# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/"Othello" at the Princess's

* related authors: William Shakespeare (1564-1616).
* sister projects: Wikipedia article, Wikidata item.
See also the postscript, "Fechter's 'Othello'".
“OTHELLO” AT THE PRINCESS’S.
Those of our readers who have obtained, or tried to obtain, places at the box-office in Oxford Street, on any Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, since October 23rd, will not be disposed to consider the Drama in a languishing or moribund condition. The audiences gathered by Mr. Charles Kean have been not only equalled, but surpassed in numbers, brilliancy and intelligence. This is, perhaps, not to be wondered at. The impersonation of Hamlet by Mr. Fechter was so novel, so scholarlike, so suggestive, that expectation has been nervously awake to catch any hints of the readings and situations to be anticipated in his delineation of the Moor of Venice.
Before we commence analysing the new performance with the care that its high artistic excellence and elaboration of detail deserve, we must make one remark intelligible to the majority of play-goers, but especially intelligible to the frequenters of the Princess’s under the old régime—we went to see a “Character,” we found a “Revival.”
It is true that the rendering given by the French tragedian has many points of novelty to an English audience. Though a performer whose name is well known to the frequenters of the theatres at Florence and the chief Italian cities, Signor Salvini has taken a view not altogether unlike that of Mr. Fechter.
As in the “Hamlet,” one sentence, viz., the passage—
And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action,
was the key to the entire interpretation, so in the “Othello” the whole character of the hero hinges on the idea that the Moor is
One not easily jealous, but, being wrought, Perplex’d in the extreme.
With this preface we open Mr. Fechter’s “Acting Edition” (pausing an instant, over its motto—faiblesse vaut vice), and from the “Dedication” learn his object. It is “to sap the foundations of that wormeaten and unwholesome prison where Dramatic Art languishes in fetters, and which is called Tradition.” We are by this announcement prepared to expect many deviations from the received mode of rendering the play in this country, and we are not disappointed. Mr. Fechter and Tradition are Plaintiff and Defendant, though the public, as Jury, acquit or condemn the words of the author in their grammatical and obvious significance.
The great issue is this. Has Mr. Fechter, in his anxiety to do something novel, and to free himself from the manacles of usage, sometimes allowed a rich and fruitful fancy and a keen eye for the picturesque and effective, to lead him into deviations from, and additions to the text, alien from the spirit of Shakspeare, and unwarrantable as the liberties which Dryden took with “The Tempest” or Tate with “Lear?”
It seems to us that, in two or three cases he has gone too far, and as we desire to get all the fault-finding over at once, we will quote the points where it appears to us he has overstepped his duty, and fancied he was annihilating Tradition when he was really unfaithful to the “Great Master” Himself. Indeed, the conduct of a lover who should compel his charmer to acquire, by cosmetics, a rosy blush when she was naturally pale, and to seek from her hair-dresser flaxen locks to conceal her own jetty tresses, affords no unfair type of Mr. Fechter in his treatment of the works of the man whom he professes to worship. Alas! perhaps, in every pursuit we bring with us that which we find.
First, we must protest against the tameness and the conversational tone assumed in the Address to the Senate. In so rendering this speech we conceive Mr. Fechter has failed to realise the situation of his hero. Othello was in considerable peril. The powers of the Ten were absolute—the privileges of the Ten sacred. The threats of imprisonment, uttered by Brabantio, in scene 2, were not empty words. The Duke himself, directly he is informed of the abduction, says:
Whoe’er he be, that, in this foul proceeding, Hath thus beguiled your daughter of herself, And you of her, the bloody book of law You shall yourself read in the bitter letter, After your own sense; yea, though our proper son Stood in your action.
Besides, in the sixteenth century, the charge of having used witchcraft was something more than a figure of speech. The Moorish General of the forces of the Republic must have been more fortunate than any other general before or since, if he had not some enemies amongst the seignory who would delight in exaggerating a charge against him; indeed, we know that the “Three Great Ones of the City,” whom he had lately displeased by the appointment of Cassio as his lieutenant, were sitting at that very council board, and would not have missed an opportunity of resenting his slight to them. And the strangest part of the matter is, that of all this, Mr. Fechter seems fully aware, for he has given in his edition stage-directions, indicating that he feels the Abduction should create great surprise and violent dissatisfaction amongst the magnificos. But yet he persists in making the General treat the matter as if it were of no moment. A few graceful waives of the hand, a deprecating look, and a complimentary stress on the second adjective in the line
My very noble and approved good masters,
appease the indignation of the most despotic, haughty, and implacable oligarchy the world ever saw! We cannot endorse this rendering with our ​applause. When Shakspeare elaborated the Apology with so many exquisite ornaments, and made it a model of rich and pathetic eloquence, he did so because he felt the Moor’s case to be far from strong, and because he saw that nothing but a speech full of cunningly adapted arguments, moving appeal and glowing description, would reconcile the Senate to condone the offence. Mr. Fechter mars this splendid oratory—this model of artless art—by a flat and monotonous delivery, a provoking nonchalance, a careful carelessness!
