Shakespeare in the Theatre

III Some Stage Versions

“THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.”
“ROMEO AND JULIET.”
“HAMLET.”

“KING LEAR.”

A critical and genuine appreciation of the poet’s work imposes a reverence for the constructive plan as well as for the text. Why should a Shakespeare, whose cunning hand divined the dramatic sequence of his story, have it improved by a modern playwright or actor-manager? The answer will be: Because the modern experts are familiar with theatrical effects of a kind Shakespeare never lived to see. But if a modern rearrangement of Shakespeare’s plays is necessary to suit these theatrical effects, the question may well be discussed as to whether rearrangements with all their modern advantages are of more dramatic value than the perfect work of the master.

Among all innovations on the stage, perhaps the most far-reaching in its effect on dramatic construction was the act-drop. Elizabethan dramatists had to round off a scene to a conclusion, for there was no kindly curtain to cover retreat from a deadlock. The art of modern play-writing is to arrest the action suddenly upon a thrilling situation, and leave the characters between the horns of a dilemma. At a critical moment the act-drop comes down; and after the necessary interval goes up again, showing that the characters have in the meantime somehow got out of the difficulty. This leaves much to the fancy, but does not feed the imagination. This leading up to a terminal climax, a “curtain,” is but the appetite for the feast, and not the food itself. It assumes that the palate of the audience is depraved in its taste, and that it is one for which the best work is perhaps not best suited; but it is a form of art, and plays can be written after this form, and well written. Apart, however, from the question as to the theatrical gain of such a crude device as a “curtain,” Shakespeare wrote with consummate art to show the tide of human affairs, its flow and its ebb, and his constructive plan is particularly unsuited to the act-drop. Upon one of Shakespeare’s plays the curtain falls like the knife of a guillotine, and the effect is similar to ending a piece of music abruptly at its highest note, simply for the sake of creating some startling impression.

The way in which some modern managers, both here and in America, set about producing a play of Shakespeare’s seems to be as follows: Choose your play, and be sure to note carefully in what country the incidents take place. Having done this, send artists to the locality to make sketches of the country, of its streets, its houses, its landscape, of its people, and of their costumes. Tell your artists that they must accurately reproduce the colouring of the sky, of the foliage, of the evening shadows, of the moonlight, of the men’s hair and the women’s eyes; for all these details are important to the proper understanding of Shakespeare’s play. Send, moreover, your leading actor and actress to spend some weeks in the neighbourhood that they may become acquainted with the manners, the gestures, the emotions of the residents, for these things also are necessary to the proper understanding of the play. Then, when you have collected, at vast expense, labour, and research, this interesting information about a country of which Shakespeare was possibly entirely ignorant, thrust all this extraneous knowledge into your representation, whether it fit the context or not; let it justify the rearrangement of your play, the crowding of your stage with supernumeraries, the addition of incidental songs and glees, to say nothing of inappropriateness of costume and misconception of character, until the play, if it does not cease to be intelligible or consistent, thrives only by virtue of its imperishable vitality, or by its strength of characterization, and by its brilliancy of dialogue.

These are but a few of the inconsistencies consequent upon the rage for foisting foreign local colour into a Shakespearian play. But if the same amount of industry bestowed in ascertaining the manners and customs of foreign countries had been spent in acquiring a knowledge of Elizabethan playing, and in forming some notion of what was uppermost in Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote his plays, we should have had representations which, if possibly less pictorially successful, would have been more dramatic, more human, and more consistent.

To use a homely image, the question of the stage representation of Shakespeare’s plays is just the question of the foot and the shoe. Must we cut off a toe here, and slice off a little from the heel there; or stretch the shoe upon the last, and, if need be, even buy a new pair of shoes? It is not enough to say that modern audiences demand “curtain” and scenery for Shakespeare’s plays. No public demands what is not offered to it. Before demand can create supply, a sample of the new ware must be shown. Most modern playgoers are unaware of the methods of Elizabethan stage-playing, and therefore cannot condemn them as unsatisfactory. They may have heard something about old tapestry, rushes, and boards, but they have no reason to infer that our greatest dramatists were “thoroughly handicapped by the methods of representation then in vogue.”

It is indeed to be regretted that no scholar nor actor has thought it necessary to study the art of Shakespeare’s dramatic construction from the original copies. Some of our University men have written intelligently about Shakespeare’s characters and his philosophy, and one of them has done something more than this. But it is doubtful if any serious attention has been given yet to the way Shakespeare conducts his story and brings his characters on and off the stage, a matter of the highest moment, since the very life of the play depends upon the skill with which this is done. And how many realize that the art of Shakespeare’s dramatic construction differs fundamentally from that of the modern dramatist? In fact, a Pinero would no more know how to set about writing a play for the Elizabethan stage, in which the characters appear in the course of the story in twenty-six different localities during twenty-six years, than Shakespeare would know how to make twenty-six persons live their lives through a whole play in one room or on one day.

The Merchant of Venice.10

The story of this play is as follows. In the opening scene, the words of Antonio to Bassanio—

“Well, tell me now, what lady is the same
To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage,
That you to-day promised to tell me of?”

And Lorenzo’s apology for withdrawing—

“My lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio
We two will leave you:”

and that of Salarino—

“We’ll make our leisures to attend on yours”—

lead us to suppose that Bassanio has come by appointment to meet Antonio, and that Antonio should be represented on his entrance as somewhat anxiously expecting his friend, and we may further presume from Solanio’s words to Salarino in Act II., Scene 8—

“I think he only loves the world for him”—

that there is a special cause for Antonio’s sadness, beyond what he chooses to admit to his companions, and that is the knowledge that he is about to lose Bassanio’s society.

With regard to Bassanio, we learn, in this first scene, that he is already indebted to Antonio, that he desires to borrow more money from his friend, to free himself from debt, before seeking the hand of Portia, a rich heiress, and that Portia has herself encouraged him to woo her. In fact, we are at once deterred from associating purely sordid motives with Bassanio’s courtship by his glowing description of her virtues and beauty, as also by Antonio’s high opinion of Bassanio’s character.

Antonio, however, has not the money at hand, and it is arranged that Bassanio is to borrow the required sum on Antonio’s security. The entrance of Gratiano is skilfully timed to dispel the feeling of depression that Antonio’s sadness would otherwise leave upon the audience, and to give the proper comedy tone to the opening scene of a play of comedy.

In Scene 2 we are introduced to the heroine and her attendant, and learn, what probably Bassanio did not know, that Portia by her father’s will is powerless to bestow her hand on the man of her choice, the stratagem, as Nerissa supposes, being devised to insure Portia’s obtaining “one that shall rightly love.” This we may call the first or casket-complication. Portia’s strong sense of humour is revealed to us in her description of the suitors “that are already come,” and her moral beauty in her determination to respect her father’s wishes. “If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste as Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner of my father’s will.” The action of the play is not, however, continued till Nerissa questions Portia about Bassanio, in a passage that links this scene to the last, and confirms, in the minds of the audience, the truth of the lover’s statement—

“Sometimes from her eyes
I did receive fair speechless messages.”

A servant enters to announce the leave-taking of four of the suitors, who care not to submit to the conditions of the will, and to herald the arrival of a fifth, the Prince of Morocco.

We now come to the third scene of the play. Bassanio enters conversing with one, of whom no previous mention has been made but whose first utterance tells us he is the man of whom the required loan is demanded, and before the scene has ended, we discover further that he is to be the chief agent in bringing about the second, or pound-of-flesh-complication. There are no indications given us of Shylock’s personal appearance, except that he has been dubbed “old Shylock,” which is, perhaps, more an expression of contempt than of age, for he is never spoken of as old man, or old Jew, and is chiefly addressed simply as Shylock or Jew; but the epithet is one recognized widely enough for Shylock himself to quote—

“Well, thou shalt see, thy eyes shall be thy judge,
The difference of old Shylock and Bassanio:”

as also does the Duke—

“Antonio and old Shylock both stand forth.”

So was it with Silas Marner. George Eliot writes: “He was so withered and yellow that though he was not yet forty the children always called him ‘old master Marner.’” However, the language that Shakespeare has put into the mouth of Shylock does not impress us as being that of a man whose physical and mental faculties are in the least impaired by age; so vigorous is it at times that Shylock might be pictured as being an Edmund Kean-like figure, with piercing black eyes and an elastic step. From Shylock’s expression, “the ancient grudge I bear him,” and Antonio’s abrupt manner towards Shylock, we may conclude that the two men are avowed enemies, and have been so for some time previous to the opening of the play. This fact should, from the very first, be made evident to the audience by the emphasis Shylock gives to Antonio’s name, an emphasis that is repeated every time the name occurs till he has made sure there is no doubt about who the man is that shall become bound.

The dramatic purpose of this scene is to show us Shylock directly plotting to take the life of Antonio, and the means he employs to this end are contrived with much skill. Shylock, in his opening soliloquy, discloses his intention to the audience, and at once deprives himself of its sympathy by admitting that his motives are guided more by personal considerations than by religious convictions—

“I hate him for he is a Christian,
But more for that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.”

The three first scenes should be so acted on the stage as to accentuate in the minds of the audience (1) that Bassanio is the very dear friend of Antonio; (2) that Portia and Bassanio are in love with each other; (3) that Antonio and Shylock are avowed enemies; (4) that Shylock conspires against Antonio’s life with full intent to take it should the bond become forfeit.

We are again at Belmont and witness the entrance of the Prince of Morocco, and the whole scene has a poetic dignity and repose which form a striking contrast to the preceding one. We get in the character of the Prince of Morocco a preliminary sketch of Shakespeare’s Othello, and certainly the actor, to do justice to the part, should have the voice and presence of a Salvini. The second scene shows us the Jew’s man about to leave his rich master to become the follower of Bassanio, and the latter, now possessed of Shylock’s money, preparing his outfit for the journey to Belmont, whither Gratiano also is bent on going. There is, besides, some talk of merrymaking at night-time, which fitly leads up to our introduction to Jessica in the next scene, and prepares us to hear of her intrigue with Lorenzo. Jessica is the third female character in the play, and the dramatist intends her to appear, in contrast to Portia and Nerissa, as a tragic figure, dark, pale, melancholy, demure, yet chaste in thought and in action, and with a heart susceptible of tender and devoted love. She plans her elopement with the same fixedness of purpose as the father pursues his revenge. In Scene 4 the elopement incident is advanced a step by Lorenzo receiving Jessica’s directions “how to take her from her father’s house,” and a little further in the next scene, by Shylock being got out of the way, when we hear Jessica’s final adieu. It is worth noting in this scene that, at a moment when we are ready to sympathize with Shylock, who is about to lose his daughter, the dramatist denies us that privilege by further illustrating the malignancy of the man’s character. He has had an unlucky dream; he anticipates trouble falling upon his house; he is warned by Launcelot that there are to be masques at night; he admits that he is not invited to Bassanio’s feast out of love, but out of flattery, and still he can say—

“But yet I’ll go in hate, to feed upon
The prodigal Christian.”

No personal inconvenience must hinder the acceleration of Antonio’s downfall.

In Scene 6 the elopement takes place, but is almost prevented by the entrance of Antonio, whose solemn voice ringing clear on the stillness of the night is a fine dramatic contrast to the whispering of the lovers.

Shakespeare now thinks it time to return to Belmont, and we are shown the Prince of Morocco making his choice of the caskets, and we learn his fate. But he bears his disappointment like a hero, and his dignified retreat moves Portia to exclaim: “A gentle riddance!”

