“The writer in ‘Putnam’ does not go into these small matters, but he attempts a criticism on acting, to which I am not entirely a convert.  He maintains that if an actor should really show a character in such light that we could not tell the impersonation from the reality, the stage would lose its interest.  I do not think so.  We should draw back, of course, from physical suffering; but yet we should be charmed to suppose anything real, which we had desired to see.  If we felt that we really met Cardinal Wolsey or Henry VIII. in his days of glory, would it not be a lifelong memory to us, very different from the effect of the stage, and if for a few moments we really felt that we had met them, would it not lift us into a new kind of being?

“What would we not give to see Julius Caesar and the soothsayer, just as they stood in Rome as Shakspere represents them?  Why, we travel hundreds of miles to see the places noted for the doings of these old Romans; and if we could be made to believe that we met one of the smaller men, even, of that day, our ecstasy would be unbounded.  ’A tin pan so painted as to deceive is atrocious,’ says this writer.  Of course, for we are not interested in a tin pan; but give us a portrait of Shakspere or Milton so that we shall feel that we have met them, and I see no atrocity in the matter.  We honor the homes of these men, and we joy in the hope of seeing them.  What would be beyond seeing them in life?

“October 31.  I saw Rachel in ‘Phedre’ and in ‘Adrienne.’  I had previously asked a friend if I, in my ignorance of acting, and in my inability to tell good from poor, should really perceive a marked difference between Rachel and her aids.  She thought I should.  I did indeed!  In ‘Phedre,’ which I first saw, she was not aided at all by her troupe; they were evidently ill at ease in the Greek dress and in Greek manners; while she had assimilated herself to the whole.  It is founded on the play of Euripides, and even to Rachel the passion which she represents as Phedre must have been too strange to be natural.  Hippolytus refuses the love which Phedre offers after a long struggle with herself, and this gives cause for the violent bursts in which Rachel shows her power.  It was an outburst of passion of which I have no conception, and I felt as if I saw a new order of being; not a woman, but a personified passion.  The vehemence and strength were wonderful.  It was in parts very touching.  There was as fine an opportunity for Aricia to show some power as for Phedre, but the automaton who represented Aricia had no power to show.  Oenon, whom I took to be the sister Sarah, was something of an actress, but her part was so hateful that no one could applaud her.  I felt in reading ‘Phedre,’ and in hearing it, that it was a play of high order, and that I learned some little philosophy from some of its sentiments; but for ‘Adrienne’ I have a contempt.  The play was written by Scribe specially for Rachel, and the French acting was better done by the other performers than the Greek.  I have always disliked to see death represented on the stage.  Rachel’s representation was awful!  I could not take my eyes from the scene, and I held my breath in horror; the death was so much to the life.  It is said that she changes color.  I do not know that she does, but it looked like a ghastly hue that came over her pale face.