nouncements of the theatre, we shall find that, in the one case, there was a constant repetition of established dramas, in the other, there is a rapid succession of novelties. If we examine these documents more minutely, Iwe shall discover, also, that, while the scenepainter and the upholsterer are now at least as important personages as the performers, then the main burden of the play ly on the actors' shoulders. Now the effect of repeating accredited dramas was to render the performer more skilful, to improve his manipulation of character, to concentrate his attention upon the details of his art. To make up for the superficial attractions of novelty, he was compelled to give a higher finish to his habitual impersonations. Whatever may have been the demerits of theatrical monopoly, it possessed this inestimable advantage to the actors. They played better individually and collectively. They were animated by a common spirit, and by an emulation not always ungenerous. To sustain the character of the house was no unusual or unworthy ambition. 66 man It appears to us, moreover, that the elder actors proposed to themselves a different, and, in some respects, a higher standard of art, than prevails among their present representatives. They may have been more nered," for the age to which they played was more precise and formal. This, however, was an accident of their generation, balanced by other and perhaps less artistic peculiarities in our own. We believe the elder school to have been more ideal. They held fast at least one principle of art of the highest value and moment. They were not content with a succession of fragmentary efforts; they aimed at unity of effect; they were not disposed to accept of occasional bursts of passion as a compensation for the neglect of the harmony and repose which enter so largely into every genuine work of art. They estimated the performance on the stage rather by its total veracity than by its spasmodic and irregular strength-even as they would have preferred the chastised grace of Reynolds to the exuberant and capricious fancy of Turner. There may have been somewhat too much of system, too elaborate a display of art, in the declamation of John Kemble; and we, whose ears are unused to such modulations, and inured, if not reconciled, to the harsh and broken tones of modern elocution, should very possibly be affected with a feeling of surprise if we heard Hamlet or Macbeth so intoned. Be this as it may, the art of re generally is among the lost arts of the stage, and has been supplanted by a trick of enunciation that relieves the dramatic poet from any obligation to write in poetic measures. Throughout his career, Charles Kemble reflected the influences of his early discipline. He was, in the first place, a veracious actor, neither adding to nor falling short of the conceptions of his author. He was, moreover, a most industrious and painstaking actor, thinking nothing done while aught remained to do; inspired with a high ideal, assiduously striving to reach it, and probably in his own conception-for such are the feelings of every genuine artist-never wholly attaining it. He loved his vocation with all his mind and with all his strength. He was not one of those actors who regard their efforts as task-work, and rejoice when the mask is laid aside. He highly rated his profession, as one ministering to the intellect and the heart of man-as at once the mirror and the auxiliary of the poet, the painter, and the sculptor. All his opportunities were made subservient to it-his reading, his travels, his observation of man and man's works, of society, of nature, of contemporary actors, native and foreign. In all respects, the work he had in hand he wrought diligently. He had none of the petty jealousies of his profession. At the zenith of his reputation he would undertake characters which inferior actors would have declined as derogatory. He envied no one; he supplanted and impeded no one. For his art he was often jealous-never for himself. He possessed, in an eminent degree, the love of excellence; but he was no seeker of preeminence. Stanch in maintaining his opinions as to the proper scope and import of acting, he was tolerant of opposition, and prompt in discovering and acknowledging me it in others. His career as an actor began in one generation, and terminated in another. It commenced at Sheffield in 1792, and closed at Covent Garden Theatre in 1840. During that period revolutions took place, both in social life and in literature, which directly and in various ways affected both the form and substance of the drama. Within the first twenty years of the present century a new literature arose-a literature which differed essentially from that of either the sixteenth or the eighteenth centuries. The wits of Queen Anne's reign would have deemed the productions of Byron and Scott as a recurrence to the earlier and ruder periods of Elizabeth; the Elizabethan poets would of decline were as yet