The cessation of such talents as Mr Kemble possessed, from their wonted exercise, strongly forces upon us the regret, that so little can be done to fix, and preserve, and recal those effects which never failed to excite admiration. Even that little is only in the power of the pencil or the chisel; words are quite impotent in seizing and reproducing those grand but fleeting impressions. But though it is not in our power to conjure up a picture as bright, or a monument as palpable as the reality, we must yet be allowed to indulge for a little in the recollection of what afforded us delight, however dim and shadowy our reminiscences may be. Among all the present competitors for theatrical fame, there is scarcely any similarity to Kemble. Never was an actor more highly gifted by Nature in all the exterior qualities that enforce admiration. His person was the model of majesty. His face was cast in the finest mould of Roman beauty, and an eye, like the eagle's, told that the mind within was not inferior in grace or in power. An air of inherent dignity attended his every motion. He spoke he moved-he looked like a king. His attitudes were such as Canova might study; and without extravagance, sometimes when you gazed upon his exquisitely formed features, the dark rolling of his matchless eye, the grace and dignity of his erect forehead, the imposing march of his majestic and symmetrical form, and all these animated, uplifted, sublimed by some lofty thought, there fleeted across the mind for a moment, the bright idea of something more than human. Quite in unison with these extraordinary personal qualities was the perfect propriety of his taste, both in costume and in gesture, both in the external decoration of the stage, (when that was under his control,) and in his picturesque disposition of all the impulse and direction. His very dress and figures to whom he gave groupes spoke. It possessed you at once with a correct conception of the assumed character, and prepared you for its particular course of sentiment and action. He never made his entrée, as Garrick sometimes used to do, to commune with the witches on the blasted heath, in a laced coat, powdered wig, and silk stockings; nor did he ever strut his Roman generalship across the stage in tight buckskins, and military boots varnished with Warren's most poetical jet-gloss. If he came before you as the murderer of Duncan, you saw him appear in the true Scottish garb; if he personated the Roman, the very folds of his drapery were classical. When he sat in the chair of the self-devoted Patriot, you were never offended by beholding the contemplations of Plato modernized, (as is commonly the case on the stage,) into the form of a neat printed octavo: he presented them under their original appearance, having restored them to their scroll of papyrus or parchment. That Mr Kemble was all-perfect, we are far from asserting. Imperfection attaches itself to every thing human; and as he must be a cynic indeed, to whose eye the sun appears darker, because his telescope has discovered a few spots on its disk, so where, as in Kemble, we meet with an assemblage of rare and noble qualities, we must be worse than peevish if we reject and despise them, because they are mingled with some alloy. What most disappointed an audience in Mr Kemble was the weakness of his voice, which corresponded so little with the power and full developement of his other physical qualities. The amplitude of his chest and the grandeur of his whole aspect gave you reason to expect a voice of thunder; and it was not a little vexatious when the big effort passed without effect, and the travailing of the mountain produced nothing but a mouse. Yet after all, perhaps, this defect has been exaggerated. Since many actors less gifted with other essentials have contrived to out-herod him by dint of brazen lungs, and since both his taste and his natural capabilities refused to accompany these Bombastes Furiosos into all the excess of their vulgar vociferation; the richness of his modulation, the intelligence and refinement of his elocution, seem to have been lost sight of. It has been also clamorously objected, that his art was too apparent, that his pompous dignity was so incessantly maintained as to be obtrusive and disgusting; that he too rigorously observed Hamlet's rule of " acquiring and begetting a temperance in the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of passion," which, if it gave smoothness to the whole, gave also a pitiful tameness; that every gesture was measured with minute precision; that he never ventured to move a step, or even to wave his hand without the most cautious study; that he was far too anxious about the grouping and disposing of the subordinate stagepuppets, so that you forgot the hero in the drill-serjeant, and had the fine illusion of the august Roman too of ten broken by the intrusion of the schooled and imperative Mr Kemble; that, in short, he never burst away, like Cooke or Kean, from the trammels of methodical precision in the irregular career of tempestuous passion. All these deficiencies and overdoings were