Scene 8 is one of narration only, but the speakers are in an excited frame of mind. The opening lines are intended to show that Antonio was not concerned in the flight of Jessica, and our interest in his character is further strengthened by the touching description of his farewell to Bassanio.

Scene 9 disposes of the second of Portia’s remaining suitors, and, being comic in character, is inserted with good effect between two tragic scenes. The keynote to its action is to be found in Portia’s words: “O, these deliberate fools!” The Prince of Morocco was a warrior, heroic to the tips of his fingers; the Prince of Arragon is a fop, an affected ass, a man “full of wise saws and modern instances,” and the audience should be prepared for a highly amusing scene by the liveliness with which Nerissa announces his approach. His mannerism is indicated to us in such expressions as “Ha! let me see,” and “Well, but to my choice.” He should walk deliberately, speak deliberately, pause deliberately, and when he becomes sentimental, “pose.” Highly conscious of his own superiority, and unwilling to “jump with common spirits” and “rank me with the barbarous multitudes,” he assumes superiority, and gets his reward in the shape of a portrait of a blinking idiot. In fact, the whims of this Malvolio are intended to put everyone on and off the stage into high spirits, and even Portia is carried away by the fun as she mimics the retiring suitor in her exclamation to the servant. The scene ends with the announcement that Bassanio, “Lord Love,” is on his way to Belmont, and we go on at once to Act III., Scene 1, which, I take it, is a continuation of Act II., Scene 8, and which, therefore, should not form part of another act.

The scene opens with Salarino and Solanio hurrying on the stage anxiously questioning each other about Antonio’s rumoured loss at sea. Shylock follows almost immediately, to whom they at once turn in the hope of hearing news. It is usual on the stage to omit the entrance of Antonio’s man, but apart from the dramatic effect produced by a follower of Antonio coming on to the stage at that moment, his appearance puts an end to the controversy, which otherwise would probably continue. Salarino and Solanio leave the stage awed almost to breathlessness, and Tubal enters. Then follows a piteous scene as we see Shylock’s outbursts of grief, rage, and despair over the loss of his gold; yet is his anguish aggravated by the one from whom of all others he had a right to expect sympathy. But Shylock, after Tubal’s words, “But Antonio is certainly undone,” mutters, “Nay, that’s true, that’s very true,” and takes from his purse a coin, and with a countenance and gesture expressive of indomitable purpose, continues: “Go, Tubal, fee me an officer; bespeak him a fortnight before. I will have the heart of him if he forfeit.... Go, Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue. Go, good Tubal; at our synagogue, Tubal.”

Shylock’s misfortunes in this scene would arouse sympathy were it not for the damning confession to Tubal of his motive for hating Antonio “for were he out of Venice I can make what merchandise I will.” Words that Jessica’s lines prove are not idle ones.

“When I was with him I have heard him swear
To Tubal and to Chus, his countrymen,
That he would rather have Antonio’s flesh
Than twenty times the value of the sum
That he did owe him.”

Act III., Scene 2, brings us to the last stage of the casket complication, and here Shakespeare, to avoid sameness, directs that a song shall be sung while Bassanio is occupied in deciding his fate; so that his long speech is spoken after the choice has been made, the leaden casket being then in his hands, and his words merely used to justify his decision. That Bassanio must win Portia is realized from the first. Moreover, his success, after Shylock’s threats in the last scene, has become a dramatic necessity, and is thus saved from an appearance of unreality, so that his love adventure develops naturally. His good fortune is Gratiano’s; then news is brought of Antonio’s bankruptcy and Bassanio is sent to his friend’s relief. Scene 3 does no more than show in action what was previously narrated by Solanio in the preceding one, for the Elizabethan dramatists, differing in their methods from the Greeks, rarely allowed narration to take the place of action on the stage. Perhaps this was on account of the mixed character of the audience, the “groundlings” being too busy cracking nuts to take in an important situation merely from its narration. To them Antonio’s danger would not become a fact till they actually saw the man in irons and the jailor by his side. In the fourth scene we go back to Belmont to hear that Portia and Nerissa are to be present at the trial, though with what object we are not told. We hear, also, of Portia’s admiration for Antonio, whose character she compares with that of her husband. Scene 5 being comic, well serves its purpose as a contrast to the tragic intensity displayed in the scene which follows. Here, too, Portia and Bassanio win golden opinions from Jessica:

“It is very meet,
The Lord Bassanio live an upright life;
For having such a blessing in his lady,
He finds the joys of heaven here on earth;...
Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match,
And on the wager lay two earthly women,
And Portia one, there must be something else
Pawn’d with the other, for the poor rude world
Hath not her fellow.”

The trial scene is so well known that I shall not dwell upon it except to mention that I think the dramatist intended the scene to be acted with more vigour and earnestness on the part of all the characters than is represented on the modern stage, and with more vehemence on the part of Shylock. Conscious of his lawful right, he defies the duke and council in language not at all respectful,

“What if my house be troubled with a rat,
And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducats
To have it baned?”

When Shylock is worsted the traditional business is for him to leave the stage with the air of a martyr going to his execution, and thus produce a tragic climax where none is wanted. We seem to get an indication of what should be Shylock’s behaviour in his hour of adversity by reading the Italian version of the story, with which Shakespeare was familiar. “Everyone present was greatly pleased and deriding the Jew said: ‘He who laid traps for others, is caught himself.’ The Jew seeing he could gain nothing, tore in pieces the bond in a great rage.” Indeed, Shylock’s words,

“Why, then the devil give him good of it!
I’ll stay no longer question,”

are exactly suited to the action of tearing up the bond. Certain it is that only by Shylock being “in a great rage,” as he rushes off the stage, can the audience be greatly pleased, and in a fit humour to be interested in the further doings of Portia. Scene 2 of this act is generally omitted on the stage, though it seems to me necessary in order to show how Nerissa gets possession of Gratiano’s ring; it also affords an opportunity for some excellent business on the part of Nerissa, who walks off arm in arm with her husband, unknown to him.

The last act is the shortest fifth act in the Globe edition, and if deficient in action Shakespeare gives it another interest by the wealth and music of its poetry, a device more than once made use of by him to strengthen undramatic material. Shakespeare’s knowledge of the value of sound, in dramatic effect, is shown by Launcelot interrupting the whispering of the lovers, and profaning the stillness of the night with his halloas, which have a similar effect to the nurse’s calls in the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet; it is also shown by the music, and in the tucket sound; while the picture brought to the imagination, by allusion to the light burning in Portia’s hall, gives reality to the scene.

Romeo and Juliet.11

The argument that Arthur Brooke affixes to his poem, “Romeus and Iuliet,” runs as follows:

“Loue hath inflamed twayne by sodayn sight,
And both do graunt the thing that both desyre:
They wed in shrift, by counsell of a frier.
Yong Romeus clymes fayre Iuliets bower by night,
Three monthes he doth enjoy his cheefe delight.
By Tybalts rage, prouoked unto yre,
He payeth death to Tybalt for his hyre.
A banisht man, he scapes by secret flight,
New mariage is offred to his wyfe.
She drinkes a drinke that seemes to reue her breath,
They bury her, that sleping yet hath lyfe.
Her husband heares the tydinges of her death:
He drinkes his bane. And she with Romeus knyfe,
When she awakes, her selfe (alas) she sleath.”

And the title of the same story in William Painter’s “Palace of Pleasure,” is on the same lines:

“The goodly Hystory of the true, and constant Loue betweene Rhomeo and Iulietta, the one of whom died of Poyson, and the other of sorrow, and heuinesse: wherein be comprysed many aduentures of Loue, and other deuises touchinge the same.”

Here is Shakespeare’s Prologue to his adaptation of the story for the stage:

“Two housholds, both alike in dignitie,
In faire Verona, where we lay our Scene,
From auncient grude breake to new mutinie
Where ciuill bloud makes ciuill hands uncleane.
From forth the fatall loynes of these two foes
A paire of starre-crost louers take their life;
Whose misaduentur’d pittious overthrowes
Doth, with their death, burie their Parents strife.
The fearfull passage of their death-markt loue,
And the continuance of their Parents rage,
Which, but their childrens end, nought could remoue,
Is now the two houres trafficque of our Stage;
The which, if you with patient eares attend,
What here shall misse, our toyle shall striue to mend.”

Why the dramatist thought fit to choose a different motive for his tragedy to the one shown in the poem and the novel, we shall never know. He may have found the hatred of the two houses accentuated in an older play on this subject, and his unerring dramatic instinct would prompt him to use the parents’ strife as a lurid background on which to portray with greater vividness the “fearfull passage” of the “starre-crost louers”; or the modification may have been due to his reflections upon the political and religious strife of his day; or to his irritation at Brooke’s short-sightedness in upholding, as more deserving of censure, the passion of improvident love than the evil of ready-made hatred. Whatever be the reason, the fact remains that Shakespeare, who was not partial to Prologues, has in this instance made use of one to indicate the lines that guide the action of his play, and it is upon these lines that I propose to-night to discuss the stage representation.

I divide the characters into three groups. Those who belong to the House of Capulet, the House of Montague, and those who, as partisans of neither of the houses, we may call the neutrals. These include Escalus, Mercutio, Paris, Friar Laurence, Friar John, an apothecary, and all the citizens of any position and standing, the Italian municipalities being ever anxious to repress the feuds of nobles.

The play opens with a renewal of hostilities between the two houses, which serves not only as a striking opening, but brings on to the stage many of the chief actors without unnecessary delay. In less than thirty lines we are introduced to seven persons, all of whom indicate their character by the attitude they assume towards the quarrel. We are shown the peace-loving Benvolio, the fiery Tybalt, the imperious and vigorous Capulet, calling for his two-handed sword—

“What noyse is this? giue me my long sword, hoe!”—

his characterless wife, feebly echoing her husband’s moodiness—

“A crowch, a crowch, why call you for a sword?”

and the calm dignity of Romeo’s mother—

“Thou shalt not stir one foote to seeke a foe.”

We are also shown the citizens hastily arming themselves to part the two houses, and hear for the first time their ominous shout:

“Downe with the Capulets, downe with the Mountagues.”

It is heard on two subsequent occasions during the play, and is the death-knell of the lovers. The quarrel is abruptly terminated by the entrance of the Prince, who speaks with a precision and decision which throws every other character on the stage into insignificance, and stamps him at once in our eyes as a central figure. After the belligerents disperse, admonished by the Prince that death awaits the next offender against the peace, a scene follows to prepare us for Romeo’s entrance, Shakespeare having wisely kept him out of the quarrel, that the audience may see him indifferent to every other passion but the one of love. Romeo, until he had been shot with Cupid’s arrow, seems to have passed for a pleasant companion, as we learn from Mercutio’s words, spoken to him in the third act:

“Why is not this better now, than groning for loue; now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo: now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature.”

Romeo’s romantic temperament naturally leads him into a love affair of a sufficiently compromising character to need being kept from the knowledge of his parents. Brooke narrates Rosaline’s reception of Romeo’s passion:

“But she that from her youth was fostred euermore,
With vertues foode, and taught in schole of wisdomes skillful lore:
By aunswere did cutte of th’ affections of his loue,
That he no more occasion had so vayne a sute to moue.”

And Shakespeare gives to Romeo almost similar words:

“And in strong proofe of chastitie well armd,
From loues weak childish bow she liues uncharmd;
Shee will not stay the siege of louing tearmes,
Nor bide th’ incounter of assailing eies,
Nor ope her lap to sainct seducing gold.”