in ope dons, though somewhat pa still in the full majesty of mat John Kemble stood confess successor of Betterton, Q Nor, although they were ture proudly eminent, were A host of actors, the least whom might now be the p London theatre, seconded a the spear side, Bensley, Hol and Barrymore on the s Powell, Mrs. Crawford, M In this most high and pa drama, and before audiences tible of emotion and skilful younger Kemble made his in the tragedy of Macbeth, ordinate character of Malcol The earlier impersonatio who rises gradually in hi rarely remarked at the time afterwards. We have, how den's testimony to the "p Kemble's acting" in Guid princely demeanor in Malcol as the representative of se his powers were first man who are old enough to remen Macbeth, and Coriolanus of ther; or the Lady Macbeth Mrs. Beverley of his match also recall the younger Kem energy in Macduff, the classi Aufidius, and the pathos he Lewson. We do not select as among his best, but merel of his powers as an auxiliary artists of his youthful days. parts he was indeed at all tim and he continued to perform he occupied the foremost stat of scenic artists. How full c and good humor was his humorous and true his dru Cassio; bow fraught with no Othello's dismissal of his "of the only Laertes whom it w see in collision with Hamlet; well worthy of the tears and sey. We have great pleasure i evidence of an excellent judg support our own recollectio Kemble. goer), saw an actor with more bu I never (says Mr. Robson, it than Charles Kemble; Lewis had city, airiness, and sparkle, but I and his Leonatus in Cymbeline. He was the compared with Charles. Who ever played a drunken gentleman as he did? His efforts to pick up his hat, in Charles Oakley, were the most laughable, the most ridiculous, the most natural, that can be imagined. I have seen him perform the character of Friar Tuck, in a dramatic version of Mr. Peacock's Maid Marian, with such an extraordinary abandonment and gusto, that you were forced back to the "jolly green wood and the forest bramble." He absolutely rollicked through the part, as if he had lived all his life with Robin and his men, quaffing fat ale and devouring venison-pasties. But perhaps his masterpiece in this way was Cassio, the insidious creep-revelled in youth, high spirit, and lusty ing of the "devil" upon his senses; the hilarity of bachelorhood: in the last, his scene with the intoxication, the tongue cleaving to the roof of Bravoes and the "Red Burgundy" was for the mouth, and the lips glued together; the con- its depth of passion equalled alone by Kean's fusion, the state of loss of self, if I may so term it, agony and death in Overreach. when he received the rebuke of Othello, and the wonderful truthfulness of his getting sober, were beyond description fine, nay, real. No drunken scene I ever saw on a stage was comparable to it. But the continued labor, the earnest study, and unwearied self-examination pursued for many years, were rewarded by greater achievements than even these, and crowned, at length, with the highest recompense which an actor can receive for his efforts-viz., that after witnessing his performance of particular characters the spectator ever afterwards, even in his solitary studies and remembrances, embodies the poet's creations in the very image of the actor himself. The names of Faulconbridge and Mark Antony instantly evoke the person, the tones, and the look of Charles Kemble. In the one we had before us the express image of the mediæval warrior, in the other, that of the Roman triumvir. His Faulconbridge bore us back to Runnymede and the group of "barons bold" who wrested the "great charter" from the craven John. His Mark Antony transported us to the Forum and the Capitol, to the Xth Legion at Pharsalia, to Alexandrian revels, and to the great Actian triumph. "In such characters" we again appeal to the Old Play-goer he just hit the difficult mark. He was noble without bluster; self-possessed without apparent effort; energetic without bombast; elegant without conceit." ། With the single exception of Garrick, Charles Kemble played well-we emphasize the word, because other actors whom we have seen, have been ambitious of variety, and imagined they could assume diversified powers when nature had denied them-the widest range of characters on record. If he had no equal in Benedict, neither had he in Jaffier; if his Leon and Don Felix were un We should exceed our limits without exhausting the list of characters in which Charles Kemble had no equal, and in which, without a combination of the same personal and intellectual qualities, and the same strenuous cultivation of them, we shall never look upon his like again. Slightly changing the arrangement of the words, we take Mr. Hamilton Reynolds' admirable lines as the fittest expression of our conviction, that with Charles Kemble departed from the stage the gentleman of high life, and the representative of the classic or romantic hero: We shall never again