LORD WICKLOW'S AMATEUR. THEATRICALS.
WE said not long ago, in criticizing the amateur performance before the Princess Mary of Cambridge, that while the representation of the higher kinds of human passion usually attracts the las educated classes on to the stage, it is the more humorous species of drama, in which the actor consciously stands above his part, stooping into it instead of abandoning himself to it, that fascinates as a rule the classes of the highest culture. In the for- mer case the charm of acting is, as it were, another form of poetry, an essentially ideal pleasure, in which the mind yields itself—un- restrained by any of the numerous considerations which, in practical life, good sense and prudent reserve impose—to the sweep of a strong emotion, and strives to enter for a time into the ideal essence of the various passions ; in the latter case the charm consists in applying that presence of mind, sangfroid, and aplomb, which fami- liarity with the world gives, to situations rather more difficult and catastrophes more embarrassing and absurd than the 'actor would be likely to meet with in real life. As a rule, so far as our observation has gone, culture is apt to disqualify for the represen- tation of really impassioned scenes, by the finer sense of propriety and finer discrimination of the shades and meanings of tone and expression with which it embarrasses the actor ; and, more than this, to render him altogether uncomfortable in loosing the reins to which refined custom has so completely inured him. Nevertheless, there is, of course, a temperament which would neutralize this habi- tual reserve and customary sobriety of mind, and which is in a certain degree analogous to the lyrical fervour of the poet. And when this exists, the passion of such an actor is a far more refined and delicate thing in consequence of the fine sieve of cultivated im- pressions and tastes through which it is filtered. But as a rule, we believe great force of dramatic passion is seldom found, except in actors who have pushed their way up in the world, and have not been early hampered by the fastidiousness of the higher social influences. For instance, M. Fechter, who has intellectual culture stamped upon his whole demeanour, though he acts with surpassing excellence such parts as require chiefly the tilting of subtle social contests and the hauteur of intellectual superiority, though he can also play that temperate and restrained tenderness which cultivated feeling permits itself, with exquisite grace, never fails so completely as when he tries, as in the last act of Othello for example, to throw the reins upon the neck of passion, and present it in its elemental force. Robson has infinitely more power of this kind than M. Fechter.
With this impression, that for cultivated amateur actors the tendency would be to fail in the delineation of what we may call the more massive sides of passion, we felt great in- terest in watching Mr. Tom Taylor's clever little piece called, Plot and Passion, at the Bijou Theatre, at Lord Wicklow's enter- tainment on 'Wednesday night. There are, indeed, in it but one or two openings for the unreserved expression of the stronger forms of passion, but the whole piece, though by no means a tragedy, con- tains very little comic acting. As the scene is laid during Fouehe's police regime, under the first empire, and the piece was written origi- nally for Mr. Robson and Mrs. Stirling, there is room in it for the play of strong emotion, and one or two openings, as we said, for the outburst of real passion. The three principal characters were sustained by actors of no common ability. The principal character is that of the heroine, Madame de Fontanges, a lady whom Fouche has ensnared, by help of her passion for gambling, to become one of his spies, or his Cohorte Cythe'rienne, and who from the first, struggling feebly against the degradation of her fate, is stimulated into a new horror of it by falling in love with one of Fouche's victims, whom she is ordered to decoy back into France from his retreat in Austria, that he may fall again into Fouche's power. The central idea of the play is to paint this inward conffict ; but there is also a secondary plot turning on the passion with which the same lady has inspired one of Fouche's lowest agents, Desmarets, who is eager to overturn his master in any case, but also willing to abandon his infamous intrigues, if he can persuade Madame de Fontanges to accept his suit. Thus the four principal parts are those of Fouche and his unfaithful subordinate De smare ts ; of Madame de Fontanges struggling in the double net, and of her aristocratic suitor, Henri de Neaville, whom she is employed to betray, and eventually is able to deliver. Of these parts that of Fouche was very cleverly played by Mr. Augustus Spalding, whose only fault was that he took, perhaps, rather too thin a view of the character, making it look smarter and less dangerous than the drift of the play demanded. There were turns, however, of great ability in his performance. In the first scene, where his treacherous subor- dinate is opening his parallels against his