A note in the Irving stage-version, referring to Mercutio’s words, “stabd with a white wenches blacke eye,” states that “a pale woman with black eyes” is suggestive of a wanton nature. Is this Rosaline’s character? If we are to accept seriously Mercutio’s words as being the poet’s description of Rosaline’s personal appearance, we may also give a literal interpretation to the following lines:

“I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes,
By her high forehead, and her Scarlet lip.”

In Charlotte Brontë’s opinion, a high forehead was an indication of conscientiousness; she could get on, she would say, with anyone “who had a lump at the top of the head.” The reproaches of the Friar are, in my opinion, levelled against Romeo, and not Rosaline. Romeo says:

“Thou chidst me oft for louing Rosaline.”

And the Friar replies:

“For doting, not for louing, pupill mine.”

Romeo could not openly woo one who was of the House of Capulet, and Rosaline would not tolerate a clandestine courtship.

In Scene 2 allusion is made for the second time to the quarrel of the two houses. We also hear of Juliet for the first time, and are shown Paris, no less a person than the Prince’s kinsman, as a suitor for her hand. The assumed dignity and good breeding of Capulet in this scene are to be noted. The Irving acting-version leaves out the whole of the servant’s very amusing speech about the shoemaker and his “yard.” Why are virtuous tragedians always anxious to rob the low comedians of their cakes and ale?

In Scene 3 we are introduced to our principal comic character, the Nurse, brought into the play no doubt to supply “those unsavoury morsels of unseemly sentences, which doth so content the hungry humours of the rude multitude.” We are shown Juliet, and hear again of Paris, whose high rank and fine clothes have won the simple mother’s heart, but Juliet’s independence of character is indicated in the line:

“He looke to like, if looking liking moue.”

And a touch of subtlety is revealed to us in the words:

“But no more deepe will I endart mine eye,
Than your consent giues strength to make (it) flie.”

In Scene 4 Mercutio is brought on to the stage; a character that figures in many Elizabethan plays, and in the theatrical parlance of the poet’s time was known as the “braggart” soldier, and yet the part had never received such brilliant treatment till Shakespeare took it in hand. Scene 5 is the hall in Capulet’s house, where Romeo and Juliet see each other for the first time, the audience now being fully aware of the conditions under which the two meet. It has seen the hatred of the houses; the purse-proud Capulet contracting a fashionable marriage for his daughter; Romeo’s melancholy; his longing for the love and sympathy of woman; and Juliet’s loneliness amid conventional and uncongenial surroundings. The sight of a Montague within Capulet’s house gives warning for a fresh outbreak of hostilities—

“but this intrusion shall,
Now seeming sweet, conuert to bittrest gall”—

and Romeo’s cry,

“Is she a Capulet?
O deare account! my life is my foes debt”—

and Juliet’s exclamation,

“Prodigious birth of loue it is to mee,
That I must loue a loathed enemie!”

foreshadow the doom prophesied by Romeo as about to begin “with this night’s reuels.”

In the rebuke of Tybalt we get an indication of Capulet’s character. A note in the Irving-version states that Capulet is a meddlesome mollycoddle not unlike Polonius. But the fussiness of Polonius proceeds from his vanity, from his mental and physical impotence. Capulet’s activity is the outcome of a love for domineering that springs from his pride of birth, and his consciousness of physical superiority. Tybalt, who is no child, sinks into insignificance at the thunder of this man’s voice:

“He shall be endured.
What goodman boy, I say he shall, go too.
Am I the master here, or you? go too,
Youle not endure him, god shall mend my soule,...
You will set cock a hoope, youle be the man...
You must contrarie me.”

Capulet, I fear, would have annihilated the bloodless and decorous Polonius with the breath of his nostrils. Women who marry men of this overbearing character often lose their own individuality, and become mere ciphers. So does Lady Capulet. She dare not call her soul her own; she cannot be mistress even in the kitchen. It is Capulet’s indignation at his nephew’s interference with his affairs that prepares us for his outburst of passion, in the fourth act, when his daughter threatens opposition to his will.

At the close of Scene 5 Shakespeare thinks it necessary to bring the Chorus on to the stage in order to make known to the audience the direction in which the future action of the play will turn, and to account for the suppression of Rosaline, of whom, until the entrance of Juliet, so much has been said. That the words were not printed in the first quarto, a piratical version published from notes taken at a performance of the play, seems to suggest that after the first representation the Chorus did not appear on the stage, for the speech was found to be an unnecessary interruption.

Presuming, therefore, that there is no delay in the progress of the action, Romeo returns from the ball, and, giving his companions the slip, hides himself in Capulet’s orchard, where he hears their taunts about his Rosaline. The value, to the poet, of the Rosaline episode is thus further shown by the use he makes of it to conceal from Romeo’s inquisitive companions this second love intrigue, so fraught with danger. That David Garrick, in his acting-version, should allow Mercutio to make open fun of Romeo’s love for the daughter and heiress of old Capulet proves how rarely the actor is able to replace the author.

It is incomprehensible to me why our stage Juliets, in the “Balcony Scene,” go through their billing-and-cooing as deliberately as they do their toilets, never for a moment thinking that the “place is death” to Romeo, and that “loves sweet bait must be stolen from fearful hookes.” In Shakespeare’s time this scene was acted in broad daylight, and the dramatist is careful to stimulate the imagination of his audience with appropriate imagery. The word “night” occurs ten times, and I suppose the actor would be instructed to give a special emphasis to it. There are, besides, several allusions to the moon and the stars, including that descriptive couplet:

“Lady, by yonder blessed Moone I vow,
That tips with siluer all these frute tree tops.”

When Shakespeare could give us in words so vivid a picture of moonlight, Ben Jonson could well afford to have a fling at Inigo Jones’s mechanical scenery, and say:

“What poesy e’er was painted on a wall?”

Romeo goes direct from Capulet’s orchard to Friar Lawrence’s cell to make confession of his “deare hap.” He loves now in earnest, and love teaches him to brave all dangers, and even to face matrimony; and his virtuous mood wins for him the good-will of the Friar, who sees in the alliance of the two houses their reconciliation. In the poem and novel both the lovers avow a similar disinterested motive to justify their union, but the mind of reason never enters the heart of love, and Shakespeare, in their case, wisely omits this bit of sophistry. The advance of the love episode must move side by side with the quarrel episode, so in the next scene we hear of Romeo receiving a challenge from Tybalt. The Irving-version omits most of the good-natured banter between Romeo and Mercutio, which is all telling comedy if spoken lightly and quickly. The Nurse enters, and Mercutio and Benvolio set off for Montague’s house, where they propose dining. The incident that follows must have been very irritating to the Elizabethan Puritans, who complained of the corruption of morals begot in “the chapel of Satan” by witnessing the carrying and recarrying of letters by laundresses “to beguile fathers of their children.” Here more excellent comedy is omitted in the Irving-version, including the Nurse’s allusion to Paris as being “the properer man” of the two, and her naïve question, “Doth not Rosemarie and Romeo begin both with a letter?” The Nurse had overheard Juliet talk about “Rosemarie and Romeo.” Later on we see rosemary strewed over the body of the apparently dead Juliet.

The scene in which Romeo and Juliet meet to be married at the Friar’s Cell ends on the stage the second act. But to drop the curtain here interrupts the dramatic movement just as it is about to reach a climax in the death of Tybalt, followed by the banishment of Romeo. These incidents require action that is all hurry and excitement, and are therefore out of place at the beginning of an act, unless it be the opening act of a play. Besides, they are immediately connected with the scene in which allusion is made to Tybalt having challenged Romeo. We are shown Mercutio and Benvolio returning from Montague’s house, where they proposed dining. And Mercutio has, apparently, indulged too freely in his host’s wine, for the prudent Benvolio is anxious to get his friend out of the public streets as quickly as possible. Benvolio’s worst fears are realized by the entrance of the quarrelsome Tybalt, whom Mercutio, as is the way with fuddled people, at once offers to fight. But Tybalt hesitates to cross swords with a relative of the Prince, and is glad of the excuse of Romeo’s appearance to transfer the quarrel to him. Romeo will not draw sword upon his wife’s cousin, and Mercutio, exasperated, takes up the challenge, is stabbed by Tybalt under Romeo’s arm, and dies cursing the two houses. This tragedy rouses Romeo to action; he will now defend his own honour since he was Mercutio’s dear friend. Tybalt is challenged and killed. The citizens “are up,” and for the second time we hear their ominous shout:

“Downe with the Capulets, downe with the Montagues!”

They enter, followed by the Prince, with the heads of the two houses and their wives. The Capulets call for Romeo’s death. The Montagues protest that Romeo in killing a man whose life was already forfeited has but taken the law into his own hands. For that offence he is exiled by the Prince.

“I haue an interest in your hates proceeding:
My bloud for your rude brawles doth lie a bleeding.
But ile amerce you with so strong a fine,
That you shall all repent the losse of mine.
I will be deafe to pleading and excuses,
Nor teares, nor prayers, shall purchase out abuses.
Therefore use none, let Romeo hence in hast,
Else when he is found, that houre is his last.”

The whole of the latter part of this scene is brilliant in the variety and rapidity of its action, and should not, I consider, be omitted in representation as is directed to be done in the Irving-version. To take out the second renewal of hostilities between the two houses; not to show, in action on the stage, the rage of the Capulets at the death of Tybalt, and the grief of the Montagues at the banishment of Romeo, is to weaken the tragic significance of the scenes that follow. Without it the audience cannot vividly realize that the hatred of the two houses has reached its acutest stage, and that all hope of reconciliation is at an end.

Mercutio at the commencement of this scene says to Benvolio: “Thou wilt quarell with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes.” Did Shakespeare, who, according to tradition had hazel eyes, act the part of Benvolio? I think he did. It is the only part in the play I can fancy him able to act. A study of both the bust and the Droeshout portrait of the poet-dramatist leads me to believe that he would not have been able to disguise easily his identity on the stage. His flexibility was essentially of a mental and not of a physical nature. The face is entirely wanting in mobility, and the head is so large that no wig could hide its unusual size. Shakespeare, moreover, became bald probably early in life. The Droeshout portrait shows undoubtedly the likeness of a youngish man, about thirty-five years old, while his baldness would still justify the epithet of “grandsire” with which Mercutio dubs Benvolio; and “grandsire” may have been a nickname of Shakespeare’s suggested by his baldness. “Come hither, goodman bald-pate”—words spoken by Lucio in “Measure for Measure”—have been quoted as a reason for presuming that Shakespeare played the Duke in that comedy. Sir William Davenant, who liked to be thought a natural son of the poet, in an adaption of this play altered the words to, “She has been advised by a bald dramatic poet of the next cloister.” If the audience recognized their “gentle Will” in the part of the peace-loving Benvolio, we may imagine the laughter that would arise at Mercutio’s words: “Thy head is as full of quarelles, as an egg is full of meate”—Shakespeare’s head being egg-shaped. If my supposition be correct, we may honour the self-abnegation, the entire absence of personal vanity that enabled Shakespeare, like Molière, to direct laughter against himself. The scattered references to him which we find in the writings of his contemporaries show us, says Professor Dowden, “the poet concealed and sometimes forgotten in the man, and make it clear that he moved among his fellows with no assuming of the bard or prophet, no air of authority as of one divinely commissioned; that, on the contrary, he appeared as a pleasant comrade, genial, gentle, full of civility in the large meaning of the word, upright in dealing, ready and bright in wit, quick and sportive in conversation.” How aptly does this description fit the character of Benvolio! One quality was especially common to the two men—tact. It was the possession of tact that made Shakespeare so invaluable to his fellow-actors as a manager. Benvolio’s tact is shown in his conversation with Romeo’s parents, with Romeo himself, with Mercutio when hot-headed, and with the Prince, Mercutio’s relative. It is true that Benvolio attributes Mercutio’s death to Tybalt’s interference, while in reality it was due to Mercutio’s indiscretion; but we have no pity for Tybalt, who, as Brooke says, thirsting after the death of others, lost his life.

