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The dramatic heroine of the week is Mademoiselle Rachel ; who on Monday last appeared at the St. James's Theatre as PIndre, for the first time since the year 1847. Rachel is one of those admirable artists who are always new. So many beauties are in every one of her delineations, that in each succes- sive season some fresh discovery is made. The same critical observers who carefully followed her through four seasons, and paid her an amount of attention which histrionic artists seldom find, see her this year in the very character they have seen her in before, and yet leave .the theatre astounded by her excellence. The Phi-dre and the .Roxane, both familiar to the audience, came to them with perfect freshness.
It is a great thing to say of Mademoiselle Rachel, that she is a thoroughly satisfactory actress in every respect. There is no need to put up with a fault in consideration of a beauty, to pass over an imperfect elocution for the sake of an evident inspiration of genius, to excuse a mannerism for the sake of the substratum of intellect which it partially covers. Rachel needs no apologist; "ifs," "buts," and " considerings, belong to a vocabulary with which she has nothing to do ; she may be tried by one ordeal after another, and she will pass through them all tri- umphantly.
Some connoisseurs, especially of an ancient school, are especially charm- ed with all that shows the high training of the artist-with a perfect elo- cution with a nice appreciation of metre, with a general power to preserve a character at a certain elevated leveL To such connoisseurs Mademoiselle Rachel will afford every satisfaction. The French metre is never cut up from any realistic notion but flows from her lips a stream of rhythmical music. The strongest exhibitions of passion never betray her into rant, nor does the organ ever seem to crack under the violence of the enuncia- tion. Every word, not only of this or that showy speech, but of the entire play, seems to have been studied with the view of thoroughly as- certaining its capability ; and the spectator is often surprised at finding a striking significance elicited from an apparently unimportant line, and at the varied effects which the actress produces by her by-play during the progress of a speech uttered by another performer. When Mademoiselle Rachel is on the stage, there are no gaps during which you may cease to listen and wait for the next point; but the whole character is, so to speak, perfectly filled up. By her cultivation of this highly elaborate style of speech and gesture, Mademoiselle Rachel has attained an expression of certain emotions that no other artist ever approaches. The hatred or jealousy, blended with contempt, which is not told by ejaculation, but is exhibited in the form of irony, and the strength of which is shown by the constant effort to re- press it, is something quite peculiar in the hands of Mademoiselle Rachel. Of calm, deliberate, caustic irony, she is the most consummate mistress ; uttering her sarcasms with the air of a superior being, who, tortured with hate, will not condescend to be in a passion. Those actors who have greatly excelled in finished declamation have often failed to please another school of connoisseurs, who care more for an appearance of inspiration than for training. A brilliant "point" made with energy will gratify this class-a very large one-more than the most adequately sustained character. It is the same class that cannot read Pope or Dryden' and shrinks from coldness rather than from incor- rectness. Strange to say, auditors of this class will find just as much to admire in the acting of Mademoiselle Rachel as those who can dwell on the beauty of her declamation. Severely as she has disciplined herself, Much as she has restrained every impulse of passion that would tend to the harsh in sound or ungraceful in attitude, she has preserved the in- tensity of passion in all its vigour. Her "points" come out with elec- trical effect; and where there is no opportunity for these more startling displays, the mobility of the features proves to us that there is nothing frigid within, but that a creature of infinite susceptibility is before us, ready to blaze into vehemence whenever occasion offers. The piece about which the greatest curiosity is raised is the drama of Adrienne Iecourreur, which will be played for the first time on Mon- day next. Hitherto Rachel has been heard by the Londoners only in classical " French verse her performance of a prose play, with all the qualities of a drame, will place her in a new light. Indeed, the Pa- risians themselves never heard her in prose till last year, when this piece was produced at the Theitre de la Republique.
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