" TARTUFFE " AND "HERNANI," AT THE GAIETY THEATRE.
“TARTUFFE," as the play which, after Hamlet, everybody is supposed to know best, has come to be called, so ex- clusively, that its real title, L' Impostenr, is not even added, was performed on last Saturday afternoon by some of the actors of the Comedie Francaise, in a style worthy of the old traditions of the theatre of Moliere. To an English audience, this is the most interesting piece among the comedies in the old repertoire, and it gains the most from being acted. There are candid people who will admit that Tartuffe is not very amusing to read; they find the exquisite neatness and polish of the verse monotonous ; but how the true, unsurpassable comedy of it comes out in the acting, how every line tells, as each point is made with brilliant precision ! The first scene of the first act has always been regarded as a severe test of the powers, not only of the Dorine of the occasion, but of the Elmire, who has to stand in silence, listening to the violent scolding of her mother-in-law, Madame Pernelle, who is as much the dupe of the "faux devot " Tartuffe, as is Orgon himself; and to the brisk repartee of Dorine, that famous,—
"File suivante,
Un peu trop forte en gueule, et fort impertinente ;" and it is a fair test of the skill of the actors of the minor
• "Theophrastas Such," p. 228.
parts as well. There they are assembled, the wife, the daughter, the son, and the brother-in-law of Orgon, to be bullied all round by the severe old lady, who has to be treated with the profound reverence inseparable, according to the manners of the time, from her age and station ; and they have to convey, one by a mere word, another by a half-sentence, interrupted by the torrent of the old lady's tongue, the individual and collective sentiments of the family. This was done, admirably indeed, although Madame Favart does not listen, as Madame Arnould Plessy used to listen—with alert interest and hardly suppressed im- patience, so perfectly conveyed that it was scarcely possible to believe that she had ever heard all this said before, and knew exactly what was coming—but takes rather the meek-and-mild attitude of a long-suffering daughter-in-law. Madame Jonas- sain, who is also so admirable as the Vicomtesse, that " reste d'une femme de qualite," in Le Demi.Monde, looked and acted the part of Madame Pernelle to perfection ; the severe, yet handsome costume of the time, the white hair, like spun glass, the stick, leant on indeed, but with a vigorous hand, the harsh, emphatic voice, bringing out every epithet of scorn and item of condemnation with unsparing distinctness, the change to admiration when she speaks of Tartuffe,—all were thoroughly admirable. Of the Dorine of Mademoiselle Jeanne Samary it would be difficult to speak too highly ; the brilliant young actress took the audience by surprise, and cap- tivated them at once. Bressant's pupil does her famous master infinite credit. Her dant at the Comedie Francaise was made in the nile of Dorine, in August, 1875, and she at once took a high place among that corps d'aite, in which her late aunt, Madame Augustine Brohan, held so distinguished a station. It is said in Paris that Mademoiselle Jeanne Samary bids fair to fill her aunt's vacant place, and we, to whom such acting as hers is a delight- ful revelation, cannot doubt that whatever heights of excellence in high and light comedy are to be scaled, she will attain them. Up to the present stage of the performances of the Comedie Francaise in London, there has been nothing so good as Mademoiselle Samary's Dorine. Her face, her figure, her movements, her voice, her enunciation, never too rapid, and always perfectly clear, her "nocteue, inane" expres- sion, her inimitable gestures, the sparkling fun in her dark, bright eyes, her vexation with the stupidity of all the people whom she either manages or cannot manage, her exasperation with Orgon, and her contempt for Tartuffe, more cutting and practical than the elegant disdain of Elmire ; her pertness, her vivacity, her ever-present cleverness, when every one but her- self is blundering and getting into difficulties ; her inimitable play of countenance during the famous lovers' quarrel and re- conciliation between Valere and Marianne, in which she prompts both, and is delightfully aware of the comic aspect of the situa- tion, and restlessly conscious that the lovers are not availing themselves of her hints half cleverly enough, are all of first- rate excellence. The humour that pervades her perform- ance comes out with perhaps its most irresistible effect in the scene with Orgon in which she relates the progress of his wife's illness, and he interrupts her at each sentence with his "Et Tartuffe ?"—and in her repetition of his famous phrase, "Le pauvre homme !" and application of it when Orgon dis- covers the full extent of the treachery of Tartuffe. At the latter point nothing could be more full of humour than her sharp, emphatic nod, her folded hands, her twinkling eyes, her tightly-shut lips, her keen enjoyment of the desperate irritation of Orgon, whose explanation to his mother that he actually heard and saw Tartuffe making love to Elmire is met with the assurance that,— " Des esprits medisans, la malice eat extreme ;" and that,— " Les langues oat toujours du venin repandre,
Et rien n'est ici bas qui s'en puisse defendre."
