SHAKESPEARE ON THE STAGE AND OFF.
THE King of Siam was taken the other day to hear Don- Giovanni at the Opera. After the performance some one asked for his opinion of it. "Thank you," replied his Majesty, "it was very fine ; but I prefer a play of Shakespeare read in an armchair by the fire." Waiving the question as to how the monarch of a tropical country comes to associate any pleasure with armchairs and fires, one remarks that he did not say, "I had sooner see Hamlet at the Lyceum." Is it a fair conclusion that Chulalongkorn may be claimed for the side who would rather read Shake- speare than see him acted ? or was it merely his charming courtesy which made him avoid a comparison between enter- tainments more or less similar ? Probably the latter ; but the two alternatives do not exclude one another. Suppose the question put to any lover of literature who is also a theatre- goer, Have you got more enjoyment out of Shakespeare from reading him or from seeing him played ? his answer in most cases would be, From reading ; but for all that he need not ap- prove the morose and supercilious persons who declare that they cannot bear to see their favourite poetry vulgarised by stage representation. If one had to choose—merely on mathetic grounds—between never seeing Hamlet played again and never reading it, one would give up the theatre without a moment's hesitation; the pleasures are distinct in kind, and it is possible to choose between them, but it is equally possible to enjoy them both. And, we should add, for a complete appreciation of any play it is necessary to have experience of both of them: to read the work for the pleasure of the poetry, and to see it for the pleasure of the drams. To make a play enjoyable as a play, merely adequate acting is needed; something that does not offend a reasonable taste. Great acting is a superadded grace, which one cannot expect and has to be thankful for as a special benediction. The pleasures proper to the stage which the study cannot afford are the beauty ot human figures as the dramatist's eye saw them, eloquent in gesture or significant in grouping—Cordelia over the body of Lear, Hamlet gazing at Ophelia—and the varied charm of human voices. Any moderate performance gives these pleasures, but naturally the degree varies. To hear Shakespeare's verse spoken as Mr. Forbes Robertson speaks it is perhaps the greatest delight of the hearing allowed to those who have not the faculty of music. He has the gift of Chrysostom, the golden perfection of utter- ance. Mrs. Patrick Campbell's is a different excellence; every motion of hers is not merely harmonious but in- stinct with feeling ; she acts best perhaps when she is not speaking. No mere imagination can provide the reader with enjoyments like these. Most readers indeed probably do not picture the scene at all, but merely follow the in- tellectual movement and the rhythm of the words,—or, if they have a picture in their minds, it is generally a reminiscence of the theatre.
For the pleasures of sight and hearing, then, we go to the play; but it will be observed that in a great measure they are independent of the poetry. Mrs. Campbell was just as picturesque at her first entrance in For the Crown as in the mad scene in Hamlet ; and the mere charm of Mr. Robertson's voice would probably make indifferent poetry beautiful. But here one strikes a question impossible to answer. Can we properly judge of Shakespeare's plays when they are acted? Does not our familiarity with them weaken the stage effect ? Many students of Shakespeare must have wished for once to be able to see a play of Shakespeare acted which they had never read. There are, of course, people who like to read up the piece before going to the theatre, there are even those who keep their eyes religiously fixed on a "book of the words" while the play is going on ; but it seems to us an inartistic taste, for surely the chief charm of a drama lies in the gradual unfolding of the plot, and Mr. Pinero would not thank you to read over Mrs. Tan queray before you go to see it. Not at all; he wants to keep your mind excited with the suspense. That is impossible with Hamlet. The action is perfectly known to as ; and as for the poetry, when the actor begins a speech we ask ourselves, not what is he going to say, but how is he going to speak it ? Try to imagine the effect upon a person who, at the beginning of Hamlet's great soliloquy, could merely sit and listen while he unfolds the tangled web of his mind. The speech, "To be or not to be," has lost much of its dramatic value jest because we know it too well. This is an extreme case, no doubt, but probably typical. Supposing the plays of Shakespeare could be produced as perfect novelties to this generation of