第74章

I

Perhaps the clothes question is exhausted, philosophically.I cannot but regret that the Poet of the Breakfast-Table, who appears to have an uncontrollable penchant for saying the things you would like to say yourself, has alluded to the anachronism of "Sir Coeur de Lion Plantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit."A great many scribblers have felt the disadvantage of writing after Montaigne; and it is impossible to tell how much originality in others Dr.Holmes has destroyed in this country.In whist there are some men you always prefer to have on your left hand, and I take it that this intuitive essayist, who is so alert to seize the few remaining unappropriated ideas and analogies in the world, is one of them.

No doubt if the Plantagenets of this day were required to dress in a suit of chain-armor and wear iron pots on their heads, they would be as ridiculous as most tragedy actors on the stage.The pit which recognizes Snooks in his tin breastplate and helmet laughs at him, and Snooks himself feels like a sheep; and when the great tragedian comes on, shining in mail, dragging a two-handed sword, and mouths the grandiloquence which poets have put into the speech of heroes, the dress-circle requires all its good-breeding and its feigned love of the traditionary drama not to titter.

If this sort of acting, which is supposed to have come down to us from the Elizabethan age, and which culminated in the school of the Keans, Kembles, and Siddonses, ever had any fidelity to life, it must have been in a society as artificial as the prose of Sir Philip Sidney.That anybody ever believed in it is difficult to think, especially when we read what privileges the fine beaux and gallants of the town took behind the scenes and on the stage in the golden days of the drama.When a part of the audience sat on the stage, and gentlemen lounged or reeled across it in the midst of a play, to speak to acquaintances in the audience, the illusion could not have been very strong.

Now and then a genius, like Rachel as Horatia, or Hackett as Falstaff, may actually seem to be the character assumed by virtue of a transforming imagination, but I suppose the fact to be that getting into a costume, absurdly antiquated and remote from all the habits and associations of the actor, largely accounts for the incongruity and ridiculousness of most of our modern acting.Whether what is called the "legitimate drama" ever was legitimate we do not know, but the advocates of it appear to think that the theatre was some time cast in a mould, once for all, and is good for all times and peoples, like the propositions of Euclid.To our eyes the legitimate drama of to-day is the one in which the day is reflected, both in costume and speech, and which touches the affections, the passions, the humor, of the present time.The brilliant success of the few good plays that have been written out of the rich life which we now live--the most varied, fruitful, and dramatically suggestive--ought to rid us forever of the buskin-fustian, except as a pantomimic or spectacular curiosity.

We have no objection to Julius Caesar or Richard III.stalking about in impossible clothes) and stepping four feet at a stride, if they want to, but let them not claim to be more "legitimate" than "Ours"or "Rip Van Winkle." There will probably be some orator for years and years to come, at every Fourth of July, who will go on asking, Where is Thebes? but he does not care anything about it, and he does not really expect an answer.I have sometimes wished I knew the exact site of Thebes, so that I could rise in the audience, and stop that question, at any rate.It is legitimate, but it is tiresome.

If we went to the bottom of this subject, I think we should find that the putting upon actors clothes to which they are unaccustomed makes them act and talk artificially, and often in a manner intolerable.

An actor who has not the habits or instincts of a gentleman cannot be made to appear like one on the stage by dress; he only caricatures and discredits what he tries to represent; and the unaccustomed clothes and situation make him much more unnatural and insufferable than he would otherwise be.Dressed appropriately for parts for which he is fitted, he will act well enough, probably.What I mean is, that the clothes inappropriate to the man make the incongruity of him and his part more apparent.Vulgarity is never so conspicuous as in fine apparel, on or off the stage, and never so self-conscious.

Shall we have, then, no refined characters on the stage? Yes; but let them be taken by men and women of taste and refinement and let us have done with this masquerading in false raiment, ancient and modern, which makes nearly every stage a travesty of nature and the whole theatre a painful pretension.We do not expect the modern theatre to be a place of instruction (that business is now turned over to the telegraphic operator, who is making a new language), but it may give amusement instead of torture, and do a little in satirizing folly and kindling love of home and country by the way.

This is a sort of summary of what we all said, and no one in particular is responsible for it; and in this it is like public opinion.The Parson, however, whose only experience of the theatre was the endurance of an oratorio once, was very cordial in his denunciation of the stage altogether.

MANDEVILLE.Yet, acting itself is delightful; nothing so entertains us as mimicry, the personation of character.We enjoy it in private.

I confess that I am always pleased with the Parson in the character of grumbler.He would be an immense success on the stage.I don't know but the theatre will have to go back into the hands of the priests, who once controlled it.

THE PARSON.Scoffer!