friend and warm admirer, Sir Walter Scott, in his admirable review of Boaden's 'Life of Kemble,' admits this much, and finds it not amiss to remind the playgoers of that day of the principle by which the treatment of such details ought to be regulated.

"The muse of painting," he says, "should be on the stage the handmaid, not the rival, of her sister of the

drama. Each art should retain its due preponderance within its own proper region. Let the scenery be as well painted, and made as impressive, as a moderate-sized stage will afford; but when the roof is raised to give the scene-painter room to pile Pelion upon Ossa; when the stage is widened that his forests may be extended or deepened, that his oceans may flow in space apparently interminable,--the manager who commands these decorations is leaving his proper duty, and altering entirely the purpose of the stage."

Again, in the same essay, while admitting that the use of "dresses suited to the time and country, and of landscape and architecture equally coherent," must be of advantage, Scott qualifies his admission by insisting "that this part of the theatrical business shall be kept in due subordination to that which is strictly dramatic. Processions and decorations," he adds, "belong to the same province as scenes and dresses, and should be heedfully attended to, but at the same time kept under, that they may relieve the action of the scene, instead of shouldering aside the dramatic interest."

If, as seems to have been the case, John Kemble occasionally overstepped the boundary which true taste would have prescribed, he

avoided this error as a rule in the plays of Shakespeare. Only in "Julius Cæsar" and in "Coriolanus" did he fill the stage with crowds. The management of his

mob in "Julius Cæsar" was admitted to be excellent by Ludwig Tieck, who did not admire Kemble's Brutus, which he thought, in the teeth of the opinion of all other critics, "was not acted, but only declaimed with intelligence." The scene of the mob, "the great Forum scene," he writes, "with its swaying to and fro from turbulence to calm, was extremely well given," (Dramaturgische Blätter'). The costumes, too, he admitted, were excellent. But according to the same shrewd critic, Shakespeare was "shouldered aside "in "Coriolanus" for the sake of mere pageantry and spectacle, large and important portions of the play being cut out for the sake" of a procession with trophies and eagles, which, entering at the back of the stage, and extending over its whole expanse, consumed a great deal of time." This procession, however, for which no fewer than 240 supernumeraries were employed, was in its day regarded as a perfect miracle of scenic splendour. People raved about it, as people raved last winter about the scenery and costumes at the Lyceum in Tennyson's "Cup." But when it was first presented, with Mrs. Siddons as the Volumnia, there was something beyond the mere pageant to justify their delight.

At

"In this procession," writes the Rev. J. C. Young, in his Memoirs of his Father, Charles Young (2d ed., p. 40), "and as one of the central figures in it, Mrs. Siddons had to walk. the time, as she often did, she forgot her own identity. She was no longer Sarah Siddons, tied down to the directions of the prompter's book—or trammelled by old traditions - but the proud mother of a proud son and conquering hero; so that, instead of dropping each foot at equidistance in its place, with mechanical exactitude, and in cadence subservient to the orchestra, deaf to

the guidance of her woman's ear, but sensitive to the throbbings of her haughty mother's heart, with flashing

eye, and proudest smile, and head erect, and hands pressed firmly to her bosom, as if to repress by manual force its triumphant swellings, she towered above all around, and rolled, and almost reeled across the stage, her very soul, as it were, dilating and reeling in its exultation, until her action lost all grace, and yet became so true to nature, so picturesque, and so descriptive, that pit and gallery sprang to their feet electrified by the transcendent execution of an original conception."

Without this feature, it is easy to conceive how tedious and misplaced this interpolated pageant, for which Shakespeare gives no warrant, must have seemed in the eyes of a critic like Tieck; and yet we have heard the splendour and effect of this same procession described by eye-witnesses as casting into the shade everything of the same kind which was subsequently done either by Macready or by Charles Kean. Certainly no man had a finer eye for stage arrangements of this kind than Macready; no man could better put into his stage mob all the fluctuations of feeling, of passion, and of unreason by which the mobs of Shakespeare are swayed. In 1838 he got up "Coriolanus" at Covent Garden, at Covent Garden, when for the last time it was worthily presented in England. See what Miss Frances Williams Wynn says of the stage arrangements

and she had seen it under John

Kemble's management, with his distinguished sister as the Volum

nia :

"I never saw a play so beautifully, so correctly got up. It was not only the costume, the scenery, the numberless accessories that were carefully attended to, but the far more difficult task of regulating the by-play of the inferior actors was also accomplished. The effect given by the number of the mob, by the variety of action, which seemed to give Shakespearian individuality to every member of it, is

indescribable. The cowed, degraded appearance of the Volscians in the Triumph was very striking. Coriolanus sitting at the hearth of Aufidius, was as fine a picture as can be imagined."'Diaries of a Lady of Quality.' London, 1864, p. 304.