Romeo’s banishment brings us to the middle and “busy” part of the play, where the Elizabethan actors were expected to thunder their loudest to split the ears of the groundlings; and Shakespeare, not yet sufficiently independent as a dramatist to dispense with the conventions of his stage, follows suit on the same fiddle to the same tune; and after all the ranting eloquence on the part of Romeo and Juliet, we are just where we were before with regard to any advance made with the story. Act III., Scene 2, is often entirely omitted in representation, but the Irving-version retains most of it. It is not till the middle of Act III., Scene 3, that the action advances again. But this, and the previous scenes, if acted with animation and rapidly spoken by all the characters concerned, would not take up much time, and could be declaimed with effect. The stage fashion of making the Friar stolidly indifferent to the unexpected complication that has arisen through Tybalt’s death is not only undramatic, but inconsistent with the text. A heavy responsibility lies on him, and his position is full of difficulty and danger. The scene that follows shows us Capulet fixing a day for the marriage of Juliet with Paris, and the father’s words—

“I thinke she will be rulde
In all respects by me: nay, more, I doubt it not,”

have a significance, and render the parting of the lovers in the next scene highly dramatic. In the poem and novel, Juliet, before parting with Romeo, proposes to accompany him disguised as his servant; about the best thing she could do. After a good deal of arguing on both sides the idea is abandoned as impracticable. Shakespeare prefers his lovers to discourse about the nightingale. Romeo being gone, the mother enters to announce to the wife her betrothal to Paris, and the early day of marriage. The news is sprung upon her with terrible abruptness, though the audience have been in the secret from the first, and Juliet has hardly time to protest against “this sudden day of joy” before the father enters to complete her discomfiture by his torrents of abuse. Capulet’s varnish of good manners entirely disappears in this scene, and his coarse nature is exposed in all its ugliness. But in the emergency of this tragic moment, as Professor Dowden points out, does Juliet leap into womanhood, and realize her position and responsibilities as a wife, and in the following lines Shakespeare touches the first note of highest tragedy in the play: that of the mind’s suffering as opposed to the mere tragedy of incident—

“O God, ô Nurse, how shall this be preuented?
My husband is on earth, my faith in heauen;
How shall that faith returne againe to earth,
Unlesse that husband send it me from heauen
By leauing earth? comfort me, counsaile me.”

I am curious to learn on what grounds these thrilling words are omitted in the Irving-version. To me they are the climax of the scene and of the play so far as it has progressed. They mark the turning-point in Juliet’s moral nature. They enable us to forgive her any indiscretions of which she may previously have been guilty. From this point onwards all is calm in Juliet’s breast, because there is no infirmity of purpose,

“If all else faile, my self have power to die.”

As the shadows fall across the path of the lovers, so do they over that of the Friar.

“O Iuliet, I already know thy greefe,
It straines me past the compasse of my wits,”

is his greeting in the next scene. A “desperate preventive” to shame or death is decided upon, and then follows what is perhaps the most dramatic episode in the whole play. We are shown Capulet’s household busy with the preparations for the marriage-feast, and the father, now bent on having a “great ado,” hastily summoning “twenty cunning Cookes”—the consequence possibly of Juliet’s threatened opposition to his wishes. Juliet enters to feign submission and beg forgiveness, which enables the father to indulge in another despotic freak by hastening the day of marriage, heedless of all the inconvenience it may cause. Juliet retires to her chamber, and Capulet goes to prepare Paris against to-morrow. Then comes Juliet’s terrible ordeal, the undertaking “of a thing like death,” which is all the more terrible because it must be done alone. This scene is often overacted on the stage. Our Juliets do far too much “stumping and frumping” about. I once saw the “potion-scene” acted with dramatic intelligence by an actress quite unknown to fame. When Juliet lays her dagger on the table, the actress took up the vial, and, standing motionless in the centre of the stage, spoke the lines in a hurried, low whisper, conveying the impression of reflection as well as the need for discretion. At the words,

“O looke, me thinks I see my Cozins Ghost,”

she sank on one knee, and, raising the right arm with a quick movement, pointed into space, the eye following the hand, a very simple but telling gesture. The words, “Stay, Tybalt, stay!” were not given with a scream, but in a tone of alarm and entreaty, followed immediately by the drinking of the potion, as if to suggest Juliet’s desire to come to Romeo’s rescue. The whole scene was acted in less than two minutes. The vision of Tybalt’s ghost pursuing Romeo for vengeance, an incident not to be found in the originals, shows the touch of the master dramatist. We feel the need of some immediate incentive to nerve Juliet to raise the vial to her lips; and what more effectual than that of her overwrought imagination picturing to herself the husband in danger.

While the poor child lies prostrate upon her bed in the likeness of death, we are shown the dawn of the morning, the rousing and bustle of the household; we hear the bridal march in the distance, the sound coming nearer every moment; the Nurse knocking at Juliet’s chamber-door; her awful discovery; the entrance of the parents; the filling of the stage by the bridal party, led by the Friar; the wailing, and wringing of the hands as the first quarto directs; the changing of the sound of instruments to that of melancholy bells, of solemn hymns to sullen dirges, of bridal flowers to funeral wreaths. All this is thrilling in conception, and yet the episode as conceived by Shakespeare is never represented on the stage. Why are the Capulet scenes omitted, those which are dovetailed to the “potion scene,” and make it by contrast so terribly tragic? The accentuation here of Capulet’s tyranny, of his sensuality, his brutal frankness, his indifference to every one’s convenience but his own, his delight in exacting a cringing obedience from all about him, are designed by the dramatist to move us with deep pity for Juliet’s sufferings, and by emphasizing its necessity to save the “potion scene” from the danger of appearing grotesque. But Shakespeare’s method of dramatic composition, that of uniting a series of short scenes with each other in one dramatic movement, will not bear the elaboration of heavy stage sets, and with the demand for carpentry comes the inducement for mutilation. At the Shakespeare Reading Society’s recital of this play, given recently under my direction at the London Institution, these scenes were spoken without delay or interruption, and with but one scene announced, and the interest and breathless attention they aroused among the audience convinced me that my conception as to the dramatic treatment of them was the right one. Until these scenes are restored to the acting version, Shakespeare’s tragedy will not be seen on the stage as he conceived it; and when they are restored, their dramatic power will electrify the house, and twentieth-century dilettantism will lose its influence among playgoers. The comic scene between Peter and the Musicians should also be restored. It comes in as a welcome relief after the intensity of the previous scenes, and is, besides, a connecting link with the comedy in the earlier part of the play.

The last act can be briefly dealt with. We anticipate the final catastrophe, though we do not know by what means it will be brought about. It is carried out, as it should be, effectively but simply. The children have loved and suffered, let them die easily and quickly. Romeo’s costume in exile is described in the poem as that of a merchant venturer, which is certainly a more appropriate dress than the conventional black velvet of the stage. After hearing the fatal news, which provokes the boy to mutter, “Is it even so?” in the Lyceum version is inserted the stage-direction, “He pauses, overcome with grief.” But as there is no similar stage-direction in the originals, the actor may, without violation to the author’s intentions, pause before the words are spoken. The blow is too sudden, too cruel, too overwhelming to allow of any immediate response in words. The colour would fly from Romeo’s face, his teeth grip his under lip, his eyes gleam with a look of frenzy, looks that “import some misadventure,” but there is no action and no sound for a while, and afterwards only a muttering. The stillness of Romeo’s desperation is very dramatic. There is nothing, in my opinion, unnatural in Romeo’s description of the Apothecary’s shop. All sorts of petty details float before our mental vision when the nerves are over-wrought, but the actor should be careful not to accentuate the description in any way; it is but introductory to the dominant words of the speech,

“And if a man did need a poyson now.”

As Juliet’s openly acknowledged lover, Paris occupies too prominent a place in the play to be lightly dismissed, and so he is involved in the final catastrophe. In Brooke’s poem, Romeo, before dying, prays to Heaven for mercy and forgiveness, and the picture of the boy kneeling by his wife’s side, with her hand clasped in his, pleading to his Redeemer to—

“Take pity on my sinnefull and my poore afflicted mynde!”

would, on the stage, have been a supremely pathetic situation. But Shakespeare’s stern love of dramatic truth rejects it. In Romeo’s character he strikes but one note, love—and love as a passion. Love is Romeo’s divinity, physical beauty his deity. The assertion that—

“In nature there’s no blemish but the mind,
None can be call’d deform’d but the unkind,”

would have sounded in Romeo’s ears profanation. When he first sees Juliet he will by touching hers make blessed his rude hand, and when he dies he will seal the doors of breath “with a righteous kiss.” To the Friar he cries:

“Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
Then loue-deuouring death do what he dare.
It is inough I may but call her mine.”

And “love-devouring death” accepts the challenge, but the agony of death does not “countervail the exchange of joy” that one short minute gives him in her presence. Here Shakespeare’s treatment of the love-episode differs from that of Brooke’s in his tolerance for the children’s love, though it be carried out in defiance of the parents’ wishes, and in his recognition that love, so long as it be strong as death, has an ennobling and not a debasing influence on character: we are made to feel that it is better for Romeo to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. For the hatred of the two houses Shakespeare shows no tolerance. Juliet’s death is carried out with the greatest simplicity, and within a few moments of her awakening. There is neither time for reflection nor lamentation; the watch has been roused, and is heard approaching. She has hardly kissed the poison from her dead husband’s lips before they enter the churchyard, and nothing but the darkness of the night screens from them the sight of the steel that Juliet plunges into her breast. It is the presence of the watch, almost within touch of her, that goads her to lift the knife, just as it is the vision of Tybalt’s ghost pursuing Romeo that nerves her to drink the potion. The dramatist’s intention is clearly indicated in the stage-directions of the two quartos and the folio, but the Irving-version retains in this last scene the modern stage-directions.

Professor Dowden is of opinion “that it were presumptuous to say that had Shakespeare been acquainted with the earlier form of the story (in which Juliet wakes before Romeo dies), he would not have altered his ending.” But an ending of this kind is inartistic. It is bringing the axe down twice instead of once. It is introducing a new complication and a new movement at a moment when none is wanted. The catastrophe should be and always is, by Shakespeare, carried out with simplicity and directness. After Juliet’s death other watchmen enter with the Friar in custody, while from afar we hear for the third and last time the cries of the citizens:

“Downe with the Capulets, downe with the Mountagues!”

the only child of each of the two rival houses lying dead before the spectators. Nature had done her best to effect a reconciliation, but man thwarted her in her purpose. Then the Prince and the heads of the two houses enter and learn for the first time that

“Romeo there dead, was husband to that Iuliet,
And she there dead, that’s Romeo’s faithfull wife.”

Well may the Prince say—

“Capulet, Montague,
See what a scourge is laide upon your hate
That heauen finds means to kill your joyes with loue.”

