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coadjutor in his clear and musical utterance of Shakespeare's verse. Nor was his example without a beneficial influence on Mr. Irving, who, under it, seemed to shake off in no small degree that affectationfor affectation it is of a mode of delivery which, however attractive to some, is a great drawback to his best performances. In Tennyson's "Cup," Mr. Irving seemed to us to have already entered upon a new course in this respect. It was well for the poet that he did so; for to our thinking not one of the resources of the actor's art but was necessary to give attraction to what, as mere piece of dramatic writing, was of very ordinary merit. With the critics Miss Ellen Terry's Camma carried off the honours; but, with all deference to their infallibility, the poet owed much less to the Camma than to the Synorix of the Lyceum. In ordinary hands Synorix would have been revolting: this Mr. Irving's skill prevented. He had obviously taken immense pains over it, and his performance was full of nice points of detail, which showed how much the actor had done to strengthen the work of the poet where it was weakest. The part of Camma is as gracious as that of Synorix is the reverse; and the actress is assured of the sympathy of the audience from the first. Moreover, the poet has given her in the last scene a splendid opportunity for that silent acting which is the test of true histrionic power -an opportunity, however, of which only an actress gifted with a poetic imagination could take advantage. Of the strange and deadly revenge devised by Camma, no hint in words can be given by the poet-for to do so would be fatal to the interest of the dénouement. But what the dramatist dared not do, the actress might and ought to have done, by making the audience feel through all the

VOL. CXXX.-NO. DCOXC.

early portions of the scene that she is possessed by some great purpose which shall explain the mystery of her consent to marry the profligate Tetrarch, the assassin of her husband. Again, when the poison she has shared with Synorix begins to take effect upon Camma's brain, and she imagines she hears the voice of Synnatus calling to her, voice and look and gesture should be such as to convey to the audience the impression of a mind beginning to waver from the effects of the draught, and of a frame slowly penetrated by the paralysing influence of the poison. But on the occasions of our visits to the theatre, we looked in vain, in the impersonation of the actress, for any such clues to the language or purpose of the poet. What an actress of genius might have made of this scene it is impossible to say, but great effects have been produced in much less striking situations. As it was, however, not only this scene, but the whole play, viewed as a drama, was singularly ineffective; and but for the unrivalled beauty of the scenery, and the general excellence of the mise en scène, not even the curiosity and admiration with which Mr. Tennyson's name invests all his work could have made it keep its hold upon the stage for any time. The Synnatus of Mr. Terriss was of great value in the general effect of the piece. It was a thoroughly well made out sketch, and showed the abilities of this promising actor at their best.

Since the days when Mr. Macready produced "Acis and Galatea" at Drury Lane, with Stanfield's scenery, nothing so beautiful in mere scenic adjuncts has been seen in England. Nor was the selection of the costumes, and the disposition of the priestesses of Artemis, who thronged her temple, less to be admired. The latter would cer

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tainly have been improved by a little of that variety of action, and of that highly developed skill in grouping, for which the Meiningen Company are conspicuous. And the accomplished director of that establishment, Herr Chronegk, has his company too well in hand for such a thing to be possible as that the high priestess of Artemis should, like her representative at the Lyceum, indulge her peculiar notions of the dignity which befits that office by sitting on the altar steps hugging her knees while a solemn ceremony is going forward. Reading, as the public had done, of Camma's matchless grace and elevation of the way in which she "fell, as if by chance, into positions which rival the best of the Greek sculptures," an action so contrary to every notion of what was appropriate to the character and the situation, must have had a rather bewildering effect upon that portion of the audience who take au sérieux the commentaries of theatrical critics.

In former days there was always, we have understood, some controlling power in every leading London theatre, which would have made such an impropriety impossible, even if it had been attempted to be indulged in-which is most improbable-by any member of the company. There are innumerable signs that in most of our theatres no such control is exercised now; and yet, without an authoritative voice to regulate every arrangement of the stage, one can very well see how vain it is to hope for that general excellence which, if it cannot inspire an audience with enthusiasm -for this only genius can do-will at least send them away instructed and content. It would be unjust, however, not to admit that such managers as Mr. Hare and Mr. Bancroft do not merely recognise the

necessity for such a control, but exercise it with rigour, and with the best results, to the reputation of their theatres, and in the gratification of their audiences. "The study of perfection" would seem to be their law. What is the consequence? Simply this, that nowhere, not even in Paris, are pieces to be seen put upon the stage or acted with greater finish or vraisemblance than at the St. James's Theatre or the Haymarket. The pieces themselves may be slight; but, such as they are, they are admirably given, and with a spirit, freshness, and individuality sufficient to show that, under favourable conditions, a school of acting might be revived in England, capable of holding its own against any in Europe.

