REVIVAL OF KING LEAR AT COVENT GARDEN.

WERE the most penetrating and instructed mind, whose judgment should be limited by mere forms and its own experience of actual life, to class the great dramas of SHAKSPEARE, it would probably assign the highest place to Macbeth, for dramatic grandeur and poetical teauty ; to Hamlet, for searching reflections and an exposure of the hol. lowness of life and purpose ; to Othello, for its worldly knowlenge, its human sympathy, and its exact portraiture of character, so universally true, yet so exquisitely individualized by nature and modified by cus- tom ; and, though unable to resist the passion and pathos of Lear, it would shrink from what have been called, and at first appear, its im- probabilities and barbarisms. But if criticism, transporting itself 44 beyond the ignorant present," examines the stores of knowledge which historians and travellers have accumulated, and, considering the passions as the essential elements of the poet's art, and time and place, the condition of society, national customs, and social modes, but as instruments to shape and show his mighty powers, it will be found that the subject of King Lear is selected with as profound a sagacity, and conducted with as nice an art, as Othello itself; and that what appear to us the faults of SIIAKSPEAUE are often in reality our own deficiencies.

The object of the poet in this tragedy, is to exhibit filial ingratitnde and parental anguish—the greatest wickedness of which human nature is capable, the greatest misery which it can endure : and he has chosen the condition, sex, age, and period of his persons, with a propriety so wonderful, that criticism is puzzled to know whether it be the result of judgment or instinct. The ungrateful children are daughters,—for a " thankless child" is more revolting in the female sex; a woman can manage such crimes with more smoothness and craft than man ; and the superadded crimes of fraternal discord, lust, and murder, show more hateful in wives than husbands. The father is a king, to enhance the value of the benefits he has showered upon his daughters ; to render the indignities put upon him sharper to his own mind ; and to excite a greater pity in the minds of the audience by the contrast with his former and present fortunes. And he has cast his time upon a barbarous age, because neither individual feeling, nor private shame, nor public opinion, would have rendered the exhibition of such strong effects and striking contrasts natural, as he was compelled to have recourse to for the purpose of dramatic effect. Considered in this light, those things which are cavilled at by refined, or perhaps emasculated judgments, are in perfect keeping —indeed, necessary as distinctive marks of the time. The resigns.

Lion of the kingly power, the division of the kingdom, the disinheriting of Cordelia, the passionate resolves and despotism of the monarch, the filial crimes of Lear's daughters and Gloucester's 'son, the fraternal hatreds and fratricides, the freakish banishment of Kent, the putting out Gloucester's eyes, as well as the sudden reverses of fortune, are not only probable, but the improbability would have been had they not been there. Those, indeed, who can form no other notion of existence than what they see around them, may cull these incidents unnatural ; but he who can even throw his eyes to the East, not to mention past his- tories wherever society is unsettled, will find no difficulty in matching them all. And if the name of England disturbs them when they look upon its present appearance, let them picture its state before the Con- quest, in their "mind's eye." Even the tempest scenes, so contrary to actual notions of kingly exposure, are managed with consummate art. It is not destitution—there is nothing sordid in Lear's distress—but his anguish, and his daughters, that expose him to the "pelting of the pitiless storm." We hear of his train of knights, though we only use one of them, with Kent and the Fool ; and a single touch prepares us for the physical exposure.

Geoucesera. The King is in high rage. CORNWALL. Whither is he going ? Geoucsseen. He calls to horse; but will I know not whither. CORNWALL. 'Tie best to give him way ; he leads himself. Gorman.. My lord, entreat him by no means to stay. GLOUCZSTER. Alack, the night comes on, and the bleak winds

Do sorely ruffle; for many miles about there's scarce a bush.

It were long and needless to criticize the parts of this transcendent drama, for their power has been told by numberless pens and felt by all; but we may note one point in its general conduct. Vehemence of passion and depth of misery are thrown out with such a lavish hand, that the opening of Lear excels in interest the close of most other dramas. The first act is wound up with a passion, in that terrific curse, as intense as any thing even in Othello; and the second exhausts paternal agony, despair, and desolation. Other minds would have been at a stand-still ; but SHAKSPEARE, without a trace of effort, deepens the intellectual interest, by pouring upon the man the heaviest affliction of humanity, and exposing the monarch to a fleshy evil from which even the animals remove themselves. When the misery of madness has run through its phases, we have his restoration to senile sense, in that soul-subduing scene with Cordelia; and then the touching pathos of their deaths.