All this last scene is full of animation, and presents a fine opportunity for the régisseur. I am obliged to use the French word, for we have no similar functionary in this country. Our public is sufficiently indifferent to the welfare of dramatic art to allow its leading actors to be their own stage-managers and often their own authors. As a consequence the public gets no English plays worthy of being called plays, and no guarantee that a dead author’s intentions shall be respected. Human nature has its prejudices, and the actor is seldom to be found who can look at a play from any other point of view than in relation to the prominence of his own part in it. It is owing to the despotism of the actor on the English stage, and consequently to the star system, that I attribute the mutilation of Shakespeare’s plays in their representation. The closing scene of this play might be made very effective in action. The crowd hurrying with “bated breath” to the spot; its horror at the sight of the dead children, who for all it knows are murdered; its amazement at finding they are man and wife; the Prince’s stern rebuke; the bowed grief and shame of Montague and Capulet; the reconciliation of the bereaved parents, and joining of hands across the dead bodies. The Irving-version omits all but the entrance of the citizens with Montague, Capulet, and the Prince, who at once ends the play with the couplet—

“For neuer was a Storie of more wo
Than this of Iuliet and her Romeo.”

But if the Prince hears no story, he and those who enter with him cannot be aware that Romeo and Juliet are man and wife, or that they died by their own hands, and are not victims to an act of treachery. Then why open your play with the quarrel of the two houses if you do not intend to show them reconciled? Why not follow the Cumberland acting-version, and take out the crowd scenes altogether? It is a more intelligible proceeding than this compromise of the Irving-version.

Criticized as classical tragedy, the play of “Romeo and Juliet” is a veritable hotch-potch. It seems to defy the laws of criticism. The characters at one moment talk in the highest poetical language, and at another in the most commonplace colloquy. Nothing can well seem more inconsistent than to put into the mouth of Capulet these words—

“Death lies on her like an untimely frost,
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”

Bombast goes side by side with poetry; passion with pantomime. Yet, as Lessing says, “Plays which do not observe the classical rules, must yet observe rules of some kind if they are to please;” and Shakespeare sought to establish rules in accordance with the national taste, his first aim being the combination of the serious and the ludicrous. Vigorous characterization, a vital and varied movement, and the skilful handling of scenes well calculated to stir the emotions of an audience, make “Romeo and Juliet” an acting play of enduring interest.

In conclusion, I hold that no stage-version of “Romeo and Juliet” is consistent with Shakespeare’s intentions which does not give prominence to the hatred of the two houses and retain intact the three “crowd scenes”—the one at the opening of the play, the second in the middle, and the third at the end. To represent only the love episode is to make that episode far less tragic, and therefore less dramatic.

“Hamlet.”12

In comparing the acting-edition of “Hamlet” with the authorized text of the Globe edition, I find that it is shorter by 1,191 lines, and omits the characters of Voltemand, Cornelius, Reynaldo, a gentleman, and Fortinbras. Such a modification should, perhaps, exclude the acting-editions from being classed as the same play with either the folio or second quarto. It is a question whether 1,200 lines can be taken out of any Shakespearian play without defeating the poet’s dramatic intentions; but if it is necessary to shorten a play to this extent in order to make it suitable for the stage, so important an alteration should not, surely, be left entirely to the discretion of the actor, but should be the work of Shakespearian scholars, assisted by the advice of the dramatic profession. One would think that Shakespeare’s world-famed greatness as a dramatist should make all his plays so valued by his countrymen that any alteration in their stage representation which had not been sanctioned by the highest authorities would be repudiated. But, unfortunately, it is not so. That the omission of some of the characters in the acting-edition of “Hamlet” has not impaired Shakespeare’s dramatic conception of the play is at least a matter of doubt. In the second quarto we have a play constructed for the purpose of showing us types of character contrasted one with the other. Strong men, weak men, old men, fond women, all living and moving under the influence of a destiny that is not of their own seeking. We have also a Danish court in which a terrible crime has been committed, and over which an avenging angel is hovering with drawn sword waiting to descend on the head of the guilty one; and, because the influence of good in this court is too weak to conquer the evil, the sword falls on the good as well as on the evil, on the weak as well as on the strong. Something is rotten in the State of Denmark; no one there is worthy to rule; the kingdom must be taken away and given to a stranger. It is the play as an epitome of life which is interesting the mind of Shakespeare, and not the career of one individual, even though the whole play be influenced by the actions of that individual. Look at the first quarto and we find a proof of this. Mutilated as that version is, care has been taken to avoid confusing the story of the play. Everything relating to Fortinbras is kept in the quarto, because Fortinbras has to appear like Richmond in “Richard III.,” as the hero who will restore peace and order to the distracted kingdom. This much-abused quarto has 557 lines less than the modern acting edition, of which 254 are not in that edition, although they are in the second quarto (or rather have a meaning equivalent to lines in the second quarto), showing clearly that it is possible to shorten the text in more ways than one. The first quarto comes nearer to Shakespeare’s dramatic conception of the play than the modern stage version, because the latter, by omitting some of the persons represented, and also many of the lines which reveal the weaker side of Hamlet’s character, have altered the story of the play, and placed the part of Hamlet in a different aspect to the one conceived by the author.

I will now compare French’s acting-edition of “Hamlet,” scene by scene, with the Globe edition. The Globe edition contains all the lines of the second quarto and the folio. It adheres to the text, but not to the stage-directions. For reading purposes, perhaps, the alterations which have been made in the latter may be justified to some extent as a necessity, yet for the acting-edition it would have been better to copy the originals. There are alterations made to the stage-directions in the first scene. Horatio, Marcellus, and the Ghost are shown to enter a line later in the Globe edition than is marked in the quarto or folio. But the attention of an audience is better sustained if the entrances of characters, especially of the Ghost, is not anticipated, and also if the dialogue is not interrupted by pauses for entrances and exits.

In comparing the text, I find that lines 69 to 125 of the Globe edition are omitted in the acting-edition. But these lines explain to the audience why Marcellus, Bernardo, and Horatio are engaged in this same “strict and most observant watch.” Marcellus and Bernardo are not common sentries. They are gentlemen and scholars, who are on duty as soldiers for this particular occasion. Lines 140 to 142 I should also like to see inserted, because they are needed to explain the words which follow—

“We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it this show of violence.”

On the stage these words are spoken, but no violence is shown towards the Ghost. Besides, the business of striking at the Ghost is a fine invention of the author to assist the imagination to realize it is a spirit. I am sorry lines 157 to 165 are omitted, because not only are they beautiful in themselves, but also appropriate, for they help to give solemnity to the scene. The omission of the last four lines of the scene leaves it unfinished. Altogether seventy-one lines have been cut out of the first scene, but the first quarto retains most of them.

The stage-directions at the head of the second scene, both in the Globe edition and folio, place Hamlet’s name after the Queen’s, to indicate the order to be observed by the actors when they come on to the stage. In the second quarto, however, Hamlet’s name comes last. As he has an antipathy to the King, and is displeased with his mother, it is not likely he would be much in the company of either, not even on State occasions, for Hamlet regards the King as a usurper. I would venture to suggest, then, that Hamlet should enter last of all, from another doorway to that used by the King and his train, having his hat and cloak in his hand, as if he had come to take leave of the Court before starting for Wittenberg.

Passing on now to the fourth scene, I notice that in the acting-edition the last five lines of the scene have been cut out, including that expressive one—

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

I do not myself sympathize with this cutting out the end of scenes, as is done so persistently in every acted play of Shakespeare’s. It is inartistic, because it is done to allow the principal actor to leave the stage with applause. Besides, it creates a habit, with actors, of trying to make points at the end of scenes, whether it is necessary or not, and this distorts the play and delays its progress.

In the fifth scene the line—

“O horrible, horrible, most horrible”—

spoken by the Ghost, is marked in the acting-edition to be spoken by Hamlet. Such an alteration is unwarranted by the text. The first quarto, by making Hamlet exclaim “O God” after the Ghost has said “O horrible,” gives indication that the words “O horrible” were spoken on the Elizabethan stage by the Ghost.

An alteration has also been made in the Ghost’s last line, which to some may appear a trivial matter. The folio attaches the word “Hamlet” to the “Adieu,” and puts a colon between it and the words “Remember me,” showing thereby that a slight pause should be made before these two last words are spoken, in order to make them more impressive; and the first quarto gives the same reading. French’s acting-version, however, tacks the name on to the “Remember me.” Cumberland’s version gives the reading of the second quarto, which I think the best—

“Adieu, adieu, adieu, Remember me.”

The omission in all the stage-versions of Hamlet’s lines addressed to the Ghost, beginning “Ha, ha, boy!” “Hic et ubique?” “Well said, old Mole!” is, I think, not judicious, because it causes some actors to misconceive Shakespeare’s intention in this scene. One can hardly read the authorized text without feeling that Hamlet is here shown as a young man, or, perhaps, a “boy,” as his mother calls him, in the first quarto, thrown into the intensest excitement. His delicate, nervous temperament has undergone a terrible shock from the interview with the Ghost, yet, owing to the absence of these lines, our Hamlets on the stage finish this scene with the most dignified composure. From the first act 217 lines have been omitted in French’s acting-edition.

In the beginning of the second act the scene between Polonius and Reynaldo is left out in all the acting-versions. It is a very amusing scene, and in my opinion gives a better insight into the character of Polonius than any of the others. If it were inserted I believe it would become popular with the audience, and we find it retained in the first quarto. The second scene is called “A Room in the Castle” both in the Globe and acting editions. Might it not be an exterior scene? It is true that Polonius remarks “Here in the lobby,” but the line next to this in the first quarto suggests that he is pointing to some place off the scene, for he adds “There let Ophelia walk,” and Ophelia is on the stage. An exterior scene would, in my opinion, give more meaning to the words “Will you walk out of the air, my lord?” and to Hamlet’s speech, “This most excellent canopy the air,” etc. The scene of a palace garden or cloister could be well introduced in a play so full of interiors. It would add to the interest of the scene if Hamlet took advantage of the early entrance in the quarto and in the folio. For Hamlet to catch sight of Polonius hurrying the King and Queen off the scene would account for his suspicions and explain his rudeness to Polonius. Lines 374 to 378, Globe edition, are omitted in the acting-edition, but should surely be inserted, because they are needed to explain why Hamlet’s reception of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern when they first enter, differs from that of the Players. I have always thought that the Hamlets of our stage, not being familiar with the context, mistake Shakespeare’s intention. I gather from the omitted lines that Hamlet should warmly welcome the players, and take them by the hand.

At line 381, in the Globe edition, Polonius is marked to enter and speak on the stage the line “Well be with you, gentlemen.” In the acting-edition he is marked to speak this “without” (to whom? certainly not to the players; Polonius would not have addressed them in such terms), and to enter at a cue lower down the page. The alteration is an instance of what I consider the wrong principle adopted in making stage-versions. The actors have preferred thinking Shakespeare wrong to using a little ingenuity to meet his stage-directions. They have said: “It will never do to have Polonius stand still saying nothing while Hamlet is making fun of him to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, so he must speak his line off the stage.” Would it not have shown more consideration for the author’s text to make Polonius enter where directed, and then find something for him to do after he is on the stage? For instance, he might enter from a side entrance, as if summoned by the sound of the trumpet, move hastily towards the back of the stage, where the new-comers would arrive, and greet Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, as he passes them, with the words, “Well be with you, gentlemen.”