principal, and Fouchg first has reason to fear that somehow or other there is a mine beneath his feet, the livid expression that came over his counten- ance had as much of the dangerous plotter in it as the most experi- enced actor could have given. And again, in the last scene, when he is checkmated and banished, the contemptuous villany of his manner was very effective. On the whole, if the conception of the character was a little too cynical and fast for the design of the play and the traditional Fonche, and had rather too little in it of vulgar and ambitious selfishness, it was a very able piece of acting, quite beyond what the original actor for whom it was written (Mr. Emery) could have reached. But it is a part admirably adapted for an amateur actor—a cold, calculating, worldly part. Mr. Palgrave Simpson had, perhaps, a more difficult task, for to him was assigned the part originally intended for Mr. Robson, that of the low subordinate of Fouche-, in whom a gleam of purer passion, quickly transformed into malicious vindictiveness, strug- gles for the ascendancy with his hatred of his more successful su- perior. The mingled malice and passion of the character, the con- sciousness of infamy which is just broken once or twice by a fitful scream of hope, and then yields again to the chuckle of gratified hatred, is adapted with very great art to Mr. Robson's peculiar powers. Mr. Palgrave Simpson perhaps threw too much of Mr. Robson's unique grotesqueness of manner, which is natural only in him owing to the peculiar force with which he gives it, into his acting. Mr. Robson has a special genius for at once lending fresh emphasis to passion and at the same time relieving the intellectual mono- tony of it, by the resisting medium of grotesquerie through which it struggles to the surface. The "lyrical cry," as it is called in poetry, comes from him with so much the more terrible force that it makes its note heard shrill above the sound of laughter, like the wail of a violin above the murmur of noisy mirth. Mr. Palgrave Simpson's reading of this was exceedingly clever, but the passion was smothered to our eyes in the grotesqueness of the manner, and the malice scarcely given at all. The part of the lover, Henri de Neuville, as it was originally the most common-place in conception, was perhaps also the most difficult to endow with characteristic ability, and, therefore, the least successful. Mr. Lincoln Lane acted the subordinate part of a foppish and renegade Legitimist marquis with great skill and without any exaggeration, but this, too, was a part asking mainly humour and knowledge of the world.
The main interest of the play turned, however, on the acting of the heroine's part, that of Madame de Fontanges, by Madame Campana, which was certainly, in many respects, a very striking piece of acting. We do not think she got over the difficulty completely to which we have alluded. Like almost all culti- vated actors, she impersonated the scenes in which contending emotions are battling in her mind much more perfectly than those in which she gives way to a strong passion. The play of her counten- ance when the fit of gambling excitement is on her, and she is bor- rowing money from the creature Desntarets in spite of his offensive declaration of love for her, is exceedingly striking. Eagerness, haughtiness, the sense of degradation, and the overpowering excite- ment of the gambling-table chase themselves visibly over her face, and we only regretted that the deep tones to which she was evidently driven in the more passionate sentences by the difficulty of making herself heard, were so much more artifical than the play of her countenance. Perhaps a still more striking piece of acting, because sounded in a rather lighter key, was the soliloquy in which she reads and comments to herself on De Neuville's letter. The gradually melting cynicism of her manner, the tenderness alternating with distrust of him and disgust for herself, the helpless rebellion against Fouche's toils, the gleams of hope, the aggressive weakness of her woman's conscience, were all given with very subtle power ; and the light musing manner of a soliloquy put none of that strain on her voice which brings out its more theatrical tones. In play of countenance, the highest and most difficult part of the art, Madame Campana has few equals even among professional actors ; but the more unrestrained bursts of feeling seemed to us to want freedom and force, especially where she implores Fouche to relieve her from his toils. It is in transitions of expression that she is most entirely successful;—Mrs. Stirling may have played the soliloquy over the letter as subtly as Madame Campana, but we do not think she could possibly have given the hope fading into languor, and that again freezing into haughty despair, with which Madame Campana acted the scene in which Fouchd's spy and her unwelcome lover Desmarets makes his appearance in Prague. Undoubtedly she has real dramatic genius, but not yet, we think, the freedom and abandon which it is so difficult for high culture to acquire.
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