KING LEAR AT THE HAYMARKET.
To read Shakspeare is a pleasure ; it is a greater to hear him well read; to see him well acted the greatest of all. Characters drawn with so much truth, passion breathed with such energy, and sentiment so variously and powerfully affecting, cannot but interest persons of ordinary human susceptibility, through whatever medium they arc presented to the understanding and imagination. The actor endowed with powers equal to a strong and just conception of the character he undertakes to personate, and with a command of voice and countenance to make his conception visible, has the means of affording society a higher and more universal pleasure than any other artist that labours for its gratification. Attempts, therefore, to embody the conceptions of the greatest of dramatic geniuses, and to restore his characters to the stage, where, from time to time, as theatrical talent rises and declines, they ap- pear and disappear, ought always to be viewed with indulgence. That nine ott of ten, or rather ninety-nine out of a hundred, should utterly fail, fs milling more than the nature of the undertaking— certainly the most arduous which the profession of an actor can prescribe to him—would lead one to expect : but a wise public will not be severe on the ninety-nine, lest its severity towards such as have miscalculated their powers should check the incipient efforts of the hundredth.
A new Lear has appeared at the Haymarket, whose case requires and has received this politic indulgence ; for whatever be his precise grade among the ninety-nine, there is not the least occasion to sing out, 'Eureka, we have gotten him ' It is easy to believe him an intelligent and sympathetic reader of the poet ; but appa- rently he has mistaken the strength of his feeling for the power to express it. For either he is not sufficiently possessed with the poet, and his feelings are not strong enough to modulate his tones, regulate his gestures, and inspire his countenance ; or he has not the flexibility of voice, features, and limbs, necessary to do justice to his feelings. His performance was rather a reading than an endeavour at personation ; and as a reading, though tolerably correct, it was cold and passionless. A delibe- rate monotony and fatiguing slowness of utterance were main- tained through all the changes and chances of a most event- ful drama, and grew at last absolutely unendurable. Had Lear even torn his passion like his garments, to tatters, the rant would have been felt by the audience as a relief from the " solemn sameness" of his leisurely elocution. Mr. Cooper, when, in imi- tation of Charles Kemble, he laid about him with his hedge- stake, drew forth the only decisive round of applause heard that night. This demonstration of energy, though the energy was but physical, acted agreeably upon an audience ennuied by the life- lessness of the pageant, on which, for their sins, they were doomed to gaze, and whose tardy progress their justifiable impatience would gladly have accelerated. The old error of taking " the life of elocution to lie in the strength of the lungs " is so exploded, that one is now-a-days seldom rattled soundly about the ears ; and the general tendency is to the opposite and less tolerable extreme of monotony. To be flat is to be natural, and feebleness is affected as a merit,—a mistake very convenient to poverty of genius and dearth of feeling ; but less likely than its opposite to meet with indulgence, inasmuch as loudness and vehemence will sometimes amuse, whilst flatness can never do other than damp an audience.
Of all stage characters, Lear demands depth and versatility of feeling, as well as strong and varied powers of expression. Invin- cible passions, outraged by insult and goaded into phrensy by in- gratitude, are not consistent with a measured delivery and a for- mal deportment. They never, in this world, moved, looked, and
spoke after the manner of the Haymarket Lear ; unless it be the wont of passion to manifest itself by composure, and an inflexible solemnity of voice and countenance be held to indicate madness. For any signs of passion or insanity, discernible in his demeanour, Lear was as tranquil when he invoked the Gods as when he called for his dinner ; and as sane on the midnight heath as in his palace. " Vos jambes seulment un per plus avinniies," is Figaro's recom- mendation to his master when attempting to personate the drunk- ard. The new actor, before he attempts the part a second time, should task himself to endure the contemplation of actual insanity, and glean some of the marks by which it is apt to discover itself.