The wording in the acting-version of the stage-direction, “Enter four or five Players and two Actresses,” is questionable. Perhaps it is not a matter of great consequence, unless the period chosen for representation be the Elizabethan one, and I would suggest that this is the most appropriate period for the play, because to adopt an early Danish period is contradictory to the text, and overloads the piece with material foreign to the author’s intentions. Shakespeare’s thoughts were not in Denmark when he wrote this play.

Hamlet’s recitation of Priam’s slaughter in the acting-version has been cut down from thirteen to three lines, and I venture to think unwisely. Hamlet has chosen these lines because they express in biting words his contempt for the King, his uncle, and the audience should become aware of this by the marked emphasis Hamlet lays on each epithet applied to Pyrrhus.

I am sorry that Hamlet’s line to the Player, “He’s for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or else he sleeps,” has been cut out. Besides being a fine hit at Polonius, it is an instructive piece of sarcasm. Playgoers in the twentieth century need as much to be told the truth as those in the sixteenth.

In Cumberland’s acting version the editor has inserted the stage-direction—“pointing to Hamlet”—before Polonius speaks his line, “Look whether he hath not changed colour,” etc. I believe this is the right reading, although it is not the one usually adopted on the stage. If Polonius had been speaking the words to Hamlet with reference to the player he surely would have inserted the words “my lord.” Besides, these manifestations of grief are more likely to arouse sympathy in Polonius coming from the “mad” Hamlet than from the actor, whose business it was to simulate emotion. By the way, the skill of this play-actor seems to have been underrated on our stage. Actors are always considered at liberty to rant the part, but from Hamlet’s description of his performance he should be an executant of considerable ability. It is curious that in Oxberry’s acting-edition the first half of Hamlet’s closing soliloquy is omitted, and he begins at the line, “I have heard that guilty creatures,” etc.; showing that even a great actor such as Edmund Kean could take some unpardonable liberties with his author. Two hundred and thirty-eight lines have been omitted from the second act of the stage-version.

The first scene in the third act is called in French’s acting-edition, “A Room in the Castle as prepared for the Play,” and in Cumberland’s, “A Hall in the Palace, Theatre in the Background.” But the interview between Ophelia and Hamlet should take place in the lobby spoken of by Polonius, the play being acted later in the day. It would add to the interest of the scene if the actor impersonating Hamlet availed himself of the position marked in the second quarto for his entrance, and actually saw the King and Polonius concealing themselves. Was not this Shakespeare’s intention?

I notice, in Hamlet’s soliloquy, that the folio has the expression, “the poor man’s contumely.” As the Globe edition, and, indeed, all the modern editions, retain the expression “proud,” used in the second quarto, I suppose that the “poor man’s contumely” is not considered a legitimate expression. It is curious, however, that the first quarto has an expression somewhat similar in meaning, “The rich man cursed of the poor.” In “Twelfth Night,” also, a play written not long before “Hamlet,” Olivia says: “O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!”

In the scene with Ophelia and Hamlet, both in French’s and Cumberland’s acting-version, Hamlet is marked to exit after the word “Farewell,” and to re-enter again directly afterwards, thus conveying the impression that he returns in order to give more force to his reproaches. These stage-directions are not to be found in either of the quartos or yet in the folio, and I can find no foundation for them in the text. They seem to me to be an unnecessary interruption in a solemn scene, and to interfere with its impressiveness. Hamlet is dismissing Ophelia to a nunnery, and the word “Farewell” is added to impress her with the necessity of her going. She must leave him, not he her. It is, indeed, a subtle touch of Shakespeare’s that Ophelia here should think Hamlet’s intense feeling and earnestness was madness, for the Prince was “hoist with his own petard,” having previously assumed madness for the purpose of breaking off his engagement with her, “made in honourable fashion, with almost all the holy vows of heaven.” After the exit of Polonius and the King, the stage-direction in the acting version is: “Enter Hamlet and First Player.” The Globe edition makes this the beginning of another scene, and where changes of scene take place in a theatre it would be correct to make an alteration, for the scene in the text is a banqueting hall and the time night. The stage-direction of the second quarto gives, “Enter Hamlet and three of the Players,” and that of the folio, “Enter Hamlet and two or three of the Players.” Hamlet, therefore, should not enter, as he does now, with only one player.

I should like to make a remark in passing on Hamlet’s expression, “trippingly on the tongue.” If Burbage’s company spoke Shakespeare’s lines in this way, I believe the longer plays could be acted in three hours. The late Mr. Brandram’s recitals showed how much more effective Shakespeare’s lines can be made when spoken “trippingly on the tongue,” and that the enjoyment of the public depends more upon the appropriate rendering of the text than upon the scenic accessories.

The stage-direction in the folio for the entrance of the court to see the play reads: “Enter King, etc., with his guard carrying torches.” It is a pity, I think, that these directions are not inserted in our acting versions. It would make a pretty picture for the stage to be darkened, and to have the mimic play acted by torchlight.

The “dumb-show” is omitted in all the stage-versions, and is not represented on the stage, but I think the play-scene is imperfectly realized by leaving it out. The Queen’s reply to Hamlet’s question, “Madame, how like you the play?” and the King’s inquiry, “Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in it?” would have a deeper significance with it represented; for evidently the poisoning in the “dumb show” has made no impression on the Queen, but a very marked one on the King, and Hamlet’s reply, “poison in jest,” assumes quite a different meaning. Besides, Hamlet’s words, “The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge,” shows that he already has become convinced of the King’s guilt before the appearance of Lucianus—and how, except by means of the “dumb show”? I believe, too, that if it were represented, then the mistake many actors fall into of making a climax at the lines, “He poisons him in the garden,” etc., and speaking them to the King, and not to his courtiers, would be corrected. There seems no justification for Hamlet making a climax of these lines. It is anticipating the King’s exit, which is the last thing Hamlet would wish for. He tells the court that it shall see “anon” how the murderer will marry the wife of Gonzago, and the King defeats his nephew’s purpose by stopping the play. Hamlet’s most dramatic line in this scene, one at which a point might be legitimately made, is cut out in the acting-version. Ophelia says, “The King rises.” Then Hamlet exclaims, “What! frighted with false fire!” Also the Queen’s remark to her husband, “How fares my lord?” has been omitted. The words have some value as evidence of the Queen’s ignorance of the King’s crime. If she knew of it the question was unnecessary.

“Exit Horatio” is the stage-direction in the acting-edition, after Hamlet’s words, “Come, some music;” but there is no similar stage-direction in either the second quarto or folio. Later on, in the acting-edition, comes the direction: “Enter Horatio with Recorders.” In the second quarto it is, “Enter the Players with recorders,” and in the folio, “Enter one with a recorder.” It seems just possible that Hamlet’s lines—

“Ah! ha! come, some music; come, the recorders.
For if the King like not the tragedy,
Why, then, belike he likes it not, perdy”—

may not be said to Horatio at all, but to one of the players who may be hanging about the stage waiting for instructions after the sudden interruption of the performance. He would then retire, and send some of his fellows with recorders. In French’s acting-edition the words, “To withdraw with you,” are altered to “So withdraw with you,” after which comes the rather curious stage-direction, “Exeunt Horatio and Recorders.” There are no such directions in the quartos or folio. A recorder is not a person, but a musical instrument. From indications in the first quarto, Horatio should remain on the stage until the end of the scene, for Hamlet says, “Good-night, Horatio,” to which Horatio replies, “Good-night unto your lordship.”

The third scene in the Globe edition is the second scene in the acting-version. French’s edition contains the King’s long soliloquy, and omits Hamlet’s entrance. Cumberland’s edition omits both. I think that to omit Hamlet’s entrance in this scene is to interfere with Shakespeare’s dramatic construction. Its omission breaks an important link between the closet scene and the play scene, and prevents the audience fully realizing the consequences of Hamlet’s clemency. Shakespeare shows us Hamlet wishing to take the King’s life at three different periods during the play, but the King’s craft and Hamlet’s conscience stand in the way; for the Ghost’s word must first be challenged; then the mother’s wishes must be respected; while the King’s prayers must not be interrupted; and when the next opportunity occurs the wrong man is killed. This is the sequence of the story, and it should not be broken; even the compiler of the first quarto knew this, for all three incidents are made prominent in his text. But our stage Hamlets try to tone down the inconsistencies and imperfections of the character; they exploit his sentiments, but do not show his inclinations. Hamlet wants to kill the King, notwithstanding that his sensitive nature instinctively rebels against the deed. A student, a controversialist, and a moralist, what has he to do with revenge or murder? But Hamlet, regardless of his own temperament, thinks only of his duty to his father.

Passing now to the third scene, which is the fourth in the Globe edition, I find that after the exit of the Ghost no less than 52 lines have been cut out, and their omission has caused actors to introduce stage-business which is contradictory to the text. Many Hamlets show an emotional tenderness towards the Queen which would be quite out of place if all the text were spoken. Look at the fierce satire expressed in lines 190 onwards! Hamlet in his self-constituted office “as scourge and minister” cannot caress his mother or hold her in his arms as is now done by actors. However much she may solicit his sympathy, his reply is: “I must be cruel only to be kind.” I should like to see inserted in the acting-edition the fine lines of Hamlet to the Queen—

“Forgive me this my virtue,
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo, for leave to do him good.”

From the third act 216 lines have been omitted.

The fourth act on the stage sometimes begins with the fifth scene, Globe edition, but very often the first and the third scenes are acted. These scenes seem to belong to the third act. They take place the same night, and are a continuation of the closet scene, for in the first quarto and folio the Queen is not marked to go off, but the King to enter after Hamlet’s exit. Between the fourth and fifth scenes a pause can well take place to allow of Laertes’ return from France. This addition to the third act would make it very long, unless the Hamlet and Ophelia scene were made part of the second act, bringing down the curtain on the words, “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.” Two objections to this suggestion, however, can be urged owing to the lapse of a day between the second and third acts, and the bringing together of Hamlet’s two long soliloquies. But an interval is only needed to show that time has been allowed to prepare the play, and, therefore, can come as well after the scene with Ophelia as before; and a good actor would surmount the difficulty of the two soliloquies by varying the delivery of each. This revision of act-intervals would make the construction of the play resemble more that of the first quarto, which, for acting purposes, is certainly the better version of the two. Moreover, in the folio there appear no divisions beyond the second act, nor any indications in the text to show where Shakespeare may have wished another pause to come in the representation.

In the first scene of the fourth act, Globe edition, the Queen, speaking of Hamlet, says:

“To draw apart the body he hath killed,
O’er whom his very madness, like some ore
Among a mineral of metals base,
Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.”

These lines are omitted in the acting-versions. Perhaps, if they were inserted, many actors might consider it necessary to show more concern for the death of Polonius than has hitherto been the stage practice.

