II.

THE ART OF EDWIN BOOTH.

"In the first seat, in robe of various dyes, A noble wildness flashing from his eyes, Sat SHAKESPEARE.

In one hand a wand he bore,
For mighty wonders fam'd in days of yore;
The other held a globe, which to his will
Obedient turn'd, and own'd the master's skill:
Things of the noblest kind his genius drew,
And look'd thro' Nature at a single view:

A loose he gave to his unbounded soul,

And taught new lands to rise, new seas to roll;
Call'd into being scenes unknown before,

And, passing Nature's bounds, was something more."

CHURCHILL.

II.

THE ART OF EDWIN BOOTH.

HAMLET.

OOTH'S impersonation of Hamlet was one of the best known works of the dramatic age. In many minds the actor and the character had become identical, and it is not to be doubted that Booth's performance of Hamlet will live, in commemorative dramatic history, with great representative embodiments of the stagewith Garrick's Lear, Kemble's Coriolanus, Edmund Kean's Richard, Macready's Macbeth, Forrest's Othello, and Irving's Mathias, and Becket. That it deserved historic permanence is the conviction of a great body of thoughtful students of Shakespeare and of the art of acting, in Great Britain and Germany as well as in America. In the elements of intellect, imagination, sublimity, mystery, tenderness, incipient delirium, and morbid passion, it was exactly consonant with what the best analysis has determined as to the conception of Shakespeare; while in sustained vigour, picturesque variety, and beautiful grace of execution, it was a model of executive art, of demeanour, as the atmosphere of the soul, facial play, gesticulation, and fluent and spontaneous delivery of the text; a delivery that made the blank verse as natural in its effect as

161

blank verse ought to be, or can be, without ever dropping it to the level of colloquialism and commonplace.

In each of Booth's performances a distinguishing attribute was simplicity of treatment, and that was significantly prominent in his portrayal of Hamlet. The rejection of all singularity and the avoidance of all meretricious ornament resulted in a sturdy artistic honesty, which could not be too much admired. The figure stood forth, distinct and stately, in a clear light. The attitudes, movements, gestures, and facial play combined in a fabric of symmetry and of always adequate expression. The text was spoken with ample vocal power and fine flexibility. The illustrative "business" was strictly accordant with the wonderful dignity and high intellectual worth of Shakespeare's creation. The illusion of the part was created with an almost magical sincerity, and was perfectly preserved. Booth's Hamlet was as Hamlet on the stage should always be an imaginative and poetic figure; and yet it was natural. To walk upon the stage with the blank verse stored in memory, with every particle of the business prearranged, with every emotion aroused yet controlled, and every effect considered, known, and pre-ordained, and yet to make the execution of a design seem involuntary and spontaneous, that is the task set for the actor, and that task was accomplished by Booth.

Much is heard about "nature" in acting, and about the necessity of "feeling," on the part of an actor. The point has been too often obscured by ignorant or careless reasoning. An actor who abdicates intellectual supremacy ceases to be an actor, for he never can present a consistent and harmonious work. To yield to

unchecked feeling is to go to pieces. The actor who makes his audience weep is not he who himself weeps, but he who seems to weep. He will have the feeling, but he will control it and use it, and he will not show it in the manner of actual life. Mrs. Siddons said of herself that she had got credit for the truth and feeling of her acting, when she was only relieving her own heart of its grief; but Mrs. Siddons knew how to act, whatever were her personal emotions, for it was she who admonished a young actor, saying, "You feel too much." Besides, every artist has a characteristic, individual way. If the representative of Hamlet will express the feelings of Hamlet, will convey them to his audience, and will make the poetic ideal an actual person, it makes no difference whether he is excited or quiescent. Feeling did not usually run away with Dion Boucicault: yet he could act Daddy O'Dowd so as to convulse an audience with sympathy and grief. Jefferson, the quintessence of tenderness, has often accomplished the same result with Rip Van Winkle. In one case the feeling was assumed and controlled; in the other, it is experienced and controlled. Acting is an art, and not a spasm; and when you saw Booth as Hamlet you saw a noble exemplification of that art, -the ideal of a poet, supplied with a physical investiture and made actual and natural, yet not lowered to the level of common life.

or,

The tenderness of Hamlet toward Ophelia rather, toward his ideal of Ophelia was always set in a strong light, in Booth's acting of the part. He likewise gave felicitous expression to a deeper view of that subject to Hamlet's pathetic realisation that