very pointedly put in some lines of a poem called the Thespiad. Precise in passion, cautious even in rage, Lo! Kemble comes, the Euclid of the stage; Who moves in given angles, squares a start, And blows his Roman beak by rules of art, Writhes with a grace to agony unknown, And gallops half an octave in a groan. These vituperations were in some instances just, but they were often urged in ignorance by minute critics who could not expand their minds to a comprehension of the whole, who could only nibble bit by bit, and count the beats of their stop-watches. That very stoical apathy of manner which offended their fustian taste, was a virtue and a mark of magnanimity in the personation of most of his characters, the tone of which (we except Hamlet and a few others) was of that lofty and severe cast, that they aimed at repelling instead of yielding to the agency of human passions, and stood far aloof from the petty jealousies and agitating moods of meaner minds. Certainly Kemble could not adapt himself to all characters. He had not the tact and versatility of Garrick, and his representation during the course of the same piece was frequently very unequal. Thus, his Hamlet had too much of the "antique Roman" in it to be perfect. He could not soften himself down into that pensive softness with which the exquisite fancy of the poet has invested the young Dane. He bore his inevitable melancholy with too heroic and unbending a fortitude; nor did he display with sufficient delicacy that superficial sportiveness of behaviour which, in the reserved and hear:-stricken Hamlet, conceals deep grief and distraction of mind, and makes them more pathetic and more alarming. He had not tact for the accommodating amiableness of the. young prince's manners. Always sustained, he seemed not to acquiesce in the author's humour for ease and familiarity, and to feel it somewhat like a derogation from his dignity to smile with the gay and to laugh with the giddy. Perhaps he had not fathomed the delicate metaphysics, of the character. But for princely dignity of mien and air, for exalted thoughtfulness and pensive philosophy, who could surpass Mr Keinble? His sarcastic reception of the hireling spies upon his conduct, the bitter taunts with which he upbraids his uncle-father and aunt-mother, were quite exquisite, fitted to blast and wither those on whom they fell. In the earlier scenes of Richard III., where the mind must be distorted and compressed under the mask of dissimulation, he was not happy; but, when Richard throws off entirely the cloak of hypocrisy under which he crept to the throne, and breaks out into all the pride and recklessness of avowed despotism, Kemble could give the direct impression of his energetic character better than any man; nor in his earlier years did he yield to any in the bustling bravery of the fight, or in the fearful hideousness of the catastrophe. The character of Zanga was more suited to his powers,-a prince degraded into the state of servitude,—born under higher auspices than the petty lord to whom he is condemned to bow in reluctant submission,—tortured by the poignant sense of wrongs can hast slain! &c. But the character of Macbeth, in which he took farewell of Scotland, was altogether his own. Before the murder of Duncan, he exquisitely mingled his vaulting ambition with the misgivings and the relentings of Nature; and, after the murder, we conceive nothing approaching nearer to the fearful truth than the throbs, and throes, and agonies of soul, which lacerate and rend him, than the inquietude which haunts his footsteps wherever he goes,-than the basilisk-terrors which startle him even in the sunshine, glare upon him from the hell-illumined cavern, or sting him on his lonely pillow. Oh! full of scorpions is my mind.- Whoever has seen the rich combina- that Shakespeare could have seen it! excellence. It was only when he had It was when he ascended the steps of the Capitol to bid a tyrant die,-it was when he stood proudly among the relics of the Roman senate, and urged his fellow-patriots to win freedom's battle, or to fall,-it was when he daringly presented himself among his enemies as the wronged outcast from his country, the vindictive asserter of his rights,-that the full congenial majesty of his character shone gloriously forth. Then, as was fitting, we lost sight of the actor entirely, and beheld-not Mr Kemble, but Brutus, and Cato, and Coriolanus alternately before us, and it was impossible to resist the impression that -the Genius of old Rome Up from the grave had raised his reverend head, Roused by the shout of millions. We cannot quote the language of the poet throughout the whole evolution of these characters, and, of course, we cannot do justice to Mr Kemble's representation of them; yet we feel pleasure in particularizing a few beau ties that live more prominently in the memory. We shall pass over all the rest, to come to his Coriolanus, which of all his characters is most closely associated with our idea of him, and most intensely reverts upon our admiration. In his person the conceptions of the poet met with their perfect