The fifth scene, Globe edition, is the second scene in French’s, and the fourth in Cumberland’s. I think it would add to the dignity of Horatio’s character if, as directed in the second quarto, the Queen and Horatio entered with “a gentleman,” who brings news of Ophelia’s mental derangement. Horatio is not a servant, nor even a gentleman-in-waiting; but a visitor from Wittenberg. The Queen, having lost her son, would naturally seek the society of his bosom friend. The stage-direction in the first quarto for Ophelia’s entrance should be noticed; I should like to see it inserted in the acting-edition: “Enter Ophelia playing on a lute, with her hair hanging down, singing.” This, no doubt, is how she appeared on Burbage’s stage. I can imagine Ophelia entering as if she were wandering about the corridors of the palace singing and muttering to herself unconscious of what she was saying, where she was going, or to whom she was speaking; the imbecility of a pretty young girl who had been, at one time, fond of her songs as of her sewing. In the acting-edition the stage-direction for the second entrance describes her as being “fantastically dressed with straws and flowers,” but there is no similar direction in the quartos or folio. Ophelia has very little time allowed her to go anywhere, and certainly not beyond the palace precincts, where she might not find straws or daisies. Shakespeare may have intended the flowers to be imaginary ones to which she refers that the audience may anticipate her ramble beyond the palace to make garlands in the meadows. Songs were rarely sung on the stage unaccompanied, and it must be remembered that Ophelia was a court lady, more accustomed to handle the lute than to pick wildflowers. The third scene of the fourth act, being the fifth scene in the Globe edition, I have never seen acted on the stage. The omission is, perhaps, not important, except that the spectators are left ignorant as to the cause of Hamlet’s return. From the fourth act 303 lines have been omitted in the acting-version.

Coming now to the fifth act, the stage-direction for Ophelia’s burial, both in the Globe and acting-editions, is as follows: “Enter Priests, etc., in Procession, the corpse of Ophelia, Laertes, and Mourners following, King, Queen, their Trains, etc.” This direction is hardly consistent with Hamlet’s description, “Such maimed rites.” I should prefer the direction in the first quarto: “Enter King and Queen, Laertes and other Lords, with a Priest after the coffin.” The absence of religious ceremony should attract the attention of the audience as much as it does Hamlet’s. I should like to see only one Priest present, and the coffin borne by soldiers or villagers, not by monks or nuns. It is often the stage practice for the Priest to stand over the grave with a book in his hand and intone his lines (replies to Laertes’ questions) as if they were part of the burial service. A rather erroneous conception of Shakespeare’s churlish Priest, who objects to the funeral taking place on sacred ground, and refuses even to approach the grave.

In the first quarto, at the words “What’s he that conjures so,” is written the stage-direction, “Hamlet leaps in after Laertes,” and I find that Oxberry’s edition has the same direction, only inserted a little lower down. I presume, therefore, that the elder Kean did actually leap into the grave. Our modern Hamlets would object to this business as undignified, and perhaps it is; but, at the same time, Hamlet’s public apology to Laertes in the last scene requires some marked movement of his in this scene. He owns himself that he was in a towering passion. Laertes may handle Hamlet roughly, but not till Hamlet has interfered with him.

None of our stage Hamlets appear in the churchyard in any change of costume. From the familiar way in which the clown talks to Hamlet, and Hamlet’s declaration, “Behold, ’tis I, Hamlet, the Dane,” I imagine that Shakespeare intended Hamlet to be dressed in some disguise in this scene. When Hamlet, writing to the King, says, “Naked and alone,” he may not only mean unarmed, but stripped of his fine clothes, so that it would not be inappropriate for him to appear at the grave in some common sailor’s dress. In the second scene in this act Hamlet says, “With my sea-gown scarf’d about me,” a line that also would furnish some excuse for change of costume. Both in the first quarto and the folio the lines, “This is mere madness,” etc., are spoken by the King. The acting-edition follows the second quarto, and gives the lines to the Queen. The King had good reason to impress upon others the belief that Hamlet is mad; and when the villagers hear the taunt they should shun the lunatic.

The second scene is divided in the stage-version; and now that it has become the custom to lower the curtain for each change of scene, I would suggest that the churchyard-scene be changed at once to the hall where the duel takes place. The forcing of this duel upon Hamlet by the King would be better shown by the King and all the court coming down to Hamlet than Hamlet’s going to them. It is the difference between his going to meet death and death coming to him.

In this second scene of the acting-edition there is a line of the King’s omitted, which, perhaps, if it were inserted, would cause an alteration in the stage-business connected with it. The King says: “Give me the cups,” showing that more than one cup is brought to the King, one of them, probably, containing the poison. In this cup the King places his jewel, to insure Hamlet’s drinking out of it. On the stage it is the common practice to use only one cup, and to imagine that the pearl contains the poison.

I have before expressed my regret that the play should end at Hamlet’s death. Shakespeare would have considered the play unfinished, and even the partisans of stage effect would lose nothing by the introduction of Fortinbras. The distant sound of the drum, the tramp of soldiers, the gradual filling of the stage with them, the shouts of the crowd outside, the chieftain’s entrance fresh from his victories, and the tender, melancholy young prince, dead in the arms of his beloved friend, are material for a fine picture, a strong dramatic contrast. Life in the midst of death! Was not this Shakespeare’s conception? From the last act 219 lines have been omitted.

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The acting-editions of Shakespeare’s plays are worth examining by students in order to ascertain how far they are consistent with the author’s intention. Since the chronological order of the plays has been fixed with more or less certainty, the study of Shakespeare has become much easier, and his dramatic and poetical conceptions are more accurately realized than they ever were before. The time has now come when our acting-editions could be profitably revised. Eminent actors may prefer, perhaps, arranging versions from their own study of the text, but there must always exist a standard version for general use in the profession. I should like to see existing a playbook of “Hamlet” which has been altered and shortened by a joint board of actors and scholars. It should have a carefully written introduction describing minutely the play as it is believed the author conceived it. There should also be a short sketch of the persons represented, with hints to the actor where to look in omitted passages for glimpses of character; besides notes on obscure passages, unfamiliar expressions, and different readings; and a description of costume and scenery most appropriate to the play. Such a book might be the beginning of a new era for the Shakespearian drama on our stage, and, by stimulating actors to study their parts from an artistic point of view, and less from a theatrical one, it would enable the public to appreciate Shakespeare in the only place where he can be properly understood, and that is the theatre.

“King Lear.”13

When I opened the newspapers to read the criticisms on a recent performance of “King Lear,” and found that the first comments made were in praise of the costumes, the scenery, and the music, then I knew that once more Shakespeare and tragedy had failed to assert themselves in the English Theatre. Charlotte Brontë, the novelist, who was educated in Brussels, and saw Rachel in one of her greatest impersonations, once astounded a London dinner-party by saying that the English knew nothing about tragedy. In her diary she writes: “I have twice seen Macready act, once in ‘Macbeth’ and once in ‘Othello.’ It is the fashion to rave about his splendid acting; anything more false and artificial, less genuinely impressive than his whole style, I could scarcely have imagined. The fact is the stage system is altogether hollow nonsense. They act farces well enough; the actors comprehend their parts and do justice to them. They comprehend nothing about tragedy or Shakespeare, and it is a failure. I said so, and by so saying produced a blank silence, a mute consternation.” Unfortunately, Charlotte Brontë’s reproach still remains true. Perhaps, had she continued to protest, the public would then have recognized the truth of her remarks. As it was, she never again referred to the subject. Like most of our literary men and women, then and now, she preferred to remain discreetly silent upon all matters connected with Shakespeare and the stage.

Last night, in a London theatre, Charlotte Brontë’s words were forcibly brought back to my mind. I have once seen a great rendering of the part of Lear, but it was given by an Italian, Signor Rossi. I have seen the whole play correctly rendered, with every character a vivid realization of the poet’s conception, but this was at a performance in the Court Theatre at Munich. For thirty years I have been a constant playgoer, and seen the best art this country can produce, but never can I say that I have seen English tragedy on the English stage. The cause is not far to seek. We have actors in abundance, and some of them creative artists; yet we have no tragic actors, because we have no school in which to develop them. Until we can set apart a theatre for the exclusive use of classical drama and its interpreters, we cannot hope to have tragedy finely acted. A tragedy in verse is the severest test of the artist’s powers, of his physical flexibility in voice and face, of his training and sensibility. When, therefore, I heard who was going to essay the greatest tragic rôle that has ever been written, the result was a foregone conclusion: exit Shakespeare and enter the Producer.

Yes! He is the hero of the moment, as all our newspapers have told us, only it is unfortunate, in the interests of art, that to the praise there should have been added no discernment. Macaulay has said that the sure sign of the general decline of an art is the frequent occurrence, not of deformity, but of misplaced beauty, and whatever beauty has been put into the production is undoubtedly misplaced. We can accept accuracy in scenery and costume when the play itself is historically accurate—that is to say, when it has been written to show the difference between two periods as that of British and Norman, or when it defines some distinctive characteristic of race relating to its morals or manners. But what is there in “King Lear” that suggests such a remote period as 800 B.C.? We are told in the programme that Shakespeare purposely removes the story from Christian times to give the tragedy its proper setting in “a remote age of barbarism, when man in wanton violence was at war with Nature.” The story, however, belongs to one of the popular fables of European literature. Like “Cinderella,” it was in all probability transplanted into our country from a foreign source. In its application it is universal, and marks no special epoch or nationality, nor is there in the story or its characters anything out of keeping with a Christian age. Have there been no ungrateful daughters, no adulterers, no bastards, no tyrants, no jealous lovers since the years B.C.? The motive for crime remains pretty much the same to-day as it did before the Christian era, and will continue to remain the same until the economic conditions of human existence are readjusted. It is contrary to history and experience to suppose that in Shakespeare’s time dramatists deliberately aimed at illustrating not only the customs but also the morals of a barbaric age. If we do not to-day tear out the eyes of our enemy, it is because we have discovered some less clumsy way of revenging our injuries. But because our manners are more refined, it does not follow that our morals are purer. The story of “King Lear,” as Shakespeare has set it forth, is one that may happen to-day in any kingdom and any home. This is what the producer has failed to grasp, and why his scenes and costumes do not illustrate his play.

Throughout the performance the spectators’ eyes are at variance with the spoken words. Did the early Britons have stocks? Were there such persons as marshals, heralds, knights, drums, and colours? Did beldames walk the villages, and were there wakes and fairs in market-towns? Why was fish eaten on Fridays? Had “Bessy” crossed the bourn? How did the ballads become known a thousand years before they were written? Needlessly is the attention distracted by these anachronisms which upset the spectator’s equanimity in a play that is pulsating with ever-living human emotion. Then, again, costume is an essential adjunct in drama, as an indication of character. We know at a glance a man’s rank, his wealth, and his taste, by the aid of his clothes, provided always that we are familiar with the period in which the apparel was worn. But put the men into bath-sheets or into night-shirts, and we cannot tell the master from the servant. As a fact the producer has put all his characters into dressing-gowns—showy ones, doubtless—while the hair of the men is as long as that of the women. In vain do we seek among these sexless creatures for our familiar characters, to know who is who. Where is the king, the earl, the peasant, the knave, the soldier, the civilian? There are slight distinctions in the costumes worn by these characters, but to the uninitiated they are meaningless. Infinite variety in character and situation is created by the author, and none shown by the producer owing to the choice of an archaic period. How the spectator longs for sight of the fool’s cap, bells and bauble, of the herald’s tabard, and the knight’s armour; to see a girl as a girl, and a man as a man, and to know which is the lady and which the queen!