Those who remember the Shake

spearian revivals by Mr. Macready during his too brief tenure of Drury Lane Theatre, will recall many other instances of his powers as a stage director. His love of the picturesque was governed by a true

sense

of proportion. His accessories were kept in their place, not allowed to interrupt the action or intrude upon the higher interests of the scene. The movements and the general disposition of his crowds were as varied as those of a real crowd would be, while they all tended to stimulate and give expression to the feeling with which the poet intended to animate the spectators. For it should not be forgotten that when Brutus or Marc Antony, for example, addresses the Roman mob, it is to us, the spectators in stalls and boxes and galleries, that their words are addressed. If we are not made to feel and to be swayed by their rhetoric, the primary purpose of the poet is missed, and all the agitation and tumult, the waywardness and the shouting of the stage mob appeal to our eyes and other senses with comparatively trifling effect. Macready thoroughly understood this fundamental principle of good stage management; and in the latest instance in which his skill in this direction was called into play-the management of the tumultuous mob of Ghent in Sir Henry Taylor's "Philip van Artevelde," his fine perception of the point to which scenic accessories can be carried without injury to the higher interest of a drama was pre-eminently conspicuous.

In this quality Charles Kean was not less pre-eminently deficient, although for a time he took the town by storm with the redundant splendour of pageantry and spectacle, under which all that is most precious in Shakespeare was smothered and obscured. Play after play was produced, in which every resource of the carpenter, the antiquarian, and the costumier was exhausted. The stage groaned under masses of supernumeraries too vast to be manageable, and only capable of following with dismal monotony dismal monotony the stereotyped action of leaders, almost as guiltless as themselves of intelligence and poetical feeling. Fascinating at first to audiences who sought only to be amused, this species of entertainment ended in palling even upon them, for it was impossible to find fresh stimulus to tastes that had been surfeited with the mere excitements of pageantry and costume. But this was not the only evil that resulted from a system, which was indeed "quite from the purpose of playing." Fine acting was absolutely incompatible with all this gorgeous splendour and mere appeal to the senses. The better class of spectators, those who reverenced their Shakespeare, were driven from the theatre; while actors who aimed at moving the imaginations of an audience by the graces of speech and action, and, by the careful development of the poet's purpose, were discouraged. What the effect has been upon the English school of actors has long been apparent in the all but total disappearance from among us of the power to put upon the stage any of Shakespeare's plays in a manner for which an educated Englishman does not blush.

To how low a pitch the standard of English acting in the higher drama is reduced was never more apparent than in "Hamlet," "Othello,"

and "King Lear," as presented at the Princess's Theatre last winter, during the performances given there by America's finest actor, Mr. Edwin Booth. With very few exceptions, the performers were such as twenty years ago would not have found engagements at any of the established provincial theatres, much less have been tolerated on a London stage of any pretensions. None of the characters were made out, because none of them were understood by the actors themselves. The rhythmic value of blank verse was an idea which seemed never to have entered into their minds; nay, the very rudiments of the actor's art-the management of the voice, articulate speech, appropriate grace or dignity of deportment, assumption of individual characterhad not only never been mastered, but to all appearance were not even aimed at. And yet it was said at the time that every effort had been made, and no expense spared, by the manager to find the strongest troupe that could be got together to support Mr. Booth. If this were so, pitiful indeed must be the resources available to any one who aspires to re-establish the old reputation of the English stage for the acting of a poetical drama. How grievously Mr. Booth suffered from the incompetence of those around him, needs not to be told. Even genius on the stage cannot show itself at its best, when all around is feeble or absolutely bad. But to an actor of his stamp, who charmed not by the flashes of genius, but rather by finish and high accomplishment, wrought of careful study and long experience, aided by a fine voice, admirable elocution, genuine sensibility, and the natural grace of a well-balanced and elastic figure, the results were simply disastrous. Kept in a constant state of irritation by the bad acting of those

who surrounded him, the public were not always in the mood to do him justice, and visited upon him the sins for which he was not responsible. It indeed spoke volumes for the genuine merits of Mr. Booth, that, in spite of every disadvantage, he established himself in the esteem of the best judges of his art; and indeed in certain passages-such as the mad scenes of King Lear-he rose to a height of excellence which explained and justified his great reputation throughout throughout America. Not for many a day has there been seen on our stage so fine an example as these scenes afforded of what the actor can do to irradiate the pages of the dramatist. The most thorough student of Shakespeare would be the foremost to admit that Mr. Booth threw a flood of fresh light upon these great scenes. His action, as he sat watching the simulated vagaries of Edgar, with looks which, by their very intenseness of credulity and wonder, showed how his own reason was beginning to totter,-"my wits begin to turn," was in the best style of the actor's art; but there was an approach to genius-that rarest of gifts in the portrayal of actual madness in the subsequent scene, and in the way the actor used the handful of straws which he carried to give to it the semblance of complete reality. At one time it became in his hand the bow to "draw me a clothier's yard," and send it home to the "clout;" at another, each separate straw seemed to be to the poor mad king a living creature, against whom he launched the shafts of his sarcasm and railing. Such acting, once seen, becomes a permanent boon to the student. It clings to the memory like something witnessed in actual life, being, as it is, a living commentary on the text, which, when of this quality of excellence and