prototype. The very beau-ideal of Roman majesty moved before the audience. There you beheld the unbending soul, whom scarce the endearment of kindred could soften from the utmost sternness of its purpose, glowing with all the generous ardour of patriotism, till hurried by injury into sweeping and impetuous revenge. These were elements which found in Mr Kemble the most congenial energies, and which kindled his heroic countenance and mind into their proudest and most forceful display. When, in the first scene, he comes forth, the haughty patrician among the mutinous plebeian rabble, even before a word is uttered, the spectator is arrested to gaze on the noblest form he had ever seen, rearing itself into the most majestic attitude, and quelling with a look of conscious authority the tumult of the crowd, his right arm erected in fearless command,-his chest distended with confidence and courage,-his purple robe magnificently depending from his shoulder, as if it shared in the wearer's triumph. Nor is the deep and settled disdain with which he contemplates the multitude assembled before him more in character than that proud exultation in which all the warrior breaks out, when he finds an enemy worthy of his prowess,-when he learns that the Volscians are in arms, with Tullus Aufidius at their head. you, His absolute shall,-shall! "There was a laughing devil in his sneer." In like manner, when one of the tribunes comes to drag him before the people, his fearless and resolute dignity sends the daring, officious fool from his presence, like a sparrow scared away by an eagle. Cor. Hence, or I shall shake thy bones Out of thy garments! Throughout the scene, which ends in the banishment of Coriolanus, Mr Kemble's genius pervaded the whole theatre with his own feelings of haughty disdain. You beheld a mighty mind, unsubdued by indignity, pouring back confusion upon the pigmy dispensers of his fate. Who, that has ever seen it, will forget his appearance in the Volscian camp, when, in an attitude of most solemn grandeur, and with an expression of eye and countenance that would have mocked even the imitative efforts of Apelles, he stands by the statue of Mars, as if his spirit vied fabled god? It more than justified the with the prowess and the pride of the exclamation of the Volscian officer, present themselves before him, and with tears and melting appeals entreat him to quit the Volscian camp, and be again the saviour of his country. The conflict betwixt affection and vengeance was sustained as Nature would have sustained it. In the two simple words, "Leave me!" there was a world of expression, a terrible picture of the distraction that was tearing his soul in twain. The choked utterance seemed not to come from the lips, but to burst from the quivering cores of the heart. point of poetic excellence, it is intend- Once more, what a deluge of passion breaks out upon Aufidius in the last scene! It was not sport to call him a Boy of tears. The depth of anger, astonishment, and disdain with which he reiterated the word Boy, carried in it something sublime, and sealed upon the audience an ineffaceable impression of the firmest manliness, the proudest magnanimity. Measureless liar! thou hast made my Too big for what contains it-Boy! If you have writ your annals true, 'tis nished in my last are vigorous, cha there, That, like an eagle in a dove-cot, I heart ON THE ENGLISH DRAMATIC WRIT- No. V. IN my last article, which brought the English drama down to the year 1587, I gave several disjointed quotations from the tragedy of the Misfortunes of Arthur," by Thomas Hughes. I was well convinced at the time, that the striking character of those passages would attract considerable attention to that almost unknown, and I may say without qualification, admirable production, written by a person hitherto a non-entity in our literary history, and partially prepared by unquestionably the greatest man of an age in which great men abounded. Every body knows in how many different shapes Gorboduc has appeared within the last thirty or forty years-how often it has been reprinted, extracted, criticised, and dissected, as forming of itself an era in our drama; and I now learn, that in consequence of what has been so recently said of the "Misfortunes of Arthur," a work infinitely superior in racteristic, and poetical. But for this fact, which I consider undeniable, I should not have laid so much stress upon the piece, but hitherto Sackville's heavy prosing tragedy has not only been loaded with more praise than is due to it, but has absorbed much of the applause merited by productions nearly contemporary. "The Misfortunes of Arthur" being unknown to them, we cannot blame Warton and others for not paying tribute to it. As a favourable opportunity is now afforded, I will extract a part of a scene between Mordred the usurper and Conan, an honest counsellor, which will give the reader something of an idea of the spirited mode in which the dialogue is generally conducted: it is from Act ii. scene 2, after Mordred has sustained his first defeat. Conan. O spare, t'weare saffer to be lou'de. |