OUR JULIET.
TN these, dwarfish days of stage degeneracy, MSS PHILLIPS IS un- doubtedly an actress to thank heaven for and be content. Not for that she is fair to look upon (which indeed she is) ; nor for that she is competent to paint (which she is not) the enthusiasm and the phrensy of woman's love blended with the innocent sportive- ness of a child—that rare phenomenon which SHAKSPEARE drew and Miss °Wan was, and which they say Italian climes yet yield ; but that, with pleasing looks, and lady-like demeanour, and modulated voice—“ gentle and' low, an excellent thing in wo- inan,"—and much intelligence, she breathes the love-inspired words, "of so sweet breath composed," which it is pleasure but to hear pleasingly delivered ; and that she speaks Juliet well, if she does not act it well, In externals, Miss Pm LLIPS is too tall for the part ; her carriage, otherwise not ungraceful, is too erect and constrained ; her ges- tures are too formal and premeditated ; and her countenance is too unvarying and inflexible in its summer-looks, for one whose face should be an April sky of lightly passing clouds, and quick-return- ing, heart-gladdening gleams ; and whose limbs should be as pliant as the fawn in its frolics under the green-wood tree—as in- finite in posture, and as incapable of stepping out of grace. We look for this pliancy and infantine charm of action, for Juliet is but a child—a " bud of love—and is inspired with an all- absorbing passion ere her step has been subdued to a measured mood, or she has learnt to veil her heart's secrets with cold looks and guarded movements :-- " But trustme, gentleman, I'll prove more true Than-those that have more cunning to be strange."
The demeanour of Miss PHILLIPS iS much too staid and pru- dential: it is but too easy for a figure like hers to step out of grace, and therefore she dares net be exuberant. But is it in cha- racter to intimate acquieseenpe in her mother's order to think of marriage,and read theCountys face, by a dignified bend ? " I'll look to like, if looking liking move," &c. Surely this is being too prim and pretty-behaved for Nurse's lady-bird. Juliet bend low with ceremonious reverence, and. in domestic privacy!—never believe it. Neither do we like the frequent recurrence of the out- spread arms,—as though about "to give her form to the breeze away,"—which seems to be • her dernier ressort, and to come in course, when, like a fencer affronting his antagonist, she has gone through her very limited number of gestures. They do too palpably invite a round of applause, and are indeed often, thesilntalformuch noise. Nor does the eternal arm uplifted in the balcony seduce us : —it was a rash, intruding, ill-advised thought, yet once a vision overcame us of Juliet in, a., pulpit. It, may be being something hypercritical to say that she comes out on 'the balcony with too much premeditation—not stealing out as one lost in a 'dream of love ; and that she sits too consciously, attitudinizing Juliet-wise, when " she leans her cheek 'upon her hand." In the balcony the tall figure of Miss PHILLIPS, is as a mast too high and Stately for the light hulk it surmounts ; and she has to,stoop so low, in order to lean on the parapet, that grace is sacrifiCed, and even a little awkwardness is apparent ;—the posture looks painful.
The character of her figure, and want of freedom in action, put playfulness beyond the power of Miss PHILLIPS : the coaxing of her Nurse is not exactly the fawn beguiling into play the gravity of its dam. The apprehensive breast takes alarm, and 'half fears it is out of character—not Juliet's, but Miss PHILLIPS'S ; and such things done by those whom Nature has not inspired to fawn and wheedle winningly, remind one of the ill-judging quadruped in the fable. At any rate the sport is prolonged beyond the proper bounds ;—a condescension, doubtless, to the taste that now-a-days relishes in SHAKSPEARE gnly the fulsome by-plays with which the corruptions of centuries have larded his performances. This, we suppose, is the defence that would be set up for some innovations which the long-suffering earth will one day gape and swallow up. Were it not for the vulgar laugh that rewards him, and has doubtless seduced him into the practide, how durst a per- son traduce SHAKSPEARE.S Mercutio so shamelessly, as to go capering off the stage like a merry-andrew ? We have seen Mr. JONES cast off a hermit's beard and weeds, and, like a gay butter- fly escaping from its film, caper in like manner out of his cell, a blue-capped, buckskinned jockey ; and we saw it with admiration. Let him confine his capers to the Hermit in London ; or we shall propose for him, by way of penalty, a plate of hot metal, whereon to cut capers unfeigned, like the gouty man in Sandford and Merton, for whom such a remedy is prescribed. Did Gentleman LEWIS, whose footsteps Mr. JONES has followed baud passi bus (Nair, use so to do ? The mimicry of "Peter, my fan, Peter" is itself a worthy interpolation of the animals that have left the marks of the beast on all the acted plays of SHAKSPEARE. Mercutio says, " Farewell, ancient lady ; farewell, lady, lady, lady." We understood that he was a mad wag—but not a buffoon. Mr. Jones is ever too much bent on turning his swan into a " crow," and he is even but too successful.
