spirit, or Juliet reclined upon the couch covered with a cloth, that did duty for the tomb of the Capulets-had become a sight to be remembered, but to be seen no more at Drury Lane. Costume had begun to claim attention, and though an officer's scarlet coat was still the recognised dress of Macbeth and Othello, and Hotspur continued to appear in a Ramillies wig, Hamlet had thrown aside the clergyman's long coat and waistcoat with big flaps, the cast-off clothes of the nobility and gentry had been discarded, at least by the leading performers, and Mrs. Woffington and Mrs. Cibber had swept the stage in silks and satins of their own. Here we see the dawn of the genius for millinery which in our day has sometimes developed into eclipsing propor

tions.

turned into a vehicle for the display of the actor. The mind of the play had ceased to be of the first importance; it had become secondary to the embodiment. Idealism, proportion of character, harmony of design, all gave way to stage effect. Hence the small quantity of dramatic workmanship of that period which has survived its own day, and hence the tampering with Shakespeare which at that time had become a habit so confirmed, that the actors themselves were sometimes not aware of the fact. "What!" exclaimed Quin-the first tragedian of his day until Garrick's arrival-when he heard that Garrick was going

to produce Macbeth as Shakespeare wrote it, "Do I not play Macbeth as Shakespeare wrote it ?"

The version that was being susperseded was Davenant's, the one associated with Locke's music, and in which Lady Macbeth towards the end becomes repentant, and exhorts her husband in this strain :

There has been too much blood already spilt,

Make not your subjects victims to your guilt.

Macbeth. Resign my crown, and with it both our lives?

I must have better counsellors. L. Macbeth.

What your witches, Curse on your messengers of Hell!

Their breaths

Infected first my breath. See me no

more

As king your crown sits heavy on your head,

But heavier on my heart. I have had too much Of kings already.

again!

See the ghost

There was not a play of Shakespeare's on the stage that had not been "improved." Garrick himself amended and patched more than once. His " Katherine and Petruchio' is still occasionally played, and the love scene which he added at the end of "Romeo and Juliet" is generally retained even now that we have become purists as to Shakespeare. The Richard III. by which Garrick first made himself famous was Colley Cibber's adaptation. In the version of 66 King Lear" then acted, Edgar was made to be in love with Cordelia, and a scene between the lovers is said to have been one of the most affecting in the play, which ended happily.

In these days when such profanity on the part of the actor in his heyday has found a retribution in the fact that he has become subsidiary to beautiful scenery and accurate costume, it is peculiarly difficult to form an idea of what

that acting was that absorbed all the attention now shared by the accessories: that could cause a thousand deficiencies and absurdities to be overlooked, that could year after year draw full houses to witness stock pieces, much in the same manner as people nowadays are drawn season after season to hear the same round of operas. It would be easier to conjure up, by means of the descriptions that have been handed down to us, some image of what great acting was, if, by means of our current experience, we could form an idea of what great, acting is. The

English stage affords at present no instance of a great actor. Mr. Irving, who enjoys a larger following than any other English tragedian, after advancing step by step for a number of years, at length essayed a Shakesperean character, and was thought by some in the first burst of enthusiasm to have restored the palmy days of the drama. In Hamlet, with his philosophic musings, and sudden and short ebullitions of fantastic passion, Mr. Irving was well suited, and his scene with the players was not open to the accusation brought by some of his contemporaries against Garrick, of being too didactic. But Mr. Irving has certain slight physical defects, which must always seriously tell against him. His voice is not only weak but unsympathetic, and the artificial methods by which he labours to correct its monotony fall very far short of nature. Certain marked peculiarities, too, of carriage and manner manifest themselves in every character he undertakes, in spite of the perfection of his skill.