Our second suggestion relates to the delivery of the “farewell” in act iii. We are by no means inclined to quarrel with the tone adopted here—the conception is admirable, and the utterance suitable to the conception, but if attention had been paid to the scenic directions of the play as Shakspeare wrote it, the effect of this magnificent passage would have been enhanced tenfold.
The second scene of the second act is “a Room in the Castle. Othello, Iago, and Gentlemen enter.” and Othello, after giving letters to Iago, sets out to walk round the works and examine the fortifications . . . The scene then changes to “Before the Castle,” and here, in the course of their circuit of the windy battlements, where there were no curtains or corners to shelter eaves-droppers, and not in a gilded and painted saloon, furnished with oriental luxury, like a chamber in a hareem, and yet used rather curiously by the General for the transaction of official business, should the first drops of the poison be instilled into Othello’s mind. In the full view of the Castle and the Galleys, with the tents of his troops pitched on the shore, with his Standard waiving from the Keep, how vivid would be the effect of the lines:
Farewell the tranquiO now, for ever, Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content! Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars, That make ambition virtue! O, farewell! Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, The royal banner; and all quality! Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
How fit a close, too, might be found to the apostrophe, if the General to whom “the tyrant custom had made the flinty and steel couch of war a thrice driven bed of down” had sunk, as he concluded, on one of the unwieldy bronze cannons, that still, honey-combed and green with verdegris, point their harmless mouths from the ancient castles of Rhodes and Cyprus, thus emphasizing the lines which Mr. Fechter timidly omits:
And you mortal engines, whose rude throats The immortal Jove’s dread clamours counterfeit, Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone!
The heaviest accusation we have, however, against Mr. Fechter, is in the matter of “The Song of Willow,” in the fifth act. Nothing can be less in harmony with the spirit of the play—nothing more sickly and sentimental! It is just the kind of improvement (?) of Shakspeare, which we should have expected from Kotzebue. “The Song of Willow” should have been unquestionably brought back—no more glaring instance of the power of Tradition for evil than the omission of it and the exquisite scene in which it occurs, can be found in stage history. But why do an unquestionable right in such a furtive, shamefaced way? The swan-like songs of Desdemona (which have one parallel, and one parallel only, the strains in the “Antigone” of Sophocles) have an exquisite meaning when sung by her, but have no meaning when sung by a soprano voice unknown in the town of Famagusta! . . .
The more gracious part of our task remains, viz. , the indication of those passages where Mr. Fechter has attained supreme excellence.
First and foremost we must, of course, point to the marvellous delivery of the three words—“not a jot.” Acute suffering, wild despair, and unutterable shame, making themselves perceptible in spite of an overpowering effort to preserve self-control, were all rendered evident as only an artist of consummate power could have exhibited them! . . . The lines
Though that her jesseIf I do prove her haggard, Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings, I’d whistle her off, and let her down the wind, To prey at fortune
were accompanied by gestures so appropriate and natural, and, at the same time, so striking and intelligent, that we felt it hard to believe Mr. Fechter was not living in an age when falconry was an every-day pastime. Those who witnessed the action which illustrated the soliloquy in “Hamlet,” beginning
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
are aware of the command, or rather masterdom, which he possesses over gesture; but we feel assured that even those who were astonished at the way in which ironical self-reproach and submission to personal indignity were expressed by a few motions of the hands, would fail to believe it possible that a man should so easily and completely explain a metaphor taken from an obsolete sport by swaying his hands in certain directions, at the same time persuading us that he is not thinking at all about herons and jesses, but that his whole mind is bent on sifting evidence against a wife supposed to be disloyal. Delicate in conception and marvellous in its close adherence to nature, is the expression that accompanies the words, “Set on thy wife to observe.” The actor’s face is literally suffused with a burning blush, and as he buries his face in his hands, we almost fancy we see the scalding tears force their way through the trembling fingers and adorn the shame-reddened cheeks!
We are inclined to admire also the ingenuity and novelty of the glance at the reflection of his dark face in the mirror which suggests the words, “Haply for I am black;” and we are assured that never was a scene rendered with truer pathos and beauty than the irrepressible burst of tenderness which the magic of Desdemona’s loveliness, and the helplessness of her sorrow combine—alas, for a few moments only—to reawaken!
Though, as all the authorities tells us, an Othello must be judged by act iii.; and though his highest histrionic laurels are gained in that portion of the play, it is, however, in the last act that we conceive Mr. Fechter most triumphantly vindicates his claims to the title of an intelligent student of ​Shakspeare. There is much in this part of the performance which is entirely out of the reach of the mere actor. The solution by the action with the toilet-glass of the difficult passage “It is the cause,” and the explanation of the story of the Turk and the Venetian by the seizure of Iago. are not triumphs of acting; they are marvels of critical sagacity. Such things the Kembles and Youngs, who established our stage traditions, could never have grasped in their conceptions. They could as easily have written Johnson’s character of Polonius, or the critique on “Hamlet” in Wilhelm Meister.
