son, postponed making his will, and died suddenly intestate, leaving

MISS HELEN FAUCIT satisfied and more than satisfied the

his adopted child to enlist or emigrate as he might choose. In a still dramatic taste of a very different period from the present,— more cruel case a child, a girl, adopted by the wife with her has- a period of dramatic idealism as distinguished from that close and band's consent, and brought up as a lady, was after the wife's death sometimes extravagantly minute reflection of the details of social sent by the husband to the workhouse, merely to be rid of a trouble life which has lately taken so strong a hold of the public fancy. which hampered him in • travelling about, and except from public No doubt there is some connection between the political and opinion there was no redress. We say nothing of the great difficulty dramatic tendencies both of that day and this. Mr. Macready sad of controlling children who are subject to the action of English Miss Helen Faucit who, as we believe, surpassed Mr. Macready in opinion, and therefore draw as they grow up-a distinction between his own school of art, attained their popularity at a time of eager the claim of their protectors to obedience and that of natural political movement and agitation, when men were disgusted with parents, for the man who .cannot govern his household must take life as it was, and looked forward eagerly to a somewhat visionary the consequences of hiefailnre, but even this obstacle would be ideal. Mr. Macready, if we remember rightly, retired from the removed were the artificial relation accepted as part of our legal stage in the very midst of the Anti-Corn Law agitation, certainly

system. very many years before the Qrinfaan war, in which the political idealisms of the nation for the time burnt themselves out.

the ideal or there seems no reason why this particular contract should not be sentimental school of acting,—in the acting which selects and idealizes the inure interesting side of life, and suppresses the small life thinks it a kindly thing to adopt one of his less successful disturbing realities,—in the acting which remembers that man brother's or friend's ten children, and the parents are gratefully is "the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals," much better willing, why should not that process be legalized, the child in- than it remembers the "quintessence of dust "in which that beauty Tested by formal registration before the regular officer with every is embodied,—or at least which seldom remembers the two together, legal right possessed by a son or daughter, enabled to inherit, giving us sentiment whether evil or good without that distracting entitled to the adopter's name, and aided by just the same limited play of contradictory agencies which real life shows,—no doubt the -claims to maintenance? One exception, the right of primo- pleasure in acting of this kind was one form of that eager uncritical geniture, which is mixed up inextricably with aristocratic feeling, enthusiasm which indulged itself in shaping the future to its liking it might be well to allow, and we should be doubtful of the more than in scanning the medley of the present. The tide has possibility of including adopted relatives within the forbidden now long turned the other way. M. Fechter, the greatest of our degrees. Hindoo society has done that successfully, reccg_ modern actors, is great chiefly because he can give the easy, light, nizing absolutely no distinction whatever of any sort between the self-contained air of modern society to great characters such as adopted and begotten child, and the Code Napoleon makes this a Hamlet, Iago, and Othello, without robbing them of their ideal cardinal point in the arrangement, but in England artificial limi- force. In comedy Mr. Sothern's success is due to a precisely tab:0ns always provoke a disposition to disregard them. But with similar power. The public taste loves such critical satire on itself those two drawbacks adoption might be made complete with, we and the modern condition of things as he has given us in Lord believe, the happiest effects. Opinion in England is always affected Dundreary, and indeed in almost all his best efforts : and all the by law, and the practice would become in a very short time an pieces which have had the most decided success have, like the accepted mode of relieving poor relations, the natural refuge from "Ticket of Leave," had a basis in the social condition of the day.

There are but two objections of any force raised to the inno- Imogen is a change not only of style but of aim. There is no " Ere

Give him that parting kiss which I had sot

shotild reconcile the sentiment expressed with a warm artless character indeed, but still the character of "such a creature as we

are in such a world as the present," in other words, one not wholly without weak and girlish elements,—deep and sweet, but a little rhapsodical an 1 wanting in reserve, rather childish in its easy confidences and inaccessibility to suspicion even after it had been fairly roused by deliberate insult,—Miss Faucit's efforts are ap-

parently directed to present Imogen as an incarnation of angelic tenderness not only without stain, which she is, but without girlish weaknesses, which she is not. Shakespeare almost always, even in his most ideal characters, gives some indication of the clue by which they may be connected with the commoner experi- ences of life. Juliet with all her sweetness is meant to display the forwardness and heat of Italian passion ; Desdemona has the love of influence deeply in her, and uses it with some pertinacity ; Ophelia's mental strength is meant to be but of the slightest, and when it fail the sensuousness of her frail organiza- tion exhales with the faint rich odour of a dying blossom in the songs of her madness. In all these cases Shakespeare has indicated clearly enough where he intends the link to be between the ideal beauties of his characters and those traces of human clay by which the actress may make them seem real as well as beau- tiful. In the case of Imogen the realizing strokes may be less distinct, but there is a clear intention, we think, of delineating an artlessness which is more than the absence of art, and gives the impression of girlish impulse and hastiness in the raptures of her confidences to Pisauio, the easiness with which her mind accepts the first impression which lachitno strives to make upon it, and after the reaction caused by his villany accepts again his own improbable explanation, and finally the quivering passion of her insulted tenderness, after hearing Posthumus's cruel charge. Shakespeare certainly intended to give both the interest and the

dependence of an almost childish artlessness to Imogen's love and anger. She almost quarrels with Cloten, and has to recall her own

dignity by an effort,—" You put me to forget a lady's manners." When she hears that her husband is at Milford, she asks, like an enthusiastic school-girl,—

" And by the way, Tell me how Wales was made so happy As to inherit such a haven,"

