The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-20 00:00:00

HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE.

MADAME RISTORI AS QUEEN ELIZABETH,
If the Medea may be said to embody the passion
and grace of Madame Ristori—not less distinctive is
the Elizabeth of her extraordinary art and variety.
These two characters which contrast so strongly in
almost every point of view—which one might call the
respective types of ancient and modern civilisation
—of the free vehement child of nature—who re-
strains and conceals nothing, but loves or hates,
guards or destroys, as her passions chance to impell
her—and of the refined woman, the child of society,
who masks and plays with her emotions—who desires
with doubt and sophistry, and indulges to endure
remorse—are not more striking in the varying
aspects which they present of a common nature,
than in the fact of their adaptation to the gifts and
genius of Made. Ristori. Whilst a type, however,
the renowned Queen is even more an indivi-
dual—that history presents to us as distinguished
by her own variety of traits, and to an extent that
seems to exhaust the most opposite qualities of her
sex. Brave, cultured, thoughtful, generous, vain,
capricious, and revengeful—a lioness in respect to
her country—too often a serpent in respect to her-
self, she seems to epitomise all the power and the
weakness of a woman. Obvioasly, therefore, she is
a subject that only an artist of the greatest range
as well as depth could hope to embody ; and if
Signor Giacometti, in his desire to identify that
artist with his illustrious compatriot, somewhat
exaggerates the original in order to give more scope
to the transcriber, we must not be blind to the
merits which he offers as an offset. To the oppos-
ing traits of Elizabeth he gives a unity and sequence
by means of her passion for Essex, which prompts
or colours her whole conduct—whilst he imparts an
interest to her story, that is both dramatic and
historical in her gradual transition from strength to
infirmity, and from her playful to her tragic aspects.
Thus every act is made to present a distinct phase
of her career, whilst each deepens as it advances
both in its lesson and its attraction. There is
something more than this, however. Whilst giving
the needed prominence to all her lower qualities,
her vanity, personal and mental—her jealousy and
ambition—the author tempers them as faithfully
with her courage and decision, and in deepening
her sensibilities, both as respects love and remorse,
he makes their larger trial serve to purify and re-
deem her, and thus subjects the known realities of
her character and history to an ideal aim and in-
fluence, that are essentially artistic. Thus she un-
folds before us gradually her gayer features first—
her heroic and tragic ultimately, and this by no
means mechanically—an aspect to an act, but certain
qualities being assumed as the cohering principle
of her nature—such as her love, will, and ambi-
tion ; and these being kept in view—the woman pro-
gresses with the action, and is completed at its
close.

Accordingly the play opens about 1587, when
Elizabeth was past fifty, and terminates with her
death, which was some sixteen years ensuing; and
the first act presents her in a literary and diploma-
tic light, surrounded by a bevy of learned doctors
and grave damsels, with whom she discusses the
claims of authors, and shows her acquaintance with
the classics. Here a letter arrives from Leicester,

then her envoy to the Netherlands, which Stating
that he hss been fired the crown, rouses her
regal jealousy—which is as great as her personal or
mental—and she rc3olves to crush her aspir-
ing favourite—whilst Sir Francis Bacon pre-
sents a petition from Shakespear, who is
represented as very poor, praying that
his Henry the VIII. may be played be-
fore the Court at Windsor. The read-

ing of its concluding lines which are a pro-
phecy of her own fortunes—restores her ruffled

composure, and leads to her dictating a letter,
alternately to tha Chief Justice, ordering him to pay
the puet's debts, and another to the unlucky Leices-
ter bidding him resign his command to Raleigh.
The news arriving of the Commons being engaged
upon what she considers a question of prerogativ e
the spirit of the Queen is aroused again, and, aban-
doning her gaieties, she rushes off to crush their
insolence. With the second act commences the
central interest of the play—her love for her new
favourite Essex, and its daring but doubtful reeipro-

cation. Ho has displaced —his rival Leicester,
but hardly dares congratulate himself on a

triumph so full of risk, for he reads the
Queen's caprice and jealousy of power. A scene

ensues between them, in which, struggling between

pride and pasairhu, she at last reveals her feeling,
and gives him the ring (according to tradition)
which he was to send her when in danger, as an
unfailing means of deliverance, even trcm herself.
No sooner is she alone than she shows that her love
for him is not so much as for her prized authority,
which he never can consent to share, and then, as
if in punishment, her ambition tempts her into
crime. There comes the death warrant of 'Mary,
which she hesitates to sign till handed a letter from
the latter, in which she is so unfortunate as to say
she bestows her crown on Pallip the Second,