Another relief from SHAKSPEARE'S tediousness, devised for the suffering audience, is Peter's backing across the entire breadth of the stage vis-a-vis to old Nurse. This also, we imagine, is excused by the fact of its being relished ; otherwise the sack and the ape and the dog were place and company Meet for such baboonery. Besides Peter, there is another scarecrow still allowed to insult men's eyes—taken apparently half-hanged from the gallows, to which we recommend its restoration. " I see that thou art poor," says Romeo to the scarecrow in question—does Romeo see no more ? Why the creature's limbs are dislocated, and 'tis odds but he'll fall in pieces at the feet of his customer. Poor houseless folk come across us often enough in this town to familiarize us with the looks of want and famine. Amidst so much matter for instruction, even poverty is burlesqued on the stage ! We will undertake to say, that he who enacted the Apothecary at the Red Bull—in the theatre's lowly day, ere Jeshuran waxed fat and kicked—played all the better for the dinner he did not eat. Chase the scarecrow, Mr. PRICE ; and bid Peter walk like a man, and not like a crab. Chase, banish, or reform all, both Capulets and Montagues ; on whose two houses the plague Mercado wished them has finally rested. Stand up for SHAKSPEARE against his traducers, and proscribe those traditional monstrosities, which are heretical, abominable, worthy of cautery and the knife. Being on the subject of grave offences, we cannot but name one—the only one committed by Miss PHILLIPS, for which she has the same excuse as all the rest—the applauses of the house. She is tumid sometimes to an insufferable degree. By way of pe- nance, we shall subjoin a list of her crimes this way, proceeding from a slighter swelling to the very climax of her tumidity.
—" But farewell compliment"— " My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep, for both are infinite"- " For 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd, " Sole Inonarch of the universal earth."
This last, if not the climax, may vie with that which is ; viz. : " And in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone As with a club, dash out my desperate brains"— Perhaps it will be said, lines so monstrous themselves ought to be monstrously uttered ; but we think Miss PHILLIPS'S rant has the advantage even of the poet's. Yet it is not so unpardonable as the one above, which mars the finest stroke in the play. The voice of the actress swells prodigiously in the last line—" Sole monarch of the universal earth "—as though, like the mother frog, she would mimic unapproachable immensity ; and, in dutiful obedience to the stage direction, after having discharged her thun- der, " crosses to L." The audience applaud her to the ceiling; and after two entire rounds, comes lagging lame behind, cold, pas- sionless, and shorn of all effect, the line that vents from Juliet's affectionate remorse, and really calls for a display of passion—" 0 what a wretch was 1 to chide at him !"—It was here that Miss F. H. KELLY deserved applauses which must still ring in her ears ;—an actress, whose Juliet was as inferior to that of Miss PHILLIPS in many natural and acquried advantages, as it was su- perior in sincerity and warmth of feeling. Miss PHILLIPS must be content to resign all pretensions to Siddonian effect. She cannot, for the life of her, look dignity, hau- teur, surprise, or consternation. If she would express horror or grief, she must hide her face with her robe like Agamemnon in the ancient picture, or like Miss JARMAN at the other house; whose Desdemona actually moves you, till the handkerchief withdrawn discloses a face of most comfortable composure, and sets you at your ease. At the same time, in the effort to achieve these, to her, impossibilities, the features of Miss PHILLIPS grow sharp, and her figure rigid, attenuated, and angular : the effect aimed at is not given, and the native charm of her countenance is banished. Passages that require such exertions on the part of the actress, she ought to elude, or read differently ;—a direct attempt will ever be a defeat, covered no doubt by the shouts of the galleries, who re- joice when they are able to hear anything. Miss PHILLIPS should learn to distrust this delusive guide : she may be assured that what she does particularly well in that vast house escapes notice, and that she is never greatly applauded but when she has done parti- cularly ill. When she hears the loud uproar in front, let her say to herself —" What enormity have I perpetrated to deserve your applause ?" The rants we have mentioned above draw down thun- ders ; but we do not recollect that any notice is taken of the inimit- able expression she throws into her face, when, with the rounded laughing eyes of a child, half-amused at the passion she had un- wittingly kindled in her old Nurse, she says aside—" Here's such a coil !"
" Ante meos oculos tanquam prnsentis imago Hnret."
This was the only instance of any approach to the child-like inno- cence with which Miss O'NEIL's Juliet bewitched the house,— especially in the line—" I have forgot why I did call thee back." Miss PHILLIPS has good taste, a correct ear, and voice obedient to it, and a just conception of the author's sense ;—only she does not seem love-inspired, and Love is the presiding deity—" All things are of him." The poet himself appears to have felt the dominant principle so strongly, that his verse flows with more than its usual harmony, and blossoms in every line. Nature's choicest sights and sounds—moon-lit skies, and flecked clouds, and crimson dawns, and song of birds, and summer flowers weeping in dew, and loading the breeze with odours—are assembled to do homage as it were to the genial deity, in the rarest temple he ever inhabited among human hearts. We have left ourselves no room to notice the new Romeo ; which is certainly an improvement on Mr. COOPER'S, and has some merits and more defects. But we must needs express our amazement at his coup-de-theatre—it was a coup with a vengeance—after having slain Tybalt, so red and so hot ;—verily the Saturnian youth ap- peared about to swallow Drury at a mouthful, without leaving enough for a second!
Previous page
