a manly spirit. Goodness, although a quality seldom taken into the critical estimate, nevertheless has its part in spiritual constitution and in consequent effect. It was, for instance, an element of artistic potentiality in the late John McCullough. It operated spontaneously; and just so it does in the acting of Willard, who, first of all, gives the satisfying impression of being genuine. A direct and thorough method of expression naturally accompanies that order of mind and that quality of temperament. Every movement that Willard makes upon the stage is clear, free, open, firm, and of an obvious significance. Every tone of his rich and resonant voice is distinctly intended and is distinctly heard. There are no "flaws and starts." He has formed a precise ideal. He knows exactly how to embody and to utter it, and he makes the manifestation of it sharp, defined, positive, and cogent. His meaning cannot be missed. He has an unerring sense of proportion and symmetry. The character that he represents is shown, indeed, all at once, as a unique identity; but it is not all at once developed, the manifestation of it being made gradually to proceed under the stress of experience and of emotion. He rises with the occasion. His feelings are deep, and he is possessed of extraordinary power for the utterance of them—not simply vocal power, although that, in his case, is exceptional, but the rare faculty of becoming convulsed, inspired, transfigured, by passion, and of being swept along by it, and of sweeping along his hearers. His manner covers, without concealing, great intensity. This is such a combination of traits as must have existed—if the old records are read aright—in that fine and famous actor, John Henderson, and which certainly existed in the late Benjamin Webster. It has, however, always been rare upon the stage, and, like all rare jewels, it is precious. The actor who, from an habitual mood of sweet gravity and patient gentleness, can rise to the height of delirious passion, and there sustain himself at a poise of tempestuous concentration which is the fulfilment of nature, and never once seem either ludicrous or extravagant, is an actor of splendid power and extraordinary self-discipline. Such an actor is Willard. The blue eyes, the slightly olive complexion, the compact person, the picturesque appearance, the melodious voice, the flexibility of natural action, and the gradual and easy ascent from the calm level of domestic peace to the stormy summit of passionate ecstasy recall personal peculiarities and artistic methods long passed away. The best days of Edwin L. Davenport and the younger James Wallack are brought to mind by them.

In the drama of The Middleman Willard had to impersonate an inventor, of the absorbed, enthusiastic, self-regardless, fanatical kind. Cyrus Blenkarn is a potter. His genius and his toil have enriched two persons named Chandler, father and son, who own and conduct a porcelain factory in an English town of the present day. Blenkarn has two daughters, and one of them is taken from him by the younger Chandler. The circumstances of that deprivation point at disgrace, and the inventor conceives himself to have suffered an odious ignominy and irreparable wrong. Young Chandler has departed and so has Mary Blenkarn, and they are eventually to return as husband and wife; but Cyrus Blenkarn has been aroused from his reveries over the crucible and furnace,—wherein he is striving to discover a lost secret in the potter's art that will make him both rich and famous,—and he utters a prayer for vengeance upon these Chandlers, and he parts from them. A time of destitution and of pitiful struggle with dire necessity, sleepless grief, and the maddening impulse of vengeance now comes upon him, so that he is wasted almost to death. He will not, however, abandon his quest for the secret of his art. He may die of hunger and wretchedness; he will not yield. At the last moment of his trial and his misery—alone—at night—in the alternate lurid blaze and murky gloom of his firing-house—success is conquered: the secret is found. This climax, to which the preliminaries gradually and artfully lead, affords a great opportunity to an actor; and Willard greatly filled it. The old inventor has been bowed down almost to despair. Grief and destitution, the sight of his remaining daughter's poverty, and the conflict of many feelings have made him a wreck. But his will remains firm. It is not, however, until his last hope has been abandoned that his success suddenly comes—and the result of this is a delirium. That situation, one of the best in modern drama, has been treated by the author in such a manner as to sustain for a long time the feeling of suspense and to put an enormous strain upon the emotion and the resources of an actor. Willard's presentment of the gaunt, attenuated figure of Cyrus Blenkarn—hollow-eyed, half-frantic, hysterical with grief and joy—was the complete incarnation of a dramatic frensy; and this, being sympathetic, and moving to goodness and not to evil, captured the heart. It was a magnificent exhibition, not alone of the physical force that sometimes is so essential in acting but of that fervour of the soul without which acting is a mockery.

