Page images
PDF
EPUB

of Mr. Pitt, that he must have been one of the most distinguished speakers in the Lower House. The House of Lords does not admit of the same display either of oratory or of capacity for public business; but when the Marquis of Abercorn did speak there, the talents which he showed warranted the prophecy of so skilled an augur as Pitt. Those who saw him at a distance accused him of pride and haughtiness. That he had a sufficient feeling of the dignity of his situation, and maintained it with perhaps an unusual degree of state and expense, may readily be granted. But that expense, however large, was fully supported by an ample fortune wisely administered, and in the management of which the interests of the tenant were always considered as well as those of the landlord. He racked no rents to maintain the expenses of his establishment, nor did he diminish his charities, which were in many cases princely, for the sake of the outward state, the maintenance of which he thought, not unjustly, a duty incumbent on his situation. Above all, the stateliness of which the late Marquis of Abercorn was accused, drew no barrier between the Marquis of Abercorn and those who shared his hospitality. Kemble was a very frequent visitor there, and with the noble landlord, the late Payne Knight, and

ture.

'the travelled Thane,

Athenian Aberdeen,'

and an eminent person, whom graver and more important duties have now withdrawn from the muses, made evenings of modern fashion resemble a Greek symposium for learning and literaBut this has carried us far from the point, and we have but the poor apology that we could not withstand certain feelings which tempted us to the digression. They are few-scattered and distant-who will be affected by the recollections of Bentley Priory. But such still exist, and why may we not steal a paragraph from our immediate subject to gratify their feelings and our own? Kemble lived in the same close intimacy with the successive Earls of Guilford and the whole of that distinguished family, in which brilliant wit, mingled with the most genuine good humour and kindness of disposition, and a rational love of literature seem to be hereditary possessions. He was also familiar at Holland House, where the classical translator of Lope de Vega could not fail to appreciate his merit, and he shared the same distinction in many families equally eminent for their rank in society and love of elegant letters.

We return to our comparison between Garrick and Kemble. It follows from what we have before said, that the style of Gar rick was impetuous, sudden, striking, and versatile-that with his complete power over the regions of comedy, and tragedy, and

farce,

farce, he should maintain a sort of ubiquity in the eyes of the public. In the play he could be Hamlet, and perform Fribble in the farce, yet delight the audience equally in both characters. In fact, as we have been assured by a venerable father of literature, most able to judge, and happily at an advanced period of life most able both to recollect and discriminate concerning the amusements of his youth, Garrick's versatility, nay, almost universality of talent, was the quality on which his extraordinary popularity chiefly rested. He was like Ariel on board the King's ship. ' now on the beak

Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabbin,

He flamed amazement.'

The peculiar talents of Kemble confined him within a much more limited range, although it was soon ascertained that this was capable of being extended far more than the critics had at first been able to anticipate. Kemble's noble person and graceful demeanour was totally inconsistent with the ludicrous, and almost with the comic. His cast of features was decidedly heroic, and when the best disguise was put on them he must have looked like Alfred playing the clown, or the elder Brutus in his assumed state of idiotcy. The very voices of these great actors were totally different; that of Garrick was full, melodious, commanding, and he might exert it with unsparing profusion. Kemble's, though perfectly distinct and impressive, was early affected by an asthmatic tendency, which rendered it necessary for him to husband his efforts, and reserve them for those bursts of passion to which he gave such sublime effect.

But besides this limitation, arising from taste, temper, figure, and organic conformation, the schools, if they may be called so, of Garrick and Kemble were founded upon different principles. We had almost said they were the schools of nature and of artbut luckily we suppressed a phrase which, like the whistle of a captain of marksmen, might have raised from thicket and ravine a swarm of controversial sharp-shooters like wasps about our ears. Let us then vary the phrase, and say, that Garrick made his impression from his skill in seizing and expressing with force and precision the first and most obvious view of his part; and that Kemble, more learned and more laborious, studied earnestly and long ere he could fix his own ideas of the true meaning of doubtful passages, often illustrated them by what is called a new reading, and was careful to express that he did so by the punctilious accuracy of the corresponding action and enunciation. Indeed Kemble, a profound scholar in his art, was metaphysically curious in expressing each line of his part with the exactly appropriate accent and manner. Sometimes this high degree of study threw

04

a degree

a degree of over-precision into the part, and in the effort to analyse the sentiment, by giving a peculiar emphasis to every word of the sentence, the actor lost the effect which to be vehement should be instant and undivided. Sometimes also it happened that, in order to complete the details upon which he had determined, Kemble permitted the action to hang too long suspended, so that one well accustomed to his manner anticipated the effort which he was about to make, by observing something of preparation, which was like the warning, as it is called, given by some timepieces that they are about to strike the hour. There was also visible in Kemble's manner at times a sacrifice of energy of action to grace. We remember this observation being made by Mrs. Siddons herself, who admired her brother in general as much as she loved him. Nor shall we easily forget the mode in which she illustrated her meaning. She arose and placed herself in the attitude of one of the old Egyptian statues; the knees joined together, and the feet turned a little inwards. She placed her elbows close to her sides, folded her hands and held them upright with the palms pressed to each other. Having made us observe that she had assumed one of the most constrained and therefore most ungraceful positions possible, she proceeded to recite the curse of King Lear on his undutiful offspring in a manner which made hair rise and flesh creep, and then called on us to remark the additional effect which was gained by the concentrated energy which the unusual and ungraceful posture in itself implied.

