CHARLES KEMBLE'S PETRUCHIO.
CAN the most devout reader of SHAKSPEARE desire more in a Pe- truchio than is found in Mr. C. KEMBLE ? Assuredly the image of a person so speaking and so looking must have been in the poet's mind, when he designed the Tamer of the Shrew. Petruchio is a gentlemen—too much, it may be, given to the "good old gentle- manly vice," but yet a gentleman ; and this, the ground-work of the character, should not be completely hidden by the rudeness superinduced upon it. The native sterling, like the sun peering through the chinks of a mud wall, must needs show itself from be- hind the cloak of assumed rusticity—else will the latter lack relief to make it relished in the representation. Mr. C. KEMBLE is one of those happy "children of the earth," on whom Nature has been pleased to write gentleman in characters not to be mistaken. Pe- truchio again, with all his roughness—" for I am rough, and woo not like a babe "—should be endowed with a power of insinuation; that whilst on the one hand he constrains, he may on the other allure his vixen bride to her obedience. The manly but benevo- lent features, the seductive tones, and winning smile of the only Romeo of our times, possess more than the needful portion of con- ciliatory and attractive influence. Petruchio is wilful, obstinate, peremptory—" An she knew him as well as /do," quoth Grumio with a feeling recollection of his recent beating, " she would think scolding would do little good upon him ;"—and, though not ill- tempered in the main, yet has he a very fair proportion of the devil in his composition. Now for a Romeo, and a much-admired one to boot, Mr. C. KEMBLE can look the diable as well as any man we know. He has an expression at command, singularly ominous of danger, and indicative of a mood capable of proceeding to any extremity—" Feenum habet in cornu—longe fuge." His counte- nance, dogged and dour, needs not on these occasions the aid of words to say—" I am he, am born to tame you, Kate ;" whilst his eye reminds one of what is said, or fabled, of Dr. Wiems's—Wie- Lis who boasted that he could look a lunatic into obedience*. Mr. C. KEMBLE'S Petruchio has the daunting glance, before which weaker nerves and inferior spirits quail; and which would do more towards the subjugation of a shrewish wife than the explosion of half a hundred horse-whips. Along with this, Mr. C. KEMBLE can assume a knowing, sceptical and jeering look askance, which is apt to discompose exceedingly those on whom it is cast ; and which, half frolicksome, half mischievous, indicates a person but too prone to turn jest into earnest. With a countenance thus jocular and sinister at once—now savage and now insinuating, Mr. C. KEMBLE puts on an air of consummate ease and noncha- lance, agreeing admirably well with the quiet, self-complacent smile which sits on his face, and intimatess o absolute a self-pos- session, and so entire a persuasion of his ability to achieve the ex- ploit, that from almost the first moment of his appearance, one is convinced that Kate, however curst, will in him find her master.
In reckoning up Mr. C. KEMBLE's exterior qualifications for representing the breaker-in of shrews, we must not omit mention of a form massive and weighty enough to lay prostrate, by the mere waving of his arm, any piece of feminine fragility that should presume to dispute his will. It was a rare sight to see him take his Katharine out of the corner, where she had ensconced herself ; opposition was as clearly out of the question, as in the case of the puppy-dog, whom Neptune the Newfoundlander, as the story goes, lifted up in his mouth, and dropped, for his insolence, in the puddle. Nor ought we to forget to commemorate Mr. C. KEMBLE'S down- right energy of action ;—perhaps there needs not so great an ex- pense:of crockery as goes to wreck in the no-supper scene ; but if such things must be done, why let them be well clone, that is, energetically clone. For want of apparent good-will and emphasis in the delivery of blows, stage brawls are, for the most part, sad pieces of make-believe. Take for example the one that occurs in the first act of Rienzi, as now played at Drury Lane. A saucy lacquey breaks the head of a citizen with a blow would hardly crush a flea ; and is knocked down for his pains by Rienzi himself, with another that would scarcely bring to the ground a ripe pip- pin. Truly, the man prostrates himself, as in duty bound, but it is " more of his courtesy" than the striker's potency. The regular * "I would have looked at him Sir, thus, tiara," said the Doctor to Edmund Burke, fixing his eye on the latter in a way that inclined the Mont-hearted orator to be a believer in the potency of this ocular influence. The anecdote is in Reynolds's " Life and Times." Varney, the villain, in " lienihvorth," boasts of having subdued pour Amy Rohsort in like manner—" They told one once at a madhouse, I had an eye would make my fortune there . . And so 1 looked at her," 6:e. We quote from memory, tragedians, who are usually devoted to the management of the voice and the countenance, and study dignity of gesture more than energy of action, might, for occasions like these, take lessons in the conduct of the limbs from that great :'melodramatic performer Mr. T. P. COOKE. To Hamlet's advice to the player's we propose to add, by way of postscript—" And when your brawlers deal blows, let them seem to be dealt in real earnest ; or else he that strikes, as well as he that falls under so feeble a stroke, will seem but the rickety works of nature's journeymen.' Mr. C. KENIBLE'S Petruchio very fairly and very properly too, breaks the plate on the "rascal cook's " head ; and if his horsewhip did not actually do its duty on " Adam, Ralph, and Gregory," we at least were not able to detect its connivances.