M. Febvre's Tartuffe is an excellent piece of acting, though he lacks the soft, glosing persuasiveness which some of his prede- cessors threw into the love-making of the Impostor. He is best in the scene with Orgon and Damis, in the third act, when he succeeds in persuading his dupe that the evidence of his son is false, and fools him to the top of his bent. The craft and subtlety of M. Febvre's acting in this scene were not spoiled by over-unctuous hypocrisy ; he allowed gratified spite and revenge to be sufficiently evident in his hardly hidden scorn of the folly of Orgon. M. Barr6 is far from being the best Orgon we have seen, but he is very amusing, with his gusty temper, his superstition, his despotism, and his naiveté.
With Madame Favart's Elmire, it is impossible to be quite satisfied ; she is polished, dignified, graceful, and her enuncia- tion has all its well known accuracy and harmony ; but she so lacks humour, that the great scene of the comedy par excellence, that in which she betrays Tartuffe's villainy to Orgon, who is concealed under a table, loses half its charm. She acts it all well, the alluring, the withdrawing, the coquetry, the impatience, the affected religious scruples, by which she elicits the hypocrite's avowal of his insincerity, but we miss the spark- ling humour with which Madame Arnould Plessy invested this device of Elmire's. Every glance of hers, every tone, was full of amusement, of thorough enjoyment of the ridiculous side of the situation, and her loftily satirical " chaff " of Orgon, in the brief interval during which she sends Tartuffe to see that all is safe outside, and Orgon emerges from his hiding-place,—her, "Attendez jusq'an bout, pour voir lcs choses Ares, Et ne cons fiez point aux simples conjectures," —were much more effective than is Madame Favart's grand serieux. In La Joie Fait Peur, which was also acted on the same occasion, the talent and practised skill of Madame Favart produced their full effect. The listless, heart-stricken grief of the bereaved mother was most touchingly represented, and Madame Favart looked the part to perfection. M. Got as the old servant, Noel, fulfilled the expectations of the audience, which were not moderate ; but the little drama narrowly escapes being ridiculous, at the best. M. Delaunay, who is an admir- able actor, as all the world knows, and the youngest-looking
man of his years on any stage, is nevertheless too much on the wrong side of fifty to fill the role of Adrien with success, or even impunity. Such an artist as M. Delaunay ought never to be placed in a position to require consideration from his audience ; he ought to draw the line rigorously beyond such parts as Olivier, in Le Demi-Monde, a role which has only a subdued, and so to speak, middle-aged vivacity about it, and in which he acts quite faultlessly. When M. Delaunay as Olivier, pro- pounds M. Alexandre Dumas' famous parable of the peaches at thirty sous and the *peaches at fifteen sous, and points its cynical moral, with blase acquiescence and the easiest wit, he does justice to his perfect skill ; but when, as Adrien, he twirls his sister off her feet, skips across the stage, and tells of his boyish exploits in climbing, he does injustice to it. He has no rival in his own line, and there does not seem to be any rising "star" of like or even approaching magnitude among the younger actors. It is, no doubt, an unavoidable condition of the constitution of the ComAdie Francaise that the jeunes premiers should all be middle-aged men (does not Mr. Mayer declare that the bel dge is forty P) but it is a regrettable one, and while it probably assists the intellectual completeness of the performances, it adds to their artificiality, of which one never loses the sense.