The skill with which Willard reserved his power, so that the impersonation might gradually increase in strength, was one of the best merits of his art. Blenkarn's prayer might readily be converted into the climax of the piece, and it might readily be spoken in such a way that no effect would be left for the culmination in the furnace-room. Those errors were avoided, and during three out of the four acts the movement of the piece was fluent, continuous, and cumulative. In this respect both the drama and the performance were instructive. Henry Arthur Jones has diversified his serious scenes with passages of sportive humour and he has freighted the piece with conventional didacticism as to the well-worn question of capital and labour. The humour is good: the political economy need not detain attention. The value of the play does not reside in its teaching but in its dramatic presentation of strong character, individual experience, and significant story. The effect produced by The Middleman is that of moral elevation. Its auditor is touched and ennobled by a spectacle of stern trial, pitiable suffering, and stoical endurance. In the purpose that presides over human destiny—if one may accept the testimony equally of history and of fiction—it appears to be necessary first to create strong characters and then to break them; and the manner in which they are broken usually involves the elements alike of dramatic effect and of pathos. That singular fact in mortal experience may have been noticed by this author. His drama is a forcible exposition of it. The Middleman was set upon Palmer's stage in such a way as to strengthen the dramatic illusion by the fidelity of scenery. The firing-house, with its furnaces in operation, was a copy of what may be seen at Worcester. The picture of English life was excellent.

When Willard played the part of Judah Llewellyn for the first time in America (December 29, 1890), he gained from a sympathetic and judicious audience a verdict of emphatic admiration. Judah Llewellyn is a good part in one of the most striking plays of the period—a play that tells an interesting and significant story by expressive, felicitous, and incessant action; affects the feelings by situations that are vital with dramatic power; inspires useful thought upon a theme of psychological importance; cheers the mind with a fresh breeze of satirical humour; and delights the instinct of taste by its crisp and pungent style. Alike by his choice of a comparatively original subject and his deft method in the treatment of it Henry Arthur Jones has shown a fine dramatic instinct; and equally in the evolution of character and the expression of experience and emotion he has wrought with feeling and vigour. Most of the plays that are written, in any given period, pass away with the period to which they appertain. Judah is one of the exceptions; for its brilliantly treated theme is one of perennial interest, and there seems reason to believe, of a work so vital, that long after the present generation has vanished it still will keep its place in the theatre, and sometimes be acted, not as a quaint relic but as a living lesson.

That theme is the psychic force in human organism. The author does not obtrude it; does not play the pedant with it; does not lecture upon it; and above all does not bore with it. He only uses it; and he has been so true to his province as a dramatist and not an advocate that he never once assumes to decide upon any question of doctrine that may be involved in the assertion of it. His heroine is a young woman who thinks herself to be possessed of a certain inherent restorative power of curing the sick. This power is of psychic origin and it operates through the medium of personal influence. This girl, Vashti Dethick, has exerted her power with some success. Other persons, having felt its good effect, have admitted its existence. The father of Vashti, an enterprising scamp, has thereupon compelled the girl to trade upon her peculiar faculty; little by little to assume miraculous powers; and finally to pretend that her celestial talent is refreshed and strengthened by abstinence from food, and that her cures are wrought only after she has fasted for many days. He has thus converted her into an impostor; yet, as her heart is pure and her moral principle naturally sound, she is ill at ease in this false position, and her mental distress has suddenly become aggravated, almost to the pitch of desperation, by the arrival of love. She has lost her heart to a young clergyman, Judah Llewellyn, the purity of whose spirit and the beauty of whose life are a bitter and burning rebuke to her enforced deceitfulness of conduct. Here is a woman innocently guilty, suddenly aroused by love, made sensitive and noble (as that passion commonly makes those persons who really feel it), and projected into a condition of aggrieved excitement. In this posture of romantic and pathetic circumstances the crisis of two lives is suddenly precipitated in action.