The propriety of this tragic termination has been defended by ADDISON and HAZLITT, but without assigning any reason ; and cen- sured by Joilwaow, as a violation of poetical justice, and as shocking to our feelings and sense of right. As regards Lear himself, this may perhaps be questioned. He is undoubtedly more "sinned against than sinning ;" but it was not through any care of his that Cordelia did not endure miseries similar to his own ; it may be inferred from his hasty and unforgiving temper, and his injustice towards Kent, that some part of his daughters' vices might be fostered by his faults ; and there are mental and physiological reasons, in his age and sufferings, to require his death. The case of Cordelia is more puzzling; but a thing is not of necessity wrong because a right reason cannot be given for it.

As in considering Lear as an intellectual production, the reader must throw aside his own narrow experience, so in criticising its per-

formals's the spectator mast to a certain extent distrust the evidence of

his impressions, or at least allow for their delusive character. The imperfections of ears and eyes, the injudicious size of the theatre, and the necessities of the histrionic art, when truth must be sacrificed to the distant galleries and the vulgar everywhere, or effect be sacrificed to truth, are all to be weighed. And, sneaking with these limitations, we incline to consider his Lear as the ttiusnph of MACKEADY'S genius; as truly conceived, as thoroughly sustained, as JOHN KENBLE'S Corio. lanus, (though we might subject even Kernels. to a severer criterion could we see him now,) and more natural and more finished in every part than his own Othello. So much new light is not perhaps flashed upon Leer as upon the Moor; whose habit of command and African heat of blood are distinctly portrayed, singly and in contention, till nature overpowers use. But in the earlier scenes of Othello, MACREADY confounds stiffness with stateliness, and wants the grave but graceful dignity of the men of the turban and flowing robe : his Lear is "one entire and perfect chrysolite." From his first entrance to the death by Cordelia's corpse, the " foolish, fond, old man," with strong self-will, vehement passions, but feeble frame, is never for a moment lost sight of. In the earlier part of the opening scene, we perceive the kingly dotard ; in the wildest paroxysms of rage, anger stimulates feebleness, but does not restore strength ; in the depths of his agony and madness, be never departs from the unity of his conception to make a point or mouth a claptrap,—a consistency which may detract somewhat frorq the popular effect of the third act, through the absurd magnitude of the house.

Of the faults of the performance,-

" Nam neque chords sonum reddit, quem vult menus et mane, Poseentique gravem perstepe remittit ocotillo ;

Nee semper feriet quodeunque minabitur arcus,"—

a tinge of mannerism, occasionally recalling the personality of the actor too strongly to the mind, is the most general, but the one most difficult to avoid. We felt too, or perhaps we fancied, that he scarcely rose to the philosophy of Lear in the tempest scenes : but it is probably impossible for oral delivery to embody such moral abstractions so as to satisfy a preconceived and indefinite idea.

Of particular beauties, the curse may be noted for its soul-thrilling effect and the senile passion of its delivery; the exclamation " Ay, every inch a king," for the decorous dignity of the attitude, with the spirit of madness which is visible through it ; the recognition of Cordelia, for its touching pathos and histrionic skill ; and the death-scene, for its truth. ful delineation of distracted hope and heartbroken despair. The ever present sense of authority, till all thought of conventional distinction vanishes in the fifth act under the intensity of misery, is an excellence of a general kind.

Besides MACREADY himself, a few other actors may be noted for rising beyond the mere mechanism of playing, and clearly conceiving and equally supporting an individual character. Of these, Mr. BART- LEY'S Kent takes the first rank, as an able portraiture of the blunt, sturdy, faithful servant, with no greater sacrifice perhaps to noise and coarseness than necessity enforces. Miss P. HORTON'S Fool was a complete, but we conceive a mistaken character : she gave us en arch, simple-witted, sportive boy, rather than the shrewd, searching Fool of King Lear, whose peculiarity of mind enabled him to see deeper into men and motives, because he disregarded their external trappings. Miss HUDDART, announced in the playbills by her marital name of Mrs. WARNER, gave evidence of her judgment, by playing Regan with. out striving to give it undue prominence; as did Miss HELEN FAUCIT in Cordelia.

The " getting-up" is worthy of the tragedy. Every scene is dis- tinguished by perfect propriety ; in which word is included beauty and splendour, when they are needed, with sufficient attention to the usages of the supposed period. Nor is the eye merely consulted in the pic- ture-like grouping of the pomp and ceremonials the position of every individual appears to have been cared for, and the minutest atten- tion given so as to make the subordinates or seconds support the prin. eipal actors, and contribute to the histrionic effect.