The first performance of Hernani, on last Monday, was one of the "events" of the engagement. It would be curious and interesting to know exactly what the majority of the crowded and attentive audience thought of the celebrated tragedy, which has twice figured in the political history of France, and has given rise to more voluminous criticism than any contemporary drama. It is not easy to discharge one's mind entirely of impressions, of hear-say, and of the cant of vehement admiration with which Hernani has been heralded ; but we cannot believe that a conscientious effort to do so, and steady attention to the performance, could result in any other conviction than that Hernani is one of the very worst plays that ever was put upon a stage, and perhaps quite the most weari- some ; that the best acting in the world could not make it any- thing else ; and that in this particular instance it was not well acted. This tragedy is perhaps the most characteristic expres- sion of M. Victor Hugo which he has given to the world; in it the half-charlatan comes out more strongly than the half- genius, though, in the occasionally fine lines, the odd bits of real poetry and genuinely good points, in the declamation, equally vapid and violent, in the absurd and unnatural situa- tions, in the stilted sentiment, and the pervading claptrap, we have traces sufficient of both. We have no hesitation in saying that a playwright manufacturing a melodrama of what used to be called the " transpontine " kind would not venture upon such audacities of construction as M. Victor Hugo's, in this instance ; that he would have held himself bound to account for Dona Sol's having ever met a proscribed brigand, and having fallen so violently in love with him that she insists on his permitting her to share his imminent scaffold, is after-
wards within an hour of marriage with her uncle-guardian, an old person of quality, who, having previously displayed the most paternal sentiments, turns into a violent, vindictive, and ex- ceedingly unpleasant lover. That playwright would also have hesitated to make the brigand, for whom Dona Sol has defied everybody, and been quite ready, indeed, anxious to die, believe that she has sold herself to her uncle for a box of jewels, which, in the course of things, would, have come to. herself as his heiress. This last is only a trivial detail amid the general absurdity, but it is so ridiculous that it strikes one more strongly than even grosser faults. No actor could make such a position tolerable as that of M. Maubart, when, as Ruy Gomez, he has to declaim thirty-one lines of indignant rant about the Cid, and the honour of the daughters of Castille, on finding Hernani, and the King, Don Carlos, in his niece's room at midnight ; while Don Carlos, hiding himself in a big cloak,. has to listen to him ! That the first impulse of any man under such circumstances would be to pull the cloak off the intruder did not occur to M. Victor Hugo, and Ruy Gomez is simply an. idiotic bore at first, and a ferocious brute at last. Nothing more unintentionally and misplacedly comic than his taking Don Carlos by the hand—like the " visiting " figure in the Lancers quadrilles—and solemnly introducing him, in several pages of pompous biographical memoirs, to all the ancestral Silvas, while the brigand is in a press, and Dona Sol is in an attitude, was ever beheld. Most sincerely to be pitied is M. Worms, when, as Don Carlos, he has to apostrophise Charle- magne, through the closed door of that personage's tomb, throughout five mortal pages of history, politics, ethics, general considerations, and tall-talk about death and its levelling ( " Alas ! poor Yorick ! " dragged out of all impressiveness) ; and has to do so, moreover, without the slightest break, or aid from any stage-device whatever.. That M. Mounet-Sully does the best that can be done with the brigand grandee of Spain, we frilly believe ; but the strafing,. the shouting, the grimacing demanded by the role, are all unpleasant, and never for a moment sublime. The sentiment is all false, the passion is all hollow, the tragedy is, in one word, rubbish ranted. Of Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt's acting in the character of Dona Sol so much has been said, that almost any performance would have fallen short of one's expectation.. Profound astonishment is the sentiment with which we beheld this "sublime creation," as it has been called, for to us it seemed that the actress's aim from first to last is to express physical exhaustion and the last depths of mental ennui, and to look as much like a half-witted person as possible. Starting eyes, with something of curiosity, but more of folly, in their gaze, a half- open mouth, feeble movements—she is perpetually dropping into a seat—a constant recurrence to some silly nonsense about a dagger, and a singularly shrill shriek, are the chief im- pressions which we carried away from one of the profoundest deceptions it has ever been our lot to experience.
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