see the spirit infuse he ran, All the soul of the soldier- the heart of the man. We shall never in Cyprus his revels retrace, In his provincial engagements at all times, and latterly on the metropolitan boards, Charles Kemble performed a range of characters for which his talents or his temperament were not so well adapted as for parts of chivalry, sentiment, or comic humor. He played Shylock, Macbeth, and Othello occasionally, but not with the marked success of his Hamlet, Romeo, or Pierre. His performance of this order of characters arose, latterly at least, from the circumstance that he alone, from his position and reputation, was qualified to support in tragedy his accomplished daughter, on whom had descended the mantle of Mrs. Siddons. But whether it proceeded from his theory of art, or from his peculiar idiosyncrasy, Charles Kemble, so excellent in the representation of sentiment. passion. His Shylock has been commended | in his demeanor, unfavora by no incompetent judge for "its parental transitions and vivid flashe tenderness;" but the infusion of tenderness such impersonations requi into Shylock's nature we conceive to have perhaps, also the correspo been an error. Shylock may have been deficiencies-a want of int attached to Jessica as a wolf to its cub; but concentrating power. An if he loved her at all, he loved gold and re- consciously, his theory of a venge more; and Shakspeare has, in our opin- regard too much the occa ion, afforded no hint of this palliating virtue the more intense and uncon in his Jew. On the contrary, in her pre- and to direct his attention sence, Shylock's language to Jessica is stern and more fleeting shades of and abrupt; and after she has forsaken him, derness, grace, the elabora his lamentations are rather for his ducats and strokes of the picture, and Leah's ring, than for his daughter. Again, of the whole. Mr. Kemble's Moor was certainly of a noble and loving nature, and his form and bearing afforded a good excuse for Desdemona's preference of him to the "curled darlings of her nation." But his Roman features and his elaborate manipulation of the character were not so well suited to the rapid alternations of Othello from absorbing love to consuming anger, from profound tenderness to yet more profound despair, from faith to doubt, from accomplished though erring retribution to overwhelming and fathomless remorse. His impersonation of the Moor was too statuesque, and beside the quickening spirit of terror and pity which Edmund Kean infused into the part, seemed unreal, and was ineffective. Macbeth, again, was a character in which Mr. Kemble, if it be compared with his other impersonations-for we are now contrasting him with himself in various parts-was less distinguished. Perhaps the recollection of his brother's preeminence in the Thane of Fife acted as a drawback upon his own conceptions, and affected him with a kind of despair of rivalry or reproduction. But his performance of it lacked the usual individuality of his historical and heroic parts: his Macbeth was as much "an antique Roman as a Dane;" in his Antony, the real man seemed to have revisited the glimpses of the moon; but on the heath and at the Palace of Scone the historical veracity was less marked. For the line of characters, indeed, in which Edmund Kean surpassed all the actors of this century-Othello, Shylock, Richard, Overreach, &c.-Charles Kemble needed certain physical qualifications. The dulcet tones of his voice, which in Romeo and Hamlet went home to the hearts of his audience on the wings of the noble poetry it uttered, were less adapted to convey the trumpet notes, the anguish, and the wail of darker passions. There were also a faintness of coloring in his face, and a statuesque repose Between the impersonati Charles Kemble there was a arising from the opposite n spective temperaments. K a part thoroughly: he di altogether-probably he w forming for himself a comple idea of any dramatic chara detached portions alone, bu flung himself with all his mi strength, moral and physi abrupt and spasmodic effor particular physical qualifica rivalled command of sinewy gesture; eyes that emitted t light; a brow and lips that intensity, and indomitable re voice running through the passion, and passing easily fr ly touching tenderness to the nance of vehement passion. who was seldom happy in speeches, was incomparable. sudden, and impulsive passag ever heard can ever forget tenderness of his reply to I citing for Cassio's restoration him come when he will, I nothing:" the blank comfor his "Farewell the tranquil content; " or the hot tearle "Oh! Desdemona, away, awa ever saw them can ever for and look-the one graceful act to spring-the other dea prepared to strike-when aw of Anne of Warwick's clam grief: or the glance of Overre rall turns against him: or the from his overweening mistres or Shylock's yell of triumph, to judgment:" or the fascinati eyes in Richard, when, unarme to death, his soul seemed ye Richmond. In