One hopeful sign is, that our best managers and actors seem not to be above learning whatever of good their foreign rivals have to teach them. Lessons from abroad they have had in plenty during the last three or four years. Italy, France, and Holland have all sent to London excellent specimens of their various schools-none more excellent than the little troupe of Dutch actors, who, last summer, surprised their much too scanty audiences by performances in which the fine qualities and great artistic skill of the leading artists were scarcely more conspicuous than the individuality of character and pantomime by which every minor actor, down to the merest supernumerary, gave an air of reality to the scene as delightful as it is unwonted. By this example some of our theatres have already profited; and if English histrionic art has anything to learn from the Meiningen Company, it is in this direction also.

Germany, like England, has at this moment but few actors of mark in the poetic drama, and the price

set upon the services of those few, there as here, puts out of the question any attempt to concentrate them in any one establishment. The Grand Duke of Meiningen has therefore wisely confined his efforts in the cause of the drama to making the most of such talent as can be made available upon easier terms. He has brought together a company of actors of more than average ability. He has given to them permanent engagements and every motive for working together in the friendly rivalry of true artists, under the discipline of a stage director of paramount authority. Each is bound to co-operate in giving strength to the cast of the pieces produced, by taking, if necessary, a subordinate part in them,-a condition impossible in England, where actors judge of themselves and are judged of by the public according to the nominal importance of the parts in which they appear; but practicable in Germany, where no such rule prevails, and where Schröder, the greatest actor of his time, when at the height of his fame, thought the Ghost in "Hamlet" a part not unworthy of his powers. No pains, apparently, are spared to make the members of this company respect themselves and the art which they profess. All that a liberal subvention can do is done to give richness and local colour to the appointments of the stage, and these. are selected with a skill, and applied with an energy, which helps to keep alive in the establishment a spirit of emulation, and a wholesome pride in the successful results of a common effort.

It was a bold enterprise to transfer to London not merely the actors, but all the scenic appointments of a theatre conducted upon such principles, and to place London playgoers in a position to judge of its merits and defects, as favourable

as though they had made a pilgrimage to Meiningen itself. In the spacious area of the Drury Lane stage, the qualities in which these representations chiefly excel had ample opportunities for display. For, as already indicated, the strength of the Meiningen theatre lies not in the pre-eminent excellence of its actors, so much as in the pomp and prodigality of the scenic accessories. For this mode of treatment "Julius Cæsar" affords the fullest scope, especially during the three first acts. In them the mob of Rome play a not insignificant part, and Herr Chronegk turned to the best account the opportunity of making them serve as a striking background to the main action. The wholesome operation of a system which allows no point, however small, to be slighted, was at once brought home to the audience in the spirit and individuality given to those of the mob, to whom Shakespeare has assigned short speeches at the opening of the play. They were represented by actors well studied in their art, fit mouthpieces for the shallow, unstable mob, who were made visibly to wince under the taunts of Marcellus for the fickleness which had led them to bestow on Cæsar the same acclamations they had so

recently given to his rival Pompey. The key-note was well struck for what was to follow in the processional entry of Cæsar, with array of attendants wellnigh regal; and the striking figure of the soothsayer, with the single sentence,

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Beware the Ides of March!" admirably delivered, was a further proof of the care taken to give due effect to the smallest incidents of the play by placing every character in competent hands. As the play advanced, the working of the same principle was everywhere apparent. In the scene with Portia (Act II.

BC. 4), and again in the Senate House (Act III. sc. 1), the soothsayer became a most imposing figure. Scarcely less admirable was the small part of Artemidorus; and although the minor characters of Lucius, of Cæsar's servant, and other attendants, were intrusted to young women, probably from the impossibility of getting boys to fill them, the parts were really acted, the words were well spoken-not walked through and mumbled as is almost invariably the case upon our stage. Indeed, several of them were represented by actresses who subsequently acquitted themselves with distinction in important characters in the other plays of the Meiningen répertoire.

