" ROMEO AND JULIET," AT THE LYCEUM.
THE production of Romeo and Juliet at the Lyceum Theatre, on Wednesday last, has, perhaps, been more eagerly looked forward to and given rise to more discussion, than any other of Mr. Irving's Shakespearian revivals. "Surely," said the actor's admirers, "we shall now see a personification of Romeo worthy of the author of Hamlet; we shall see all the development of which the character is capable ; we shall see all the southern intensity of passion ; and above all, we shall see a thoroughly effective and unconventional rendering of the part." 4' Surely," said in their turn those who thought little of Mr. Irving's powers, " there never could have been any one less fitted to play such a part. Conceive a Romeo of forty, gaunt in person and guttural in tongue ; with not a single joyous inflec- tion in the voice which has grown hoarse with depicting every variety of villain; and not a single touch of fresh, unsullied youth to be seen in face and figure." This was, perhaps, the staple of the discussions before the play was produced, upon which were embroidered, wonderful stories as to the elaboration with which the play was being mounted ; expectations, which could hardly be called anything short of "joyous," of seeing Ellen Terry play Juliet, and speculations as to how the other characters would be filled.
And now the French proverb of nothing being certain except the unforeseen, has come true once more, and admirers and detractors are proved to have been equally at fault, or at all events, equally expectant of something which has not happened. For the one matter upon which all were agreed, was that Mr. Irving would give a very great prominence to the part of Romeo, —would make it a very startling character-study. And he has done nothing of the kind. Indeed, he has done the very reverse. After watching the play with considerable attention, we came to the conclusion that there was scarcely a single situation of the play in which we had been accustomed to have Romeo thrust prominently upon our notice, in which Mr. Irving did not, and, as it seemed to us deliberately, minimize the effect.
It would take np far too much of our space here, to go into all the numerous alterations which have been made in the acting version ; suffice it to say that scarcely a single scene re- mains quite the same, and that both the omissions and the addi- tions are very considerable. We heard one young critic com- plaining bitterly of some beautiful lines which had been cut out, but, after all, any possible acting version of Shakespeare necessarily omits so much, that a new representation must be judged as a whole, and not by the neglect of individual beauties. Given that a manager puts Romeo and Juliet, or, say, Julius Ccesar on the stage for us from one intelligible point of view, ere must permit him to sacrifice to that end, much that we should willingly keep untouched. And the only question we shall fairly ask is,—Is the point of view aimed at the right one, and is it attained ? What was it, then, that we all went to see, on Wednesday, at the Lyceum P It was not Mr. Irving as Romeo, nor Miss Ellen Terry as Juliet ; it was not even the beautiful scenery, dresses, and stage details, which accompanied the play. It was, though it sounds rather paradoxical to say so, some- thing which cannot be seen at all,—an atmosphere.
This was the surprise that was in store for every one, even for those who, reading between the lines of Mr. Irving's letter to the Times, had some faint idea of his intention. Both physically and mentally, the story of Romeo and Juliet was re- presented from a totally new point of view,—that of one of the incidents of the play, rather than the play itself. It was like a love-story read on a summer day by the sea,—full of little bursts of sunshine and shade, and murmuring noises of the waves running down the beach. Something—to com- pare great things with small—of the vagueness and vastness of Nature, was over it all ; the love, the parting, and the death were like "A tale of little meaning, though the words were strong ;" they seemed to come through too dense a medium, to affect us very deeply. For once—perhaps for the first time in the history of the Stage—the " supers " had it all their own way. Every now and then we became vividly conscious that Romeo and. Juliet were in the foreground of the picture, loving, parting, or dying, as the case might be, but speak- ing generally, it was the background which usurped the consciousness, despite its not claiming the attention. It is this last difference that we wish to try and make our readers understand. If Mr. Irving had simply so over- crowded his stage, over-dressed his characters, and over- decorated his scenery, as to have swamped his acting, we should have said little about the play, and thought less. But this was not so. Though the dresses were very rich and the scenery excessively beautiful, of which we must say a word further on, they were not overdone ; and the cause of the effect we are noticing was twofold. It came, in the first place, from the " supers " all acting their parts so well, that one entirely lost sight of the fact that they were " supers " at all, and began to take quite an interest in their movements. The second cause was one which would hardly, we think, have been expected by anybody but an artist, for it consisted in the management of the light. We had occasion to speak specially of this point in our notice of the Two Roses, but we must confess that we did not then understand, and should not have believed, had we been told, the point to which it was possible to carry this detail. The notion of lighting a scene out of doors as it would really be lighted seems a very simple one, but is a matter of the most intense difficulty, and the effect of so doing, when it is really done, as it was on Wednesday night, is most startling. To use an artist's expression, all the objects " melt into the back- ground,"—there is no outline to any of them. The result of this will easily be seen. It takes away from the actor that speciality of attention, which, as a general rule, is the very thing which he seeks to gain,—it makes him only one detail of a mass. Whether this be an advantage or not is a large question, one, indeed, which involves the whole matter of " Realism " in Art, but it is unquestionable that, whether it be dramatically right —and we are inclined to think it is—it is certainly artistically and poetically right.
