" BECKET" AT THE LYCEUM.
THE two plays now being performed at the Lyceum afford, in many respects, an interesting subject of comparison. Both are in some sense monodramas. The whole interest of each lies in the story of one man's life. Both are admirably put on the stage. One is the work of England's greatest dramatist, the other of a poet of supreme power of insight into and delineation of character,—though hardly, in execution, in any Skakespearian sense, a dramatist at all. Lear is a play of which the pathos is overpowering on the most cursory reading. Becket needs careful study for any true appreciation of it. Lear has often been played with success by actors of less ability than Mr. Irving, with a mise-en-sane which would not bear a moment's comparison to the wonderful per- fection of the Lyceum staging. We remember a perform- ance of Lear by Mr. Edwin Booth, some years ago, in which the sobs of the audience almost interrupted the performance. Yet it was badly pot on the stage ; Mr. Booth was badly sup- ported; and the American actor himself cannot be accounted to have been the equal, in many respects, of his London rival.
But in a play the whole effect of which depends on the exhi- bition of a single career and character, he 'had caught what Mr. Irving—pace the able apologists who have defended his reading—appears to us to have missed. The gradual breaking of the spirit of the hale old man, "every inch a king," under misfortune ; the stretching-out "upon the rack of this tough world" of one whose dignity had hitherto fenced him off from the pains and realities of life ; the picture of him exposed to the pitiless tempest, physical and mental,—the wild storm which breaks over his grey head being the counterpart of the overwhelming inner agony wrought by ingratitude ;—the revelation to one who would have played Providence, and apportioned to each and to himself their future destiny, of the helplessness of unprotected man,—of the unkinged Lear; —all this is, to a great extent, missed by Mr. Irving, and it was expressed by Mr. Booth. Admirable in all its surroundings, the play fails at the Lyceum for lack of the essential condition of success.
With Becket it is otherwise. Tennyson had seized the
genius of Becket's character ; and Mr. Irving has seized the genius of the poet's idea. The play has faults of construction ; but these are almost forgotten in the force alike of the poet's conception, and of the actor's delineation. Each phase of the character is adequately realised ;—the Chancellor, whose force of will and power of stubborn opposition are held in the reserve characteristic of real strength,—indisposed to un- called-for aggression, though capable of strenuous and unbending exertion ; whose conception of his status as a courtier causes one who was to become later a by-word for asceticism to be addressed as- " A sauce-deviser for thy days of fish ; " whose first duty is to the King ; whose care is the throne, whose " wisdom has kept it firm from shaking ; " and then the Archbishop, with the same strong nature, with the same definite conception of what is suitable to his calling, the same faculty of devoted allegiance transferred to the Church, the protector of the poor from tyranny, the divinely commissioned rebuker of Kings for their excesses, the visible embodiment of the arm of God.
The delineation of the struggle of mind which comes of the
collision between the Archbishop's sense of his new mission and his early associations,—his friendship for the King, his habits formed in I life not of contest but of ease,—is so im- pressive as more than to atone for the occasional abruptness in the action of the piece ; and Mr. Irving's greatest triumph is, perhaps, the culmination of the third scene in the first act. The Council Chamber at Northampton Castle, in which the regal "customs," encroaching on the liberties of the Church, are proposed for Becket's acceptance, is a wonderful reproduction of mediceval life, and affords an excellent back- ground to Becket's action, The successive pictures of Becket, iron and unmoved in presence of threats, his stern, "My lords, is this a combat or a council P" the change when entreaty replaces defiance, the yielding to these gentler influences and the signature of the constitutions, the subsequent repentance, the new strength of resistance when he sees what he has signed and refuses to seal,—" If a seraph shouted from the sun, and bade me seal against the rights of the Church, I would anathematise him," —lead up to the final choosing of sides. Compromise cannot be. The choice must be between the Church—the friend of the poor, the unyielding foe to secular tyranny—and the King's lawless will. He makes it :—
"I refuse to stand By the King's censure, make my cry to the Pope, And under his authority—I depart."
And a few moments later the great doors are throiiiiéna the back of the chamber, and the Archbishop finds himself amid a crowd of his people, who salute him with the cry,—
" Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."
We are inclined to think it a pity that the note struck with such effect in this scene—in which the Archbishop stands forth as the father and protector of his devoted people—is not pro- longed at the Lyceum as it is in the original play as written by Lord Tennyson. It is, indeed, emphasised by Mr. Irving in the words added to the original play, "The voice of the people is the voice of God." But it is not sustained. The succeeding scene in the refectory at Northampton Monastery is omitted. This scene, in which the Archbishop calls in the poor from the streets, and feasts them, emphasises what, in Tennyson's,. conception, as in history, is essential,—the position of the Church as the guardian and protector of the poor. Becket's tenderness to the poor man's dog, caught and maimed by the King's verderer ; all that is conveyed in his remark : "Better thy dog than thee. The King's courts would use thee worse than thy dog. Were the Church King, it would be other- wise," should not be lost. This scene gives to Becket's un- bending opposition the peculiarly human interest attaching to the protector of the weak against the strong, which is needed to prevent his stubborn defence of the Church from bearing an unpractical and purely mystical character beyond the intentions of the author. The scene in which this note is partially struck is so obviously effective, that we re- gret the total omission of the subsequent scene of which we are speaking, even if some modification of time and place is required for the exigencies of the stage. Becket's love of the poor gives that "touch of nature" which makes the hero of the Mediawal Church " kin " to the champion of the oppressed in all ages. It adds to ideals which are so unlike those of our own time, as to be in danger of remaining unappreciated, an ideal which the two ages have- in common. It brings out, moreover, the tenderness of Becket's character, which, in the Lyceum version, though not entirely lost, tends to be overweighted by his strength.
The episode of Fair Rosamond is depicted with grace- and tenderness by Miss Terry ; and though we cannot account its connection with the action of the play altogether happy, the second act is, as a thing apart, singularly touching and beautiful. Taken altogether, the piece is not without considerable defects as an acting play ; but the central figures and incidents are most nobly conceived, and are- presented in a manner worthy of their conception. Mr. Irving, if his physique lacks the robustness of the his- torical Becket, leaves little else to be desired. In dignity of bearing, and in the finely intellectual interpretation of the character, in its various phases and moods, from the earlier days of the courtly Chancellorship, down to the tragedy of the martyrdom, he achieves a marked success. We believe that his greatest strength is exhibited in such melodramatic roles as Mathias in The Bells, and Dubose in The Lyons Mail;. but in tragedy proper, his Becket will rank high among his most successful impersonations.
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