—and puts as many inapposite questions in a breath about her journey, as, for example, "how many score of miles may we well

ride from hour to hour ?" as a happy child, rather than a wife looking forward to a grave, deep happiness. Her resentments, too, are those of a mere girl, sharp but not grave enough. Miss Faucit gives her the air of an offended queen when Iachirno makes his monstrous proposals, whereas Shakespeare indicates rather the fierce flash of a girl's offended honour striving in vain to be per- fectly dignified, but falling in spite of herself into language too violent to be scornful :—

"Thou wrong'st a gentleman who is as far

From thy report as thou from honour, and Solicit'st here a lady that disdains Thee and the devil alike ;"

with further language that puts her far too much on an equality in point of dignity with the villain whom she is reproaching. Miss Faucit gives to all this scene, in which Imogen shows her inex- perience and credulity as much as her own purity, the stately air of regal displeasure, and walks across the stage, as she says, "The King, my father, shall be made acquainted of thy assault," with an artificial and theatric resentment more than the passion of a help- less girl's offended modesty and pride.

Again, we think there is the same defect in Miss Faucit's too dignified and too monotonous rendering of that most dramatic scene in the play, when Pisanio shows Imogen her husband's cruel letter accusing her of adultery, and ordering him to kill her. As we read it there is first a flash of girlish passion and recrimination, a bitter recalling of the faithful love which her husband had accused of false- hood, and a keen retort (womanlike almost more fierce against the

supposed cause of her husband's cruelty than against himself) ;— " Some jay of Italy . . . hath betrayed him." Then she

disowns all her love for him, declares her heart empty of his image, passes through a phase of forced calmness and, as it were, judicial denunciation, and finally relapses into reproachful tenderness. Now Miss Faucit does not seem to us to reflect these rapid changes of mood and impulse. She throws no passion of jealousy into the out- break against the "jay of Italy ; " and she makes the bitter lines,—

" Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion; And, for I am richer than to hang by the walls, I must be ripped ! To pieces with me ! Oh! Men's vows are women's traitors !"

—an outbreak of pure grief and despair rather than of equally mingled grief and anger, which it certainly is. As the fierce flash dies down, and Imogen regains her self-command without as yet melting towards her husband, she seeks to punish him by bending implicitly and coldly to his cruel purpose, and leaving him to his remorse :—

" Why, I must die ; And ii I do not by thy hand, thou art No servant of thy master's : Against self-slaughter

There is a prohibition so divine

That cravens my weak hand. Come, here's my heart; Something 's afore 't ;—Soft, soft ; we no defence ; Obedient as the scabbard.—What is here ; The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus, All turn'd to heresy? Away, away, Corrupters of my faith! you shall no more Be stomachers to may heart! Thus may poor fools Believe false teachers : Though those that are betray'd Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor Stands in worse case of woe.

And thou, Posthumus, that didst set up My disobedience 'gainst the king my father, And make me put into contempt the suits Of princely fellows, shalt hereafter find It is no act of common passage, but A strain of rareness: and I grieve myself, To think when thou shalt be disedg'd by her That now thou tirest on, how thy memory Will then be pang'd by ma—Prithee, despatch: The lamb entreats the butcher : Where's thy knife?

Thou art too slow to do thy master's bidding, When I desire it too."

Miss Faucit takes these lines as the expression of a sort of spas- modic anguish. She clutches at the letters next her heart, and tears them as she scatters them. This is surely an erroneous inter- pretation. There is cold displeasure in the overstrained obe- dience with which she removes these shields from her heart, and calls her husband ironically the " loyal " Leonatus, as also in the pity she bestows on Posthumus when he shall awaken from his trance, and in the reference to her own rare sacrifice for him,— a cold displeasure which is all concentrated in the last two litres. Nor should she, we think, tear the letters. She casts them coldly away as having misguided her heart, but for the moment she is in the mood for looking down on her husband with pity, not giving way to her passion. This tone of mind is carried on into the next words, in which Imogen chooses to ignore Pisanio's horror of her husband's order, and to assume that the servant cannot wish to be more faithful or loyal than the master :— " 0 gracious lady!

Since I received command to do this business I have not slept a wink."

linogen. Do 't and to bed then."

This Miss Faucit gives with a sort of defiance or petulance, as if she could not endure Pisanio's delay. It seems to us to express perfectly the cold, impassive, apathetic stage of misery which refuses to recognize the signs of the servant's sympathy and fidelity, in the bitterness of a greater desertion. From this point Imogen's girlish pride begins to melt away at the touch of her ser- vant's sympathy, and at last completely breaks down in the confession that her only object in life is still to follow her husband to Rome and learn his every movement. In this mood she should not leave her husband's letters torn and scattered around her. All the flood of her girlish tenderness has returned, and though half broken- hearted she has re-admitted her love into her heart.

The fault of Miss Faucit's rendering of all this scene, as indeed of the whole part, is, to our minds, a monotonous ideal tenderness. which scarcely changes throughout, except from the sob of pain to the radiant smile of trusting rapture. There is too little of child- ishness, too much of severity and dignity in the earlier scenes ; too little of wounded self-love in her later anguish ; too little of the rainbow tints of girlish feeling ; too little of that variety of im- pulse which helps us to see how Imogen though a poetic ideal might really have existed. This defect becomes the more visible because there is absolutely no reality in any other of the characters unless it be Cloten's, which is very nicely played by Mr. 1Va1ter Lacy. Mr. Phelps and Mr. Creswick try to make up by vehemence for the poverty of their parts, but though that may succeed with the gallery it only enhances the deficiencies of the play to the mind of any thoughtful spectator. Cymbeline certainly derives its sole interest from the graceful and tender though somewhat monoto- nous sentiment of Miss Helen Faucit.