It must be owned that the actor's conception of the part, if inef- fective, was at least consistent ; for as there was latterly no phrensy, so there was previously no violence. The hot-headed old man disinherited Cordelia, and banished Kent, with great equa- nimity and self-possession. In the words, indeed, there was the " wrath of the dragon," but in look and action the staidness of the judge ; and an idle fancy might have imagined it some venerable person strayed from the Common Pleas or Exchequer. Did ever man, in poetry or prose, ban and curse with the depth and bitter- ness of Lear ? At the passage where he invokes wrinkles and sterility on his (laughter, somebody near, apparently a little awed, ejaculated " What a prayer !" but it was the poet's influence he felt, not the actor's ; who, to say the truth, uttered Lear's wither- ing curses in a manner rather pious than imprecatory ; and a fo- reigner might have taken him for a father invoking blessings on the head of a dutiful daughter. It was not so with Kean, who was almost convulsed and nearly inarticulate with the vehemence of his denunciation. It was not so that, according to the testi- mony of Sir. W. Scott, Mrs. Siddons thought the imprecation should be delivered.
" She arose and placed herself in the attitude.of one of the old Egyptian statues; the knees joined together, and the feet turned a little inwards. She placed her elbows close to her sides, folded her hands and held them upright with the palms pressed to each other. Having made us observe that she had assumed one of the most constrained and therefore most ungraceful positions possible, (she had been previously remarking on her brother, J. Kemble's occasional sacrifice of energy of action to grace,) she proceeded to recite the curse of King Lear on his undutiful offspring, in a manner which made our hair rise and flesh creep, and then called on us to remark the additional effect which was gained by the concentrated energy which the unusual and ungraceful posture itself implied."* Was it Kean who set the fashion of a decrepit, drivelling Lear ? Whencesoever the present actor borrowed his notion, it is most er- roneous. Eighty years have rather augmented than abated the violence of Lear's passions ; and he who should represent him cor- rectly-, would show them agitating the remains of a once iron frame almost to dissolution. Lear is an octogenarian Achilles—"ira- cundus, inexorabilis, acer," whose anger blazes into outrageous in- justce at a " most small fault" in his best-beloved. His impo- tency is of an untameable temper, not of intellect or even of are. " Fourscore years and upwards," it is true ; but the old man is still ready with his sword, quick to strike, a hale and hearty hunter, calling loudly for his dinner, and on the verge of the grave, yet strong enough to do deeds of death, and boast of the " good biting faulchion that had made them skip." That symptoms of an age advanced beyond the common lot should mingle with his bursts of
grief and indignation, is only natural ; and the great art of the actor is to show the action of strong passions in a weak frame, and the violence of the one towering amid the tremulousness of the other.
The picture of David Deans labouring at once under the agitations of .sorrow and resentment, will convey the best idea of the look
and manner at which a Lear ought to aim.—" They found the poor old man half frantic between grief and zealous ire ; his cheek inflamed, his hand clenched, and his voice raised, while the tear on his eye, and the occasional quiver of his accents showed that his utmost efforts were inadequate to shaking off the consciousness of misery." The new Lear contented himself with an exhibition of
stiff joints, and, whenever his tones broke out of their usual mo- notony, with a kind of doting whine, borrowed apparently from Kean. No doubt, the old man is subdued at last. It is not in human nature that an aged frame should bear up for ever against the wear and tear of usage so unnatural and feelings so acute and exasperated. His language is then suitable to his condition, humble and almost infantine--" a very foolish fond old man, &c." It is a calm after a tempest—a pause amidst the storm of war- ring elements, the more felt by reason of the preceding agitation. But endowed with no more energy of body and mind, than the pre- sent actor chose, or was able to infuse into his acting, Lear had sunk into second childhood, when his woes first began to assail his wits.
After what has been said, it needs scarcely be observed that the innumerable touches of irresistible pathos, that distinguish the part, fell cold and stale upon the ear. Intervening, as they do, amidst transports of passion, and the wild starts of an erring intel- lect, their effect is not to be withstood. But as it is from the con- trast with the violent, that these softer emotions are so affecting, the absence of the first afforded no scope for the influence of the other ; for where there were no paroxysms there could be no re- vulsions. In a word, the so often quoted " Si vis me flere, dolen- dum est," &c. must be quoted again. Who could pity a Lear, that bore his wrongs with so much indifference ?—or believe him afflicted who testified no sense of affliction ? or imagine him crazed who exhibited no symptoms of derangement more plausible than a wreath of straw, to countenance a verdict of insanity ?
* Quarterly Itevlew.wBoaden's Life of John Kemble,
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