Such imperfections as arise from over-study-and these showed themselves but occasionally, and never offensively-were the only faults we could discern in this great actor, and they were amply compensated by the justice of his conception, the precision of his taste, the patience of his investigation, which left no point unconsidered, the firmness of his disposition, which would never be drawn from any point in which he considered himself as perfectly right.

Garrick, never timid but on the stage, would readily concede any point of taste to the audience, and illustrated in its fullest extent the maxim of the poet.

The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give,

For those who live to please, must please to live.'

Kemble, on the contrary, felt much more for the honour of his profession and the truth of the dramatic art, than for his own profit or quiet, and would have died on the breach rather than yield to the authority of the public in a point where he justly conceived himself a much better judge than they. Perhaps he carried this to extremity, when he insisted on pronouncing aches as a two-syllable word in the speech of Prospero.

For

For this be sure to night thou shalt have achés.' Unquestionably the word was so pronounced in Queen Elizabeth's time. But then it was scarce worth quarrelling about 'so small a matter with the audience, and it would have been more prudent, perhaps, to have suffered the aitches to have quietly undergone the same transmutation into modern sound, as has befallen doubtless a hundred words in the language. We cannot, if we would, bring back the pronunciation of the Elizabethan age, and why should not this modern abridgment of a single syllable pass current with other alterations? But Kemble was too proud of his art to sacrifice even a grain of incense to unjust criticism. He was ready to hazard every thing in defence of the right reading of a word in Shakspeare. Night after night he menaced Caliban with aitches, and night after night was for so doing assailed by a party in the pit with a ferocity worthy of Caliban himself. One evening he felt himself, from indispoşition, unwilling to sustain the usual conflict, and on that occasion evaded a drawn battle by omitting the line entirely. It was curious enough to see how the critics, as he approached the place where they expected to hear the obnoxious line, resembled

greyhounds in the slips,

Straining upon the start;'

the puzzled countenances which they displayed as speech after speech was made without the expected game being roused;—and the blank look of disappointment when the close of the scene announced to them how Kemble had, for the evening, eluded their resentment without bending to their authority. This perseverance gained the day, but it was resented as obstinacy by not a few, and served to increase the discontent of the low-minded part of the audience against an actor who presumed to follow his own judgment rather than theirs.

We remember observing a similar instance of Kemble's attention to restore true readings astonishing a provincial audience. It occurred in the lines in Macbeth

'Augurs, and understood relations, have,

By magot-pies, and choughs and rooks, brought forth

The secret'st man of blood.'

Performers had been in the habit of pronouncing the word magpies, though the blank verse halted for it. But Kemble resumed the proper pronunciation of magot-pies, with an emphasis which made the audience of look around them in astonishment, scarcely trusting their ears, and marvelling how any species of augury could be derived from what they apprehended to be a stale pasty. Luckily they were diffident of their own judgment, and

only

only afforded the new reading their amazement, without presuming to dissent from it.

To return to the dramatic career of Mr. Kemble, we can only briefly say, that he speedily attained acknowledged pre-eminence in the tragic scene. There was none, indeed, worthy of being named as a competitor excepting Henderson, and the excellence of his Falstaff, which we remember as a most wonderful exhibition, made all his other parts relish of sack and sugar. In many parts of which Kemble obtained possession, and which he played admirably, he has, nevertheless, been equalled or excelled. The ancients preferred the Richard of Garrick to that of the new actor, and many of the moderns give a like preference to Kean, particularly in the last two acts. Some obstacles, however, occurred from his own personal qualifications. We have said he could not appear ludicrous, and we must add that, from the noble effect of his countenance and figure, neither could he seem constitutionally villainous: he could never look the part of Richard, and it seemed a jest to hear him, whose countenance and person were so eminently fine, descant on his own deformity. He was, perhaps, sensible of this, for he used to argue that Richard III. being of high descent and breeding, ought not to be vulgar in his appearance or coarse in his cruelty. There certainly should prevail a tinge of aristocracy about the dramatic Richard, but it ought not to be of a generous or chivalrous character, or, whatever the figure of the historical Richard may have been, that of a handsome prince.

For the same reason Kemble was inferior both to Cooke and to Kean in Massinger's Sir Giles Overreach. That singular character is Richard in ordinary life, an extortioner and oppressor, confident in his art and in his audacity; but Kemble, when dressed for this part, reminded us of a dignified country gentleman of the ancient school-an old courtier of the Queen's,' rather than a low-born, upstart, purse-proud tyrant, with impudence enough to glory in his base arts of extortion. He might say what ill he would of himself, the audience could not believe him.

In Lear, Kemble must, we think, have been decidedly inferior to Garrick. In Hamlet he was not more than the equal of Garrick, and a most formidable rival arose in his own time in Charles Young. But in Macbeth, Kemble has been as yet unapproachable; nor can we conceive that the bold and effective manner of Garrick, touching on the broad points of the character with a hand however vigorous, could at all compare with Kemble's exquisitely and minutely elaborate delineation of guilty ambition, drawn on from crime to crime, while the avenging furies

at

« PreviousContinue »