truth to nature, outweighs all that can be done in the way of exposition by the subtlest or most eloquent of critics. Admirable as, in the main, Mr. Booth's King Lear was, it did not maintain this high level of excellence throughout; but this seemed to be due not so much to any defect of conception as to a weakness of physique, possibly temporary, which prevented him from giving full force to the outbursts of wayward anger, or adequate depth of pathos to the overflowings of passionate tenderness, which are demanded for a wholly satisfactory rendering of this character. We have called this weakness "possibly temporary," because it was well known that during the latter portion of this gentleman's performances he was suffering from a domestic anxiety calculated to impose a very severe strain upon a nature obviously most sensitive.

It was fortunate for Mr. Booth that he did not leave England without an opportunity of being seen under more favourable conditions at the Lyceum Theatre, where he alternated with Mr. Irving the characters of Othello and Iago. Very far short of excellence as the general performance of "Othello" was at that theatre, still it contrasted favourably with the cast of the same play at the Princess's Theatre. The Cassio, it is true, was colourless and commonplace; but the Cassio of the Princess's was simply an outrage upon propriety. On the other hand, the Roderigo of the Princess's was as far above the Roderigo of the Lyceum as an actor of average ability, trained upon good models, is above one whose ability, such as it was, had obviously enjoyed no such advantage. For Mr. Irving and Miss Ellen Terry, it is needless to say, there were no counterparts at the Princess's; and in the Brabantio of

Mr. Mead a good specimen of an actor of the old school-a striking contrast was afforded to the Brabantio of the Princess's-an actor who, with some of the virtues, has just those vices into which the disciples of that school fall, who are without the sensibility and the fine intelligence which distinguished its leaders. Little as Brabantio has to do and say, that little, especially in the scene of the Venetian Council, is of radical importance; and in Mr. Mead's hands not a point was lost. He was just the father who, while by his own coldness and want of sympathy he had driven Desdemona to seek sympathy elsewhere, yet was cut to the very heart when he woke up to find that she had chosen a husband and a future for herself. When we heard, at the end of the play, that he had died of grief, we remembered how consistent such an ending was with the heartstricken look and quivering tones of the actor, as he spoke the few significant words with which he resigned his daughter to Othello.

No more marked contrast of styles could well be imagined than that between the styles of Mr. Irving and Mr. Booth. The Iago and the Othello of Mr. Irving were both more calculated to strike the imagination than those of Mr. Booth, for in conception no less than in treatment they were full of novelty, and enlivened by a minuteness of detail which ran over at times into something bordering on extravagance. If Mr. Booth's Othello wanted fire and force, Mr. Irving's was without the exquisite tenderness and the native dig nity by which Othello maintains his hold upon our sympathies, in spite of the all but incredible credulity with which he allows himself to be made the dupe of Iago. But of the two, Mr. Irving's conception, upon the whole, seemed as though it would have come nearer to the

Othello whom Shakespeare drew, if only nature had endowed him with the power to give utterance to that intense and concentrated emotion which is demanded for the volcanic passion of the Moor. As Iago, however, Mr. Booth's impersonation was much more likely than Mr. Irving's to impress those around him with the belief of his "exceeding honesty." It had the outward semblance of frankness and geniality by which people are thrown off their guard, while the utter hardness of heart, and unscrupulous selfishness of the man, who has said to himself, "evil, be thou my good," flashed out upon occasions with tenfold force by contrast with the careless ease of his general bearing. Every word told without having undue stress laid upon it. Mr. Booth's soliloquies were those of a man really thinking aloud, and they let the audience into the secret of Iago's character, without any of those conscious asides and knittings of the brows in which only stage Iagos ever indulge. About Mr. Irving's Iago, on the, other hand, there was too much effort, too much "affectation of a bright-eyed ease," too palpable a simulation of foppish jauntiness not consistent either with Iago's character or position, too constant a desire to provoke attention when others were by. Along with this, the actor, it seemed to us, had recourse in his soliloquies to an excess of little artifices, intended to give an appearance of spontaneousness to the act of thinking, but which produced exactly the opposite effect, while throughout there was too much of the crafty restless look and of the cynical self-gratulation, which are more appropriate to the villain of melodrama than to the smooth and ingrained hypocrite of the Machiavellian type.

One advantage Mr. Booth had in both characters over his brilliant