MR. BEERBOHM-TREE'S HAMLET.
MR. MOWBRAY MORRIS, in an interesting article on "Hamlet and the Modern Stage," which appears in the March number of Macmillan's Magazine, devotes a couple of pages to Mr. Tree's Hamlet at the Haymarket Theatre. He points out, with truth, that Mr. Tree, with all his subtlety as an actor, has yet a good deal to learn in the delivery of blank verse. The art of elocution in its higher manifestations is something apart from histrionic genius; and Shakespeare, poet as well as dramatist, taxes both to the utmost. He calls for the exercise of two arts almost as distinct as those exer- cised in the great rates in the dramatic operas, such as Raoul de Nangis in Les Huguenots, Fernando in La Favorite, Jean de Leyden in Le Prophete. Few great singers have attained to the double perfection which such parts require. With most, as with Mario, the perfection of dramatic form has come after the voice has seen its best days, and when vocalisation has therefore been handicapped. The Hamlets of the last thirty years have generally lacked one or other of the two necessary qualifications. Feehter's accent seriously marred the music of Shakespeare's lines. Mr. Phelps's studied elocution was not matched by that subtle conception of the character which is the first requisite. Mr. Irving's Hamlet was an interesting intellectual study, but both from a dramatic and an elocutionary point of view it left something to be desired.
After all, however, what we first look for in a Hamlet is the dramatic realisation of a psychological study ; and so regarded, Mr. Tree's performance appears to us to have a delicacy and power which Mr. Morris has alto- gether missed. No one, since the appearance of Goethe's cele- brated criticism in "Wilhelm Meister," has failed to have a general understanding of Shakespeare's conception of Hamlet. He meant, in Goethe's words, "to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it." This unfitness has generally been interpreted mainly on the intellectual side. Hamlet, a morbidly subjective, reflecting, reasoning, doubting, questioning, and wholly unpractical character, is weighed down by too much thinking, and cannot bring himself to act. Mr. Tree takes the conception a step further, and does so with great subtlety and success. He represents the extremest delicacy of physical and mental organisation. He emphasises not only morbid deliberation, but abnormal sensitiveness ; an excess not only of thought over action, but of feeling over action. Hamlet's great work over- taxes the powers of one whose whole energy is expended in specu- lation; but his sensitive nature, and even his bodily frame, are also overwhelmed. A mind so imaginative, as well as so intel- lectual, is capable of taking in the horror of the situation in a degree in excess of what human nature normally admits. The balance between thinking and doing is in most men fairly pre- served. They realise enough for action, and action brings a rein- forcement of realisation. Hamlet takes in a far wider field of ideasthan is needed to prompt him to act, and is paralysed by the crowd of consequent feelings and thoughts. A nature endowed with all the sensitive apparatus for appreciating the varied hues of life,—its joyousness, its poetry, the happiness of love and of youthful fellowship, the riches of art, as well as the mixture of the sombre and sad which falls to the lot of all, is filled ex- clusively with the details of one great tragedy. The many- sided brilliancy of "the courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword," is overshadowed. The flowers of youth are withered. The nature cannot regain its spring or its powers of action under the influence of the nightmare which oppresses it. We are reminded of Professor Dowden's words. "His idealism," writes Mr. Dowden, "at thirty years of age almost takes the form of pessimism—his life and his heart become sterile—he loses the energy which sound and joyous feeling supplies, and in the widespreading waste of corruption which sul-rounds him, he is tempted to understand and detest things rather than accomplish some limited practical service. In the unweeded garden of the world, why should he task his life to uproot a single weed ?"
Mr. Tree conveys the specially distinctive features of his con- ception by more numerous and delicate touches than we can here reproduce. Mark the craving for sympathy which his whole bearing shows when Horatio and his friends are leaving him, and he asks:for "Your loves, as mine to you." Observe the play of feeling throughout his interview with the Queen,—its rapid transitions from stormy violence to deepest, tenderest grief, the almost strained interpreta- tion of Shakespeare's text which marks his sorrow for Polonius's death. Note, again, how, after doing violence to the tenderness of his nature in the scene with Ophelia, played with great delicacy by Mrs. Tree, he breaks down, and, unseen by her, kisses her hair. Observe, also, the deep consciousness of his own weakness of body and of purpose, conveyed in the- melancholy laugh which accompanies the contrasting of him- self with Hercules :— "My father's brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules."
The scene with Ophelia to which we have just referred, gives. Mr. Tree a great opportunity. He departs here from Coleridge's interpretation, which in many respects he follows throughout. According to Coleridge, the questions, "Are you honest ?" "Are you fair ? " intimate at the outset that Hamlet suspects Ophelia of being a decoy ; and "what follows is not so much directed to her as to the listeners and spies." Mr. Tree, on the contrary, divides the dialogue with her into two parts, each of which represents an entirely dif- ferent frame of mind. The first part conveys disgust with the world, a brooding over his mother's falseness and the false- ness of all mankind and womankind, the determination to break off all connection with Ophelia, and devote himself ex- elusively henceforth to his newly imposed duty. The infinite tenderness of Mr. Tree's first "Get thee to a nunnery "is quite different from the common conception of the wild violence of simulated madness. It is spoken in a moment of deepest, saddest earnestness. And the self-accusation which follows it completes the sentiment which he is expressing. "It is an evil world," he intimates, "and I am as bad as others ; keep. out of it ; it will be your happiest course." Then he suddenly sees Polonius and the King listening. His whole manner changes. "Where is your father?" he asks. "At home, mg Lord," she replies; and he holds her convicted of falsehood.. She too, as well as his mother, his uncle, and the rest of the world, is false. His demeanour henceforth is a mixture of simulated madness, for the benefit of the listeners, and of a, wild, overstrained mood which her falseness to him has. brought about.
Is not a great deal of the charm of Hamlet's character due to a point which has hardly been sufficiently noted by the critics,—his disinterestedness ? This comes partly from the nature of his mind. Hamlet is the spectator of life rather than an actor. His own share in the drama has no special prominence in his eyes. A wrong done to himself is simply a wrong done to one man. That Claudius has robbed him of the throne is a minor, a very small detail of a great and wide- reaching crime. Egoistic and personal feelings are completely absent from this dreamy onlooker at the tragedy. But there is a nobler side also, in the depth of unselfish and the absence of selfish feeling. Where feeling does affect his judgment, it gives to his personal wrong too small rather than too great importance. His love for his father and his horror at his mother's conduct fill his heart, and self-interest can find no place there.
Taken altogether, Mr. Tree's performance is a very remarkable one, as interesting to the habitual reader of Shakespeare as to the playgoer. It has much developed in finish since the first night. It has been called monotonous, a criticism which recalls to the present writer the impression of the British soldier in the Crimea that the French talked gibberish. The variety needs for its understanding dramatic perception, and does not express itself by the play of emotions which Hamlet could never have had. But it is such as an audience at the Munich Hoftheater would note with delight,. and a careful student of Shakespeare cannot fail to appreciate..
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