In parts like Macbeth and Othello, which call for the exhibition of vigorous and sustained passion, Mr. Irving wholly fails to make us forget the actor in the

character. America has sent us an actor in Mr. Jefferson, who, in the part with which he has made us familiar, is perfection. In the current of understanding he establishes with his audience, by which the expression of Rip's unuttered thoughts is conveyed through a look, a trivial gesture, a passing expression of the face, a pause, or an arrested action, we gain some notion of the eloquence, apart from speech, which formed so important an element of Garrick's power. Of tragic acting by far the finest specimen recently seen on the English stage is that of Signor Salvini. Each character he assumes becomes a distinct and individual embodiment. The soul with which he endows his impersonation shines with a force of truth and reality in spite of the drawback of a foreign language. The scenery may be old and the dresses dingy; but we know nothing but that there stands Othello, or Hamlet, or the Gladiator. Yet,

apart from the fact that different kinds of great acting produce similar effects, we can form from Salvini only an imperfect idea of what Garrick was like. Nothing could be wider than the physical differences between the two men, Salvini being of massive build, of great bodily strength and power of lung; while Garrick was of low stature, possessed a slight figure, and a voice not very strong. Even though we might take it for granted that there was the same husbanding of power, and, upon occasion, the same overwhelming bursts of passion, there would still be wanting in Salvini, partly in consequence of the too great development of our theatres, in which facial expression is lost at any distance, those fine workings of the countenance which so distinguished Garrick. It will be readily understood that an absorbing effect must have been pro

duced by a play of feature answering so rapidly to the thought, as to anticipate the words, or, it may be, betraying a contradiction between words and thought. It is easy to imagine how the alarm expressed by retreating body and distended fingers would be heightened by the inspired expression that came over Garrick's face in Hamlet when he first sees the Ghost. Unite with this language of the face the tragedy of Salvini and the comedy of Jefferson, and a notion may be gained of what went to make a Garrick. It was in a Shakesperean width and depth of range. that Garrick surpassed all the other members of that brilliant band which seemed to have been called into existence by his early triumph. Barry might rival him as Romeo, Sheridan or Mossop might be superior in Hotspur or Faulconbridge where the quality of robustness was in demand; but no one had so various and so complete a hold upon his audience, no one could work such magic over its laughter, its tears, its pity, and its terror. An ominous chill of fear used to pass over the theatre as King Lear, being gradually wrought upon by the growing perception of his daughter's ingratitude, threw away his crutch, clasped his hands, and turning his eyes to heaven, fell upon his knees. Then, "with extended arms, and clenched hands, with set teeth, and a savage distraction in his look, trembling in every limb, and with eyes pointed to heaven, he launches into the famous curse with a broken, eager, inward utterance, gradually rising in every line in loudness and rapidity of utterance, until all at once he is struck with his daughter's ingratitude, and bursting into tears, with a most sorrowful tone of voice, he says, Go-go my people.'"

In such terms was the rendering

of the curse in Lear pictured by an unfriendly eye-witness. The wellknown passage from Tom Jones describing Partridge's visit to the theatre is such a happy piece of indirect criticism, and is of such assistance in forming an impression of what Garrick was like, that we cannot refrain from quoting parts of it.

"As soon as the play, which was 'Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,' began, Partridge was all attention; nor did he break silence till the entrance of the ghost, upon which he asked Jones, 'What man that was in the strange dress; something,' said he, like what I have seen in a picture. Sure it is not armour, is it ?'

"Jones answered, That is the ghost.'

"To which Partridge replied with a smile, 'Persuade me to that, sir, if you can. Though I can't say I ever actually saw a ghost in my life, yet I am certain I should know one if I saw him better than that comes to. No, no, sir, ghosts don't appear in such dresses as that neither.' In this mistake, which caused much laughter in the neighbourhood of Partridge, he was suffered to continue until the scene between the ghost and Hamlet, when Partridge gave that credit to Mr. Garrick which he had denied to Jones, and fell into so violent a trembling that his knees knocked against each other. Jones asked him what was the matter, and whether he was afraid of the warrior upon the stage. 'Oh, la, sir,' said he, 'I perceive now it is what told me. you I am not afraid of anything, for I know it is but a play; and if it was really a ghost it could do one no harm at such a distance and in So much company; and yet if I was frightened, I am not the only person.'