Londoners : the stock answer is that nobody would go to see them without Shakespeare's name. That is simple nonsense. Hamlet is absolutely the most popular play in the language, and we firmly believe that if it were produced for the first time to-morrow it would be almost as successful as Char ley's Aunt, and beat the records of the Adelphi. What is wore, we believe that plays which it does not pay to produce now — say Julius Cwsar or Cymbeline — would pay if we did not all know the story of them. Not long ago a very able Japanese diplomatist who knew English stumbled upon a performance of Shakespeare without knowing it. He came back declaring that he had seen the most won del f ci play in the world. He could not recall the name, but his sketch of the plot showed that he had seen Hamlet. Three things go to make up Shakespeare's especial greatness : his power of selecting a story of permanent human interest and telling it under the conditions of stage representation ; his power of characterisation (which is a part of his humour) ; and his extraordinary gift of poetic style. He owes his pro- longed life on the stage chiefly to the first, in a less degree to the second, and hardly at all to the third. No play has more poetry in it than the Tempest, unless it be the Winter's Tale, yet neither can properly be said to hold the stage, because the stories do not fulfil stage requirements. Nowhere is there stronger characterisation than in Coriolanus, but the story does not interest playgoers. Aristotle knew what he was talk- ing about when he said that in a play the story was the essen- tial thing ; and yet an Athenian audience was trained—as also to some extent an Elizabethan audience was trained—to judge poetry by the ear. We have come to depend upon the eye, and nine critics out of ten would be unable at the end of
a new play written in blank verse to give any competent opinion on its literary value as poetry.
The people, then, who prefer their Shakespeare in print are those who care more for Shakespeare the supreme poet than for Shakespeare the marvellous but unequal playwright. There are also those who have that strong intellectual antipathy to the whole business of acting which one would call Puritan if Plato had not expressed it in its extreme form before Puritanism existed. But those of as who value the poet's art beyond the playwright's may take delight also in the latter, and few things are more enjoyable than to see a play of Shakespeare's well performed. We do not believe in the interpretation theory. Shakespeare is a very lucid writer, and one can make out most of the points even in Hamlet's soul without assistance ; and it is probable that an actor's view of a part is largely determined by his own limitations and excellences. He emphasises those points in a character which best suit his own style. Mr. Robertson (other- wise admirable) apparently thinks that Hamlet's soliloquy, " Now might I do it pat, now, now he's praying," does not fit with his own charming and affable Hamlet, so he omits the passage. One must forgive him, since he has restored the entrance of Fortinbras at the end, so that the play ends quietly, as Shakespeare meant his plays to end, and not with a crash or a telling phrase. Besides, Mr. Robertson plays quietly as Hamlet recommends it, and there is nothing to jar the nerves. Some actors give at least a show of reason to those who will not risk hearing their favourite passage mouthed "as a dog mouths a bone." Over-acting is a much worse sin than under-acting, and the performances of Shakespeare's plays which we look back on with most pleasure are apt to be those where no single actor was specially prominent. There are many people who go to see a par- ticular actor or actress rather than the play,—a most deplorable proceeding. It is to catch the ear of such people that we get shrieking Ophelias. Mrs. Campbell, at least, does not play for them. She realises that Ophelia is meant to be a pathetic figure somewhat in the shade, and she never for an instant forces the part into undue prominence. Everything she does, she "turns to favour and to prettiness." But for all that, when it came to the exquisite, the unap- proachable, scene of her madness, the appeal was mainly to the eye ; for the incommunicable thrill of those verses that she has to speak one must go back with the King of Siam to the armchair by the fire. Yet after all, if one had never read Hamlet before, if one were not comparing Mrs. Campbell mentally with half a dozen other Ophelias as well as the ideal Ophelia of our fancy,—good heavens, how that scene would stir us ! But as it is, wonderful, indeed, must be the acting that can make Shakespeare new to us.
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