THE THEATRE.
MR. BEERBOHM TREE.
THE performance at His Majesty's of The Mystery of Edwin Drood has been chiefly interesting as affording, in a compact and vivid manner, an example of Mr. Beerbohm Tree's con- ception of the art of acting. The play, as a play, was in no way convincing or significant; it had not even that "bad eminence" in raw emotionalism possessed by less restrained melodramas ; its only merit was that it showed us Mr. Tree, and nothing but Mr. Tree. The attention was not distracted by those suggestions of poetry or plot or dramatic situation which—one is half ashamed to admit it—do occasionally creep into the mind during his revivals of Shakespeare, or his pro- ductions of Mr. Stephen Phillips's plays ; the whole of the interest was centred in the actor. And doubtless all who witnessed Mr. Tree's performance of John Jasper did so, if not with thrilled excitement, at least with a pleased curiosity aufficiently active to carry them through the piece without a touch of tedium. Yet how many of those who watched the stage from the first moment to the last with absorbed attention
took the same feelings away with them after the fall of the curtain ? Mr. Tree's acting always seems to raise, in a greater or less degree, this curious kind of contradiction. While it lasts, we are attentive, amused, and interested ; when it is over, a feeling of flatness and barrenness, a feeling almost of dejection, comes over our minds. If we could account for this, we should perhaps come nearer to a true understanding of the fundamental qualities of Mr. Tree's art. But in any case, it seems clear that the kind of acting which leaves upon the spectator either no permanent impression at all or an un- pleasant one cannot be a really good kind ; and the further question suggests itself : Why, if Mr. Tree's acting is not really good, is it so eminently successful?
To all these questions there is no doubt an obvious answer, which is to a great extent the true one. Mr. Tree—and with Mr. Tree we are considering the whole class of actors of which he is the most prominent member—succeeds only in his treat- ment of detail, and fails altogether to produce a fine or convincing general effect. His acting reminds us too often of a building in the bad style of florid architecture, where the structure is obliterated and lost under the mass of irrelevant ornament. For the moment the ornament attracts, but the impression which it produces is supported and domi- nated by no great lines, no massive proportions, so that in the end the only effect that is left upon the mind is one of insignificant display. Mr. Tree is so anxious to make "points," and to make them as thoroughly as possible, that he constantly forgets that the first aim of the actor should be to produce an impression which is consistent and artistic as a whole. He sacrifices the lasting unity of dramatic effect to a succession of minor effects which are merely momentary. In The Tempest, for instance, he was sometimes a sentimental child of Nature and some- times a ridiculous buffoon, with the inevitable result that he was never Caliban. Similarly, as Mark Antony in Julius Caesar he lost a great opportunity in the oration over Caesar's body owing to his inability to resist the temptation of bringing off a momentary coup. The whole significance of the scene depends upon the mob, which, under the spell of Antony's oratory, turns gradually from indifference to interest, from interest to sympathy, and from sympathy to rage. It is a marvellous study of crescendo in human passion, and ought, if treated adequately, to produce overwhelming effect. As Mr. Tree performed it, the mob in a few moments changed violently from one extreme to the other ; the sudden transition was striking, but that was all; it showed Antony, perhaps, as a greater orator than even Shakespeare had made him ; but it shattered at a blow the supreme dramatic significance of Shakespeare's scene. The same tendency, though in a some- what different form, made its appearance in Edwin Drood. Here Mr. Tree seemed only anxious to do one thi ng,—to suggest murder at every possible opportunity. He was, without a moment's intermission, all horror, all terror, all guilt. A leaf dropped, and be clutched the air with frantic fingers ; he could never speak with out first looking over his shoulder, and he could never look over his shoulder without first rolling his eyes. Each lurid grimace, each dreadful attitude, held the attention; but, in the mean- time, where was the character of John Jasper ? It had been forgotten altogether, it had disappeared under a cloud of melodramatic "points." One felt, as one watched Mr. Tree's perpetually gruesome figure, that John Jasper possessed all the qualities of a murderer, except one,—that of being a man. So long as he was on the stage one was attracted by the successive tricks and gestures, but the attraction necessarily ceased the moment the curtain fell. Mr. Tree is like a spendthrift who produces the impression of wealth by living on his capital, and who when he dies turns out to bare left nothing at all.
But there is another, and a deeper, explanation of the com- bined fascination and fruitlessness of Mr. Tree's acting. No one can have failed to observe the immense stress which he invariably lays on facial expression, on gesture, on scenic decoration, on costume, on everything, in fact, which goes to make up the outward appearances of things. His gorgeous and elaborate scenery, which, in interest and beauty, so often seems to outweigh by itself all the other constituents of the drama put together, and the comparatively small importance attached by him to the spoken word—even when it is the word of Shakespeare himself—these are alike instances of a habit
of mind which delights far mere in expression than in what is expressed. Nothing ,vas more noteworthy in his perform- ance of Antony, in _Antony and Cleopatra, than the way in which be substituted, foe the glowing and passionate utterances of the great . Roman, the. visible .excitements produced by gesture and splendour and pomp Doubtless the utterances were there, but,it was not, through, them that the dramatic appeal was made; they weretotally insignificant; it was only what one saw that mattered. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that Mr. Tree is fundamentally a great dumb-show actor, a master of pantomime, and .nothing more. And what does this mean P It means that all, the subtler effects, all the more delicate presentments of .human feeling and human character, are banished from Mr., Tree's art. Mere gesture, to produce any impression at aut muat be lighly generalised, and it must also be grossly osaggarated. One of the great difficulties in acting is to combine dramatic effect with verisimilitude. The actor must never forget that lie is acting to an audience, and he must never show the audience that he remembers it. The common fault of. uninstructed actors is to give too little attention to their,andience, to be too realistic in fact, and thus to fail in dramatic effect. M. Tree affords an instance of exactly the opposite..error. He is so acutely conscious of his audience that he is blind to everything else. In his effort to impress them in the most complete and forcible way, be rejects the use. of fine shades, and subtle dis- criminations—the.. innumerable delicacies of tone and meaning which suggest rather, than portray the state of a soul—and he •relies solely .. on such obvious and glaring gesticulations as must . be ...plain. .to the meanest mind. The result is that he defeats -ills. own object, for the very violence of his action destroye. the -illusion which it was intended to create. In Edwin, •Drooelo.for instance, we begin to wonder how it is that theiother, oharacters can fail to observe that Jasper is a conscience-stricken. • criminal,—we see it with such painful clarity ourselves.. Or rather—to put it more accurately—we see that, the part of a conscience-stricken criminal is being acted by.Mr.Tree. The truth is that when once an actor becomes obseaaed .byhis audience he loses his highest functions. He loses his individuality and.his power of initiative ; he becomes an echo of conventions andAbe slave of those whom he ought to lead.. Audiences like .Mr. Tree because they find themselves in him,—their own, emphatic, uninspired conceptions of passion and of life. . When he commits a murder on the stage they feel; "This is jastaahat a murderer would do." But a great actor would . make them...feel something .very different ; he would make ahem,feel.: " A ..murderer is doing this." He would lift them.unfuhia,own,heightsugiving them visions of realities they had., hardly dreamt of, and of mysteries they could never ,understand.,. Mr. Tree does not achieve this. He does not show, us life itself, but, onlythe: conventional decora- tions of life,—like the windows.of tailors' shops. And so in the long run his art, is unsatisfying.. We feel that though it has given us so ranch, it laa, given us nothing that we really
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