We cannot leave the performance at the Princess’s without a few words about two of the other actors.
Mr. Ryder renders Iago as it has probably never been rendered before. He looks the sardonic remorseless Ancient to the life. The diabolical sneers behind the back of his master, the brutal coarseness to his wife, the cajolery and banter with Roderigo, the hypocritical tenderness for Desdemona, and the bursts of virtuous indignation at the assault on Cassio, are all pourtrayed with incomparable vividness and spirit. Where all is so excellent, it is clearly hypercriticism to suggest any improvement; but perhaps the contrast should be a little more marked between the manner in conversation and the manner when uttering soliloquy. We cannot help thinking that the speech, after he has filched the handkerchief from Emilia, when he sees his way in a moment to the whole plot, should be given with a fierce abandonment to the evil demon that possesses him; and we fancy that flinging up the lace embroidered toy, which is to be the instrument of so much woe, and catching it again in his hand as it flutters down with a gesture of malignant gaiety, would enhance the effect of the lines:—
Are, to the jealous, Trifles, light as air, Are, to the jealous, confirmations strong As proofs of holy writ.
On the whole, however, this character is far superior to any which this veteran of the London stage has undertaken. It is superior to his Buckingham or to his Hubert, both of which were admirable, and it atones for the vulgar Transpontine manner in which for seventy-two nights he persisted in acting Claudius, in Hamlet.
Mr. Jordan’s Cassio does not quite satisfy us. Throughout he lacks gentlemanly ease. In the drunken scene he does not get intoxicated soon enough; and he gets sober too soon. The sentence—“I pray you pardon me—I cannot speak,” was uttered by the late Charles Kemble (incomparably the best Cassio that ever lived), with the slippery uncertainty of one overtaken in his cups. Mr. Jordan, in spite of Mr. Fechter’s stage direction, is restored to complete sobriety by the entrance of Othello.
This article has already exceeded the limits we prescribed to ourselves, yet our readers will be sure to anticipate some allusion to the foreign cadence (for it is a cadence, not an accent) which still impairs the effect of Mr. Fechter’s delivery of English blank verse. It is certainly not so perceptible now as it was when Mr. Fechter first came to London, and we conceive that when this paper is in the hands of the readers of Once a Week, it will be even less noticeable than it is when we write. The cadence is most injurious in the long speeches, which are, owing to this defect, cut up into fragments by numerous pauses, and in more than one instance subjected to unjustifiable curtailment and monstrous excisions. Of course we cannot tell what parts Mr. Fechter proposes to undertake in time to come, but we cannot help thinking that the three plays which are left us in Shakspeare’s later manner—“Coriolanus,” “Julius Cæsar,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” would afford large scope for his peculiar talents; and as the dialogue is far more broken and the speeches are shorter, all deficiencies of pronunciation would be completely lost. The last of these plays would afford ample opportunities for picturesque action and wealth of fancy, and has the advantage of being almost new to the present generation of play-goers. But the faithfulness of Mr. Fechter’s tongue to his native pronunciation is after all a secondary matter—we think of it as little as we did of the Swedish accent in which Jenny Lind sung “John Anderson My Jo,” or “On mighty pens;” and we are sure, if Shakspeare himself were to witness his Othello at the Princess’s, he would say as his own Henry said to Katherine:
“If you will love me soundly with your French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your English tongue.”
Though we have in the previous pages freely commented on his readings and innovations, we cannot take leave of Mr. Fechter without assuring him of our entire sympathy and hearty admiration—nor without pointing him out to all our actors as the great master of gesture and expression—as the most consummate and careful observer of minute points of detail and niceties of characterisation, and as a man profoundly sensible of the high responsibilities of his Art.
* ↑ A general movement of surprise—“Murmurs in the Senate”—“Fresh murmurs.”—C. F.’s edition.
* ↑ As illustrations of Fechter’s greatness in trifles, observe in “Hamlet” the gradations of courtesy with which he greets Horatio, his fellow student and friend, Marcellus, his acquaintance, and Bernardo, a stranger. In “Othello,” the indication of thorough honesty and manliness in sharply and decisively turning the key in the house-door, when craftily solicited by Iago to act as though guilty, and shun “the raised father and his friends,” the gesture of command with which he waives back the servants of Brabantio, who, presuming on the probable fall in his fortunes, attempt to precede him, and the reality of his occupation with his papers in act iii. when, instead of glancing at one stage letter, held in both hands as nobody ever reads a letter in real life, he peruses, endorses, annotates, and throws aside, as though each paper claimed a distinct consideration and required a different treatment. May we hint that the banner of the “valiant Moor” should not be a gaudy ensign like the flags in a Lord Mayor’s Show, but a tattered and smoke-begrimed standard like those which we recall in the entry of the victors of Agincourt in Mr. Kean’s “Henry the Fifth,” and, further, that the house with illuminated windows at the back of the stage (act iv., scene 3) must be the dwelling of Bianca, not Iago, and that the tinkling of a lute from that direction, stopping just before Cassio enters, would be suggestive and natural.