For all this, every true lover of the drama felt grateful; and scarcely less so for the beauty of the scenic arrangements, a very futile and misplaced attempt to depict what should have been left to the imagination, "the tempest dropping fire," and the general electrical disturbance, described by Casca, on the night before Cæsar's death, excepted. Nothing but good, how ever, is to be said of the manner in which the scene in Cæsar's house and that of his assassination were presented, or of the way in which the grouping and action of

the characters were described and carried out. The actors wore their Roman dresses well, and maintained each his own individuality in broad and marked lines. These scenes, so splendidly conceived by the poet, were, in short, presented in a way at once to stimulate and to satisfy the imagination. Nor do we remember to have seen a more impressive picture than when Marc Antony, left alone upon the stage, went up to the dead Cæsar as he lay swathed in his purple robes, and, standing at his head, poured

out his hitherto suppressed anguish and purpose of revenge in the speech, admirably spoken by Herr Barnay, beginning

"Oh, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth," &c.

In all this the stage director had given true assistance to both actor and poet, and we were again reminded of the excellence of the Meiningen system in the genuine pathos which the young lady who played Antony's servant threw into the exclamation, "Oh, Cæsar!" as she caught a sight of his body, and fell on her knees beside it. It is by little touches of this kind, quite as much as by elaborate accessories, that the Meiningen company justify their claims as reformers of the stage. These touch the heart, and foster the proper mode for appreciating the purpose of the poet; whereas there is always danger that this mood may be disturbed, if the appeals to the eye be too frequent or too vivid.

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Something of this danger was incurred in the immediately following scene in the Forum. Every resource of the establishment was called into play in order to give a sense of reality to this scene scene in which Shakespeare's genius grappled, and successfully grappled, with what was certainly one of the most striking events in Roman story. In the various costumes of the vast crowd which filled the stage, the student of antiquity was delighted to see the results of the most scholarly research; while the artist's eye was gladdened by contrasts of colour and variety of grouping, in which there were suggestions for many pictures. The general disposition of the scene was excellent, and quite sufficient for all dramatic purposes. But it was in the way that the crowd became a

living, seething mass of ill-instructed, excitable, passionate human creatures," a fierce democratic sway'd at will" by the rhetoric first of Brutus and then of Antony, -that the presiding spirit of the company made his power felt. Not a hint given by Shakespeare in the interjected speeches of the first, second, third, and fourth citizens, but was turned to profit. The representatives seized and directed the variable moods of the mob with admirable skill, moving in and out among them, and driving home their speeches with the tones and action of accomplished actors. The crowd itself, moreover, listened to the two great orators as if, indeed, a portentous issue hung upon their words, and step by step it was wrought up to the frenzy of passion, which in Shakespeare finds vent in the words

"Sec. Cit.-Go fetch fire!

Third Cit.-Pluck down benches! Fourth Cit.-Pluck down the forms, windows, anything!"

and which in reality made the Roman populace lay hold of every inflammable thing within their reach, musical instruments included, to make a funeral pyre for Cæsar's body in the Forum, not three hundred yards from the spot where Marc Antony spoke his craftily devised harangue.

But the very vividness with which all this was acted could not fail to do some violence to Shakespeare, who naturally throws more stress upon Brutus and Antony as the moving spirits of the scene than upon those whom they address, whereas upon the stage they were somewhat overshadowed by the prominence of the mob. An actor of less power and accomplishment than Herr Barnay would have run great risk of being utterly eclipsed.

Only his imposing voice and presence enabled him to tower over all the weltering turbulence of the scene, and, despite the somewhat too frequent interruptions of assent from the crowd, to keep the attention of the audience fixed upon himself as the central figure. It was in this scene, as in the previous scene in the Senate House, that Herr Barnay-who, we hear, is not a permanent member of the Meiningen troupe-proved himself to be of a far higher order than those with whom he was associated. His elocution, unforced and incisive, aided by a flexible penetrating voice, and by the graces of free and appropriate action, told with immense effect. When he descended from the Rostrum to a place beside the bier, his tall and commanding figure prevented him from being dwarfed, as otherwise he must have been, by the crowd which was allowed to press too closely and eagerly upon him. Not soon will be forgotten by those who saw it, the admirable way in which he illuminated with voice and action the speech beginning, "If you have tears, prepare to shed them now," - working up his audience to the highest pitch of sympathy, till he had prepared them for the climax of his rhetoric, as he threw back the mantle from Cæsar's face, with the words

"Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold

Our Cæsar's vesture wounded? Look you here,

Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors."

By this time he had moved the audience in front, as well as those upon the stage. He sent the same thrill through them by showing to their eyes that " poor and bleeding piece of earth," to which the civil