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A country squire, whose hobby was horses, once told me that although at twenty he thought himself a good judge of a thoroughbred, after fifty more years of experience he hesitated a long while in determining a nag’s good points. It is the same with the student of Shakespeare; the oftener he has read one of the poet’s plays, and the more study he has given to it, the longer he hesitates to criticize. The art of the dramatist is too thorough and too subtle to be lightly discussed. To all stage-managers who wish to mend or improve Shakespeare I say: “Hands off! Produce this play as it is written or leave it alone. Don’t take liberties with it; the man who does that does not understand his own limitations!” Let us uphold that there is but one rule to be followed when it becomes necessary to shorten one of the poet’s plays; and that is to omit lines, but never an entire scene. Shakespeare, of all his contemporaries, unless it be Ford, gave to his dramas—especially to his later ones—unity of design; so that each scene has a relation to the whole play. But in the preparation of this stage-version of “King Lear” it must be admitted that no rule, no method, no love, nor respect has been shown; and, what is the least pardonable fault, no knowledge is apparent. Scenes and passages have been torn out of the play, just as children might tear up bank-notes, regardless of the value of the parts to the whole. No matter if the story to modern minds is unintelligible, the characters incoherent, and the ethics of the play unconvincing, the management presumes that, as everything in “King Lear” took place among the early Britons, eight hundred years before Christ, only the costumes and scenery of the producer can be expected to elucidate the barbarities of the play or its people.

Stowed away in an odd corner of the drama, Shakespeare generally introduces some words to indicate his point of view, and, in regard to “King Lear,” his view is thus expressed:

“Edmund: This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune [often the surfeit of our own behaviour], we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion... and all that we are evil in, by divine thrusting on” (Act I., Scene 2).

And Shakespeare repeats the warning in “Coriolanus”:

“The gods be good unto us!... No, in such a case the gods will not be good unto us,” etc. (Act V., Scene 4).

Now, unfortunately, Edmund’s speech is omitted from the stage-version, so that the playgoer who does not know his Shakespeare misses the irony of the terrible tragedy he is called upon to witness. The poet wishes us to understand that if a community leaves to the care of the gods man’s responsibility to his fellow-men, instead of taking that responsibility upon itself, then life will go on to-day—and does go on—just as it did in the age of Elizabeth. All through the play Shakespeare denies omnipotence to man’s self-made gods. Edmund has good looks, intelligence, and good intentions (Act I., Scene 2). The community, however, in which he lives decides that because he is an illegitimate child these gifts shall not be profitably employed for the good of the State or for the benefit of the individual who possesses them. Edmund therefore becomes embittered, and revenges himself upon that community. Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall, being vicious in mind and self-seeking, make use of Edmund’s abilities to serve their own ends, by which means the catastrophe in the death of Cordelia and Lear is brought about, together with the deaths of the plotters. But Kent, Albany, Gloucester, and Edgar believe that all their misfortunes are brought about by the gods. Well, perhaps they are, if we admit that by the gods is meant society’s instinct for self-preservation, which compels it to rebel against bad laws and bad conventions. Unfortunately, however, history shows that a community can live too much in awe of its self-imposed gods, who overrule natural instinct, and encourage ignorance and folly, when a nation soon perishes, and is wiped out of existence.

It has been said that the putting out of Gloucester’s eyes is an artistic mistake on Shakespeare’s part. I hold that it is a necessary incident in the play, and that the dramatist has shown the reason for it. Cordelia has set foot in the country with her French soldiers, determined to regain the kingdom for her father, and Gloucester, whom Cornwall regards as belonging to his own faction, is conniving with Cordelia. Now had Gloucester been a common soldier, Cornwall could have put him to death as a traitor (Act III., Scene 7); but the offender being an earl, Cornwall dare not do this, so he puts out the old man’s eyes to prevent him reading Cordelia’s despatches. He is blinded, moreover, in sight of the audience, that Cornwall may be seen receiving his death-wound. And even the fact that Regan and Goneril were capable of acting so inhumanly towards Gloucester makes Lear’s plight more desperate, and therefore more pathetic. Yet Shakespeare never makes his characters suffer without giving them compensations, and the meeting and reconciliation between the blind Gloucester and his son is one of the most touching incidents in the play. That this reconciliation was omitted in representation suggests that the ugly incident of putting out Gloucester’s eyes was retained merely as a piece of sensationalism, and, if so, it merits severe condemnation.

Shakespeare has often been blamed for being intolerant to democracy, and this is in part a well-founded reproach, but it was a fault of the age and not of the man. Still, in “King Lear” the dramatist abundantly proves his sympathy with the hard lot of the poor. For this reason the play preaches no pessimism. Lear, Gloucester, and Edgar are the happier for the troubles they experience. Such hardships as they endure are brought upon themselves by their own shortcomings; but these hardships are mitigated by the gain to their moral natures of a fellow-sympathy for the sufferings of those who have done no wrong, and by an appreciation of the injustice done towards those whose miseries are created through the selfishness of the rich. Lear, who has ruled a country as a despot for half a century, discovers for the first time in his life that—

“Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all.”

Having exposed himself to feel what wretches feel, he knows, as he has never known before, how the heart of a desolate father can crave for the love of a gentle daughter. To prison he can cheerfully go with her,

“To pray and sing and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies,”

because now he is no longer himself in the wrong, but the one who is wronged. And the blind Gloucester, also, is happy in his misery, because for the first time he can say:

“Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man;—
that will not see
Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly;
So distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough.”

This is Shakespeare’s message to the aristocracy to-day, and yet all this is cut out by the actor-manager who seems to imagine that these sentiments are barbaric, and only represent the opinions of men who lived some three thousand years ago.

The omissions in this stage-version are in a great measure due to carelessness in the study of the play. The right point of view from which to present this colossal tragedy on the stage has been missed, and the stage-manager having allowed his actors to take up half the evening in drawling out the words of the first two acts, the blue pencil has been used for the remaining three with a freedom and ignorance which never should have been sanctioned.

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“Matinées every Wednesday and Saturday.” These words appear on all printed bills announcing the performance of “King Lear.” They go far to explain why the play fails to represent tragedy either in its emotion or terror, and why it sends playgoers back to their homes as cold and indifferent to human suffering as it left them. What is offered to the public is a kinematograph show; walking figures who gesticulate and utter human sounds; puppets who mechanically move through their parts conscious that the business must be done all over again within a few hours. Does an actor honestly think that he can impersonate Lear’s hysterical passion, madness, and death, twice in a day, and day by day, and that he can do this efficiently together with all his other duties of management? That he may wish to do so is intelligible, but that the public should sanction it and the critics tolerate it is strange indeed. That the exigencies of modern theatrical management impose these conditions is beside the question. A less exacting play might have been chosen instead of distorting one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces. Salvini, whose reputation as a tragedian is universally acknowledged, refused to act Othello more than three times in a week, and never on two consecutive days; and those who saw his moving performance must admit that it was a physical impossibility for him to do otherwise. A man does not suffer the tortures of jealousy without physical and mental prostration; and the actor endures a very heavy strain when he seeks to simulate an emotion which has not been aroused in a natural way.

The actor, however, not only fails to reproduce the emotions of Lear, he never even shows us the outside of the man. We look in vain about the stage to find the King; instead we see a decrepit, commonplace old man, though Lear is neither the one nor the other. He should resemble an English hunting “squarson,” a man overflowing with vitality, who is as hale and active at eighty as he was at forty; a large-hearted, good-natured giant, with a face as red as a lobster. He is one of the spoilt children of nature, spoilt by reason of his favoured position in life. Responsible to no one, he thinks himself omnipotent. No one but Lear must be “fiery,” no one but him unreasonable or contrary. In the crushing of this strong, unyielding, but lovable personality lies the drama of the play: this is what an Elizabethan audience went to the Globe Playhouse to see. But how can the story be told when a Lear comes on the stage, who at his first appearance is broken-down and half-witted? Where is the purpose or the art in showing us such a helpless creature being ill-treated by his own kindred? Yet Lear boasts of his physical strength; and how skilfully the dramatist has planned the entrance, so as to accentuate the virility of the man! The play opens with prose, and the first line of verse is spoken by the King, so that the change of rhythm may the better call attention to his entrance. Those who saw Signor Rossi, in the part, dart on to the stage, and with a voice of commanding authority utter the words—

“Attend the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloster”—

recognized the Lear of Shakespeare. This single line, as by a flash of lightning, revealed the impetuosity and imperious disposition of the King, and prepared us for the volcanic disturbance that followed the thwarting of his will. Another thing, overlooked by all our English actors, is the necessity for Lear to come on the stage with Cordelia. On her first appearance she should be seen with her father in affectionate companionship, so as to balance with the last scene, where she is carried on in his devoted arms. Lear’s division of his kingdom among his three daughters is not so eccentric a proceeding as the critics would make out. The King needs an excuse for giving the largest portion to his youngest child, and he thinks the most plausible reason is a public acknowledgment of the bond of affection between them. But Cordelia’s sense of modesty and self-respect have not been taken into account, and Lear, who never tolerates a rebuff, in a moment of temper upsets all his pre-arranged plans, with disastrous consequence to himself and others. All this animated drama is omitted in the present performance, because Lear, on his first entrance, fails to give the keynote to the character or to the tragedy. Lear, in fact, is never seen on the stage, but only a Piccadilly actor who assumes the part, divested of frock coat and top hat.

The title-rôle, unfortunately, is not the only part which has been wrongly cast. With the exception of Goneril and Regan, every character has been falsified and distorted. This is not due to want of ability in the actors, but to their physical limitations and to deficiency in training. Their reputations have been won in modern plays, and they seem quite unable to give expression to character when the medium of speech is verse. To those who think more about the actor than about the character he represents this is perhaps not a matter of much moment, but it is one of considerable importance to the play, since with all great dramatists the incidents are evolved by the characters; and if the men and women we see on the stage are not those that Shakespeare drew, his incidents are apt to appear ill-timed and ridiculous. After the title-rôle the most serious misconception of character is in the part of Edmund, the man whose wits control the movement of the drama. He is an offspring of the Italian Renaissance, a portrait of Machiavel’s Prince, whose merit consists in his mental and physical fitness. He should be the handsomest man in the play, the most alert, the most able; he is a victim neither to sentimentality nor to self-deception, and he is fully capable of turning the weakness of others to his own advantage. It is impossible to hate the well-bred young schemer, because he is too clever, and his dupes are too silly. Unfortunately, the actor who is cast for this important part is quite unsuited for it. Another brilliant part which has suffered badly at the hands of its interpreter is Edgar, a character in which the Elizabethans delighted, because of its variety and the scope it allows for effective character-impersonation. The actor has to assume four parts—Edgar, an imbecile beggar, a peasant, and a knight-errant, and each of these characters should be a distinct creation; but the actor gave us nothing but a modern young man making himself unintelligibly ridiculous. Even more disastrous was the casting of the part of the fool, that gentle, frail lad who perishes from exposure to the storm, a child with the wisdom of a child, which is often the profoundest wisdom. Then a lady with a majestic figure cannot represent the little Cordelia, and she should not have been given the part. Of course the obvious retort to this kind of criticism is that the play must be cast from a company selected for repertory work, most of which, perhaps, will be modern. London managers, also, impose actors on the public because they have a London reputation, and this creates a monopoly which becomes a tyranny upon art. Whether the artist is suited or not for the part, he must be put into it, for box-office considerations.

To sum up. For the first time in the history of our stage the theatre is put under the management of a literary director, presumably with a view to bringing scholarly intelligence to bear upon the exponents of drama; but the result to the public, in so far as “King Lear” is concerned, is that it gets quite the most chaotic interpretation of the poet’s work that it has ever been my misfortune to see represented on the stage. What is the reason? Has the director, like the fly, walked into the spider’s parlour, or, in other words, into the network of theatrical commercialism, to find his artistic soul silenced and himself bound? Time perhaps will show us!