We remember an intelligent gentleman's saying, that he made a point of never seeing SHAKSPEARE on the stage, because the sight of him there spoilt him for the closet, by obtruding upon you, in place of the poet's own just conceptions as conveyed to you by his words, the more definite but vulgar image of one who in no case could adequately represent them. There is some truth in this. Lear and Coriolanus, as subjects of private study, do cer- tainly not profit by a previous sight of Mr. KEAN ; who, great in Shylock, great in Sir Giles Overreach, is not successful in deli- neating Roman pride or 'crazed majesty. Our quondam hall-ac- quaintance would find the reverse of his fears verified, would he but consent to witness Mr. C. KEMBLE'S Petruchio. The " Thmine; gee the Shrew,"—out of which the stage piece called " Katharine and Petruchio" has been made by simply omitting the other plot interwoven with it,—must be classed among the improbable dramas ; and SHAKSPEARE himself seems in the last line of the play to cast a doubt on the efficacy of the cure so strangely wrought- " 'Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tamed so." But the manner, look, and voice of Mr. C. KEMBLE appear so adapted to the perilous achievement, that Petruchio's miracle—the conversion of a " wild cat" into a " household Kate" seems to fall within the scope of practicability ; and the reasonableness of the poet's con- ception is vindicated by the actor's happy mode of realizing and representing it. War is declared and a blow struck in almost the first words Petruchio addresses to his antagonist :—" You lie, in faith, for you are called plain Kate." Er uno disce omnes, we might say : these few introductory words are a specimen of the felicity with which Mr. C. KEMBLE acquits himself throughout the perform- ance ; for. though plainly significant of the rough terms on which Petruchio intends to conduct the campaign, they are mitigated in the utterance by so much suavity and humour as to be robbed of half their offensiveness. So when he exclaims, on her striking him—" I swear,I'll cuifyou, if you strike again"—the actor's tone is admirably divided between jest and earnest ; or rather, it is the tone of one who would hint in a good-natured way an ungentle but very determined purpose. Excellent too is the seeming deep sin- cerity of the commendations with which he parries the strokes of her tongue and disappoints her ill-nature—" No, not a whit, I find you passing gentle ;"—and then, the ready wrath with which he takes what he isepleased to consider her part, when the company exclaim against her resolution so frankly avowed, to see " him hanged" ere she'll marry him.
" Be patient, gentlemen ; I choose her for myself ; If she and I be pleased, what's that to you ?"
Above all worthy of remark was his reiteration of her com- mand to the company—" Gentlemen, forward to the bridal dinner ":— " They shall go forward Kate, at thy command;— Obey the bride, you that attend on her : 55Be mad and merry—or go hang yourselves."
And finally, when carrying her off, in spite of her struggles, he makes as though he were rescuing her from enemies- " rear not, sweet wench, they shall not touch thee, Kate; buckler liwe against a million."
In' all this, and indeed throughout the drama, Mr. KEISIBLE'S Peiittchi0 stuck literally to his politic text, announced by himself, of seeming to " do all in reverend care of her."
We cannot conclude this imperfect description of a clever and amusing performance, without noting among its memorable p as- sages, the able delivery of' Petruchio's confident reply to the scep- tical inquiry—" But will you woo this wild cat ?"— " Will I live?
Why came I hither but to that intent ?
Think you a little din can daunt mine ears ; Have 1 not in my time heard lions roar ?
* • And do you tell me of a woman's tongue That gives not half so great a blow to tlw ear,
v:-ill a chesnut in a farmer's fire ?
Ta.Nit .7 tusk! fear boys with bugs."
Since the opening of the two legitimate theatres, we may ven- ture to assert, that no piece has given so much pleasure to so laree a proportion of the house as this repetition of a drama old enon::1! to be quite stale, if SHAIISPE.ARE could ever be other than fresh, ajlcl of a piece of acting exhibited often enough to have become tire- some, if such acting could ever be other than pleasant to behold.
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