HAMLET AT THE LYCEUM

(Dramatic Review, May 9, 1885.)

It sometimes happens that at a premiere in London the least enjoyable part of the performance is the play.  I have seen many audiences more interesting than the actors, and have often heard better dialogue in the foyer than I have on the stage.  At the Lyceum, however, this is rarely the case, and when the play is a play of Shakespeare’s, and among its exponents are Mr. Irving and Miss Ellen Terry, we turn from the gods in the gallery and from the goddesses in the stalls, to enjoy the charm of the production, and to take delight in the art.  The lions are behind the footlights and not in front of them when we have a noble tragedy nobly acted.  And I have rarely witnessed such enthusiasm as that which greeted on last Saturday night the two artists I have mentioned.  I would like, in fact, to use the word ovation, but a pedantic professor has recently informed us, with the Batavian buoyancy of misapplied learning, that this expression is not to be employed except when a sheep has been sacrificed.  At the Lyceum last week I need hardly say nothing so dreadful occurred.  The only inartistic incident of the evening was the hurling of a bouquet from a box at Mr. Irving while he was engaged in pourtraying the agony of Hamlet’s death, and the pathos of his parting with Horatio.  The Dramatic College might take up the education of spectators as well as that of players, and teach people that there is a proper moment for the throwing of flowers as well as a proper method.

As regards Mr. Irving’s own performance, it has been already so elaborately criticised and described, from his business with the supposed pictures in the closet scene down to his use of ‘peacock’ for ‘paddock,’ that little remains to be said; nor, indeed, does a Lyceum audience require the interposition of the dramatic critic in order to understand or to appreciate the Hamlet of this great actor.  I call him a great actor because he brings to the interpretation of a work of art the two qualities which we in this century so much desire, the qualities of personality and of perfection.  A few years ago it seemed to many, and perhaps rightly, that the personality overshadowed the art.  No such criticism would be fair now.  The somewhat harsh angularity of movement and faulty pronunciation have been replaced by exquisite grace of gesture and clear precision of word, where such precision is necessary.  For delightful as good elocution is, few things are so depressing as to hear a passionate passage recited instead of being acted.  The quality of a fine performance is its life more than its learning, and every word in a play has a musical as well as an intellectual value, and must be made expressive of a certain emotion.  So it does not seem to me that in all parts of a play perfect pronunciation is necessarily dramatic.  When the words are ‘wild and whirling,’