If a "thing of beauty is a joy for ever," then all of those who went to the Lyceum Theatre on Wednesday will have some precious possessions, for a more beautiful series of pictures was never seen on any stage. The two garden scenes especially were so wonderfully arranged and lighted, and so beautifully painted, that it hardly needed any love-making in words to complete the illusion. The soft warmth of an Italian night, the mystery of the confused foliage, the broken splendour of the moonlight, were caught and reproduced, as we should have thought it im- possible to have reproduced them; and when Romeo came swiftly through the trees, and Juliet began her soliloquy to the night, we fancy there were few people in the theatre who were not thoroughly in the spirit of the scene, whether they were thinking of Juliet and Verona, or, possibly, Mary and England.
We have tried to give our readers some faint idea of the main point of the Lyceum rendering of Romeo and Juliet. It remains to say a few words as to the actors, and the manner in which they played their parts. The general reproach against Mr. Irving—that he wishes to have none but inferior artists upon his stage—cannot be sustained, in the presence of the company that is now playing with him. Without counting Miss Ellen Terry (of whom it is not too much to say that she
would probably fill any theatre in London), there are Mrs. Stirling, Mr. Fernandez, Mr. Howe, Mr. Terriss, Mr. Mead, and a young provincial actor called Alexander, who promises to be one of our best jennes premiers. To dismiss the minor characters first, we may say that the only characters that were really inefficiently filled were those of Capulet and his wife. Mr. Howe, as the former, was pompons, -without being dignified; Miss L. Payne, as the latter, was harsh of voice and awkward of gesture. Peter, whose part was greatly curtailed, was well and quietly acted by Mr. Andrews; and Tybalt was played by Mr. C. Glenny (a new member of this company) very much as it should be done,—not as a hectoring bully, but as a thoroughly bad-tempered gentleman. Mr. Alexander's Paris was, perhaps, a trifle too shy, but in other respects good; he looked like a gentleman, and a good-lookingone, and after all, that is mainly what he has to do. Mr. Fernandez's Friar Laurence was dignified and earnest, and had that touch of tolerant fondness for Romeo's youth and enthusiasm, which is so often missed. Of Mr. Terriss's Mercutio a deal might be said, but our space will only permit us to note that its salient merit was that of a clear and decisive rendering of the character; it was a living man, not a machine uttering witticisms. His delivery of the dream speech was especially good ; rapid, without being hurried, making all his points quickly and clearly, and carrying the audience with him to the end. His chief defect is a tendency to over-swagger, and generally to comport himself something like " Jack ashore," and there is a rather too marked endeavour to thrust himself into prominent places. The Nurse of Mrs. Stirling admits of nothing but praise ; it simply could not be better. Her garrulity, her fondness for her child and her dinner, her endeavours to enter into Juliet's desires and her total failure to comprehend the point of view, her indifference to Romeo, as Romeo, her petulance, her dignity, and her innocent little triumphs, are all there, and all overlaid with a film of good-nature, that makes the personification irresistible. One cannot help saying, "What a dear old woman !" and quite understanding why Juliet was so fond of her.
And of Romeo. Perhaps the truest sign of Mr. Irving's genius is that he has not attemped to give us a character Romeo at all. He has managed, partly by the help of the scenery and all the surroundings, partly by his own power, to throw Romeo into the shade, and bring Juliet forward into the light. As far as it is possible for an actor of this part to do it, he effaces himself. We feel there is some one who loves Juliet very much, we see him and we hear him, but we hardly know who he is, and we certainly do not know what he is.
Of Miss Terry's Juliet two things may be noticed. She fails in passion, and excels in tenderness. The death scene has probably never been made so little of by a great actress, and the scene with the Nurse never so much. The parting from Romeo at dawn was as tender and as sweet as such a parting should be, and the utter- ance of her one reproach to the Nurse, " You have comforted me, marvellously !" was a magnificent piece of quietly intense acting. As to her appearance, we heard one enthusiastic spec- tator declare that she only looked fourteen, and, making all allowance for his enthusiasm, he was not far wrong. To say that the play was lavishly mounted, is hardly to express the manner in which it was put upon the stage. A word of distinct praise must be given to the scene-painters, who have done their work admirably. The audience were enthusiastic, and the performance was not over before midnight.
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