recording t an dowments of nature rather than results of study, we desire to draw and to impress this distinction: (1) That such intellectual and physical qualities as Kean possessed belong to the emotional rather than to the poetical phase of the drama; that the opportunities for their employment are of rare occurrence, and are seldom offered except by Shakspeare himself; and that they do not and should not be supposed to supersede the earnest study of human nature, or that men tal and bodily discipline which the vocation of the actor demands. (2) That whereas an actor like Kean is extremely limited in his range of parts-the number of his great characters was six or seven at most actor like Charles Kemble, in virtue of his catholic study of art as a whole, of his high general cultivation, of his patient elaboration of details, is enabled to fill with success various and even dissimilar departments of the drama, and to combine in one and the same person the endowments of a great tragic and a great comic actor. The example of Kean would be of little service to any performer not similarly gifted with himself; the example of the Kembles is available even to the humblest members of their profession, and so long as it was followed and held in honor, so long did the stage retain performers capable of doing justice to the classical drama of England. His performance of Hamlet was, perhaps, Charles Kemble's highest achievement as an actor. Of the relations which it may have borne to his brother's impersonation of the princely philosopher we cannot speak, but of its superiority to all contemporary or later Hamlets we entertain no doubt. His form, his voice, his demeanor, his power of expressing sentiment, his profound melancholy, his meditative repose, were all strictly within the range of his physical and intellectual endowments, and had all been anxiously trained up to the highest point of precision and harmony. His performance of this arduous character, indeed, left nothing to desire except that occasionally the harmony of the execution had been broken by the disturbing forces of passion. Nothing could exceed his picture of loneliness of soul as he stood encircled by the court of Denmark; what a gleam of joy beamed forth in his welcome of Horatio; now at least he has one faithful counsellor and friend; he is no longer all alone. Nothing was ever more exquisite or touching than his "Go on, I follow thee," to the ghost. Perfect love had cast out fear; faith His to the bourne of death and the grave: he will dive into the heart of this great mystery, but not in the spirit of despair, or at the summons of revenge, or in bravery, or in stoical defiance, but in the strength, and in the whole armor of filial love. We have seen actors who fairly scolded their father's spirit, and others who quailed before it; but except in Charles Kemble, we have never seen one whose looks and tones accorded with the spirit of that awful revelation of the prison-house, and the concealed crime, and its required purgation, and expressed at once the sense of woe endured, anticipated, and stretching onward through a whole life. In this scene, so acted, the classic and romantic drama melt into one; it is Orestes hearing the hest of Apollo, and it is the Christian hero, scholar, and soldier standing on the isthmus of time and eternity. Again, in the beautiful scene with Ophelia, in which the great depths of Hamlet's soul are broken up, and madness and love gush forth together like a torrent swollen by storms, with what exquisite tenderness of voice did Charles Kemble deliver even the harsh and bitter words of reproach and self-scorning. forlorn and piteous look seemed laboring to impart the comfort which he could not minister to himself. Every mode or change of expression and intonation came with its own burden of anguish and despair. Filial love at one entrance was quite shut out; his mother was for him no longer a mother; albeit not a Clytemnestra, yet, like her (unτnp dunnp), the wife of an Ægisthus-no more shelter for the weary on that maternal bosom: childhood snapt rudely from manhood; the earliest and holiest fountain of love dried up for ever; and as yet the dregs of the cup have not been drained. The love stronger than the love of "forty thousand brothers" must also be cast off, at least as to all outward seeming; and the arrow which has pierced his own heart be planted in Ophelia's also. Seeing Charles Kemble enact this scene, we have often marvelled how the Ophelias who played with him resisted the infection of his grief. But we must not forget, in thus reviving our recollections of a great artist, that descriptions of acting are, for the most part, like pictures to the blind, or music to the deaf, or as when a man beholds his face in a glass, and straightway the image of it passeth away. To those who remember Charles Kemble's impersonations, and who studied them with a diligent and reflecting spirit, we shall appear probably to |