666

Why, who,' cries Jones, 'dost

"Jones offered to speak, but Partridge cried, 'Hush, hush, dear sir, don't you hear him?' And during the whole speech of the ghost he sat with his eyes fixed partly on the ghost and partly on Hamlet, and with his mouth open; the same passions which succeeded each other in Hamlet succeeding likewise in him. .

"At the end of the play Jones asked him which of the players he had liked best?

"To this he answered, with some appearance of indignation at the question, The King, without doubt.'

"Indeed, Mr. Partridge,' says Mrs. Miller, You are not of the same opinion with the town; for they are all agreed that Hamlet is acted by the best player who was ever on the stage.'

"He the best player!' cries Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer, Why, I could act as well as he myself. I am sure if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner and done just as he did. . . . . I know you are only joking with me; but, indeed, Madam, though I was never at a play in London, yet I have seen acting before in the country; and the King for my money; he speaks all his words distinctly, half as loud again as the other. Anybody may see he is an actor.""

There is a story vouched for by Johnson as having been told to him by Peter Garrick, of a Lichfield grocer, who, having business in London, went one evening to Drury Lane, for Garrick, being a Lichfield

man, and the brother of a Lichfield magnate, was much talked of among the class to whom London was as unknown as fairyland. The play was the "Alchemist," with Garrick as Abel Drugger. The first sensation called up in the mind of the worthy matter-of-fact tradesman at the sight of Abel Drugger was one of disappointment. As the action proceeded he became disgusted, and at last honestly indignant; and on his return to Lichfield when he next encountered Mr. Peter Garrick, he exclaimed, "Well, by G————, sir, though he be your brother, he's one of the shabbiest, meanest, most pitiful hounds I ever saw in the whole course of my life."

It was not alone, however, the simple and inexperienced who felt the truth and nature Garrick infused into most of the characters he assumed. Those whom long habit might naturally have rendered proof against the effect of simulated emotion were remarkably sensitive to his influence; and we hear of actors upon the stage with him controlled and disconcerted by the peculiar spell of his eye; of Mrs. Siddons' declaration that she never forgot the terror with which he had once inspired her by a look; and of the sentry on the stage, in tears at the sight of King Lear's woes. We know, too, how Mrs. Clive stood fuming one night at the wing waiting to give the manager a fishwife's lecture upon his exit. While standing there the pathos of the scene overcame her; she wept and swore alternately, and at last cried out, "Damn him, he could act a gridiron."

thirty years been contradicting an old-established proverb-you cannot make bricks without straw; but you have done what is infinitely more difficult, for you have made actors and actresses without genius." The practical ability which words like these remind us that Garrick possessed, and the patience, tact, and temper that he brought to bear upon the routine business of his career, might be illustrated ad infinitum by the testimony of his own correspondence, or the correspondence of others with him. We might see him, now parrying with clear-headed coolness the thrusts prompted by disappointment or rejection; now winning by his suavity the gratitude, or at least the respect, of his opponent; now expressing the pleasure he feels at an acknowledgment of indebtedness voluntarily proffered by the only actor of his day who ever approached the variety of his own excellence; now the subject of an encomium by a famous novelist* who, finding his antipathy melted by unlookedfor generosity on the part of the manager, endeavours thus to "make atonement in a work of truth, for wrongs done him in a work of fiction." But there is no need to

The

multiply instances of this kind. We have seen an aptitude for dealing with the prosaic difficulties of daily life to have been among the earliest indications of Garrick's character, and the unquestioned facts of his career are in consonance with that early trait. The extraordinary union of two faculties rarely met together affords a striking parallel between Garrick and the author of whose works he was the greatest interpreter the world had seen. range of both extended over every passion, every humour, and in each the highest genius was joined with the most practical common sense. But how different is the ultimate fate of the actor and the poet! To the second attribute Shakespeare owes nothing of his posthumous fame; but who will say that the name of Garrick would not have faded into a mere tradition, but for the prosaic quality that made him, as the adroit and wealthy manager of Drury Lane, an employer of labour, a keeper of the gates of Fame, a powerful friend of men in power, a centre round which pleasure, wit, and ambition revolved; a figure reflecting itself in the literature, nay, in the very history of his time?