,~

beth's great rival. This defiance rouses her fury and
serves to justify her vengeance. She signs the
warrant and leaves the room, bending a look on
her secretary, who fully comprehends it, and de-
parts to fulfil her wishes. Here a little liberty
is taken with history in the introduction
of James the Sixth, on a secret visit to the Queen to
implore compassion for his mother, and obtain, if
possible, her release. At the height of his entrea-
ties arrives the news of Mary's death, and the young
King giving vent to a burst of horror and indigna.
tion, lays his malediction on the murderess, and
rushes from her presence. From this critical post-
tion, in which the Queen's dissimulation only in-
tensifies her guilt, she is rescued by fresh news—
only permissible by stage license, the approach of
the Armada, and then stet personal feeling vanishing
in her undoubted love of country, her heroism re-
stores her to her true dignity and altitude. She
gives orders to call out her troops, vows she will
lead them to the field in person, and grasping the
sword of her father, calls on her assembled nobles to
pledge their lives upon its blade, On this exciting
picture closes the second act. The third, which
opens at Greenwich, in the midst of the festivities
caused by the defeat of the Armada, is the weakest
in the play, and yet fulfils an important end in pre-
paring for its climax. Its action scarcely extends
beyonds the disgrace of Essex, who, having et-
ceeded his instructions by his foray upon Cadiz,
has provoked the Queen's displeasure—her ambi-
tious jealousy imagining that she detects in her
new favourite a certain symptom of the old one.
Essex's indignation at his treatment, and irreverent
expressions, inflaming the Queen in turn, she deals
him a hearty cuff—his hand flies to his sword ; he
is instantly arrested, and quits her presence tor the
Tower, pouring out a flood of invectives which leave
her amazed and choked with fury. With the fourth
act unfolds the tragic aspects of the story. Essex has
been condemned to death, not only for the present
treason but for his complicity with another, and
his danger having aroused the full measure of her
love for him she awaits the arrival of the ring by
which his danger is to be escaped. Her pride will
not allow her to pardon him without it, for its
sending would imply submission as well as prove
affection; but the ring comes not and she begins to
fear that his pride is equal to her own. He may
die even in defying her and thus involve her in a
murder even blacker than that of Mary—the murder
of the man she loves. Her struggles are at their
height when the warrant is brought her to sign,
and she—shrinking front it and turning
to it as love and pride alternately*
sway her--at length believing that at the
approach of death, his courage must give way,
and he will send the needed mission, signs the
warrant with terrible fears, and again watches and
asks eagerly if any message has come from the Towe-
r length Lady Howard flies into her presence. She
has been entrusted with the ring but deprived of it
by her husband, who is the enemy of Essex, and
no sooner is this told, and the Queen with a shriek
of terror has ordered the execution to he
stayed than a distant gun proclaims its
work Essex has fallen, and she aghast
at the measure of her guilt, waves every-
one away from her, and falls to the ground
with a never-dying remorse, When the curtail
rises again, Elizabeth, worn with years and suffer-
ing, for she is now on the verge of seventy, is seen
to be trembling on the brick of the grave. All
that sustains her is a will that has defeated every
enemy, and seems strong enough at last to wrestle
even with death. She had been prostrate for
several days when she had heard that the Ccm•
raons were discussing the question of her successor,
and as this was an invasion of her prerogative,
her strength had rallied for a last victory,
and she had ordered herself to be carried in a litter
to the house where she had once more subdued its
haughty patriots to silence. She enters, leaning
on the arm of Burleigh, elate with this achieve-
ment ; and, deceived by its excitement into the
belief that it has endowed her with a new life,
she orders a festivity at Windsor, and laughingly
tells Burleigh he shall have the honour of her
hand. She even goes so far as to com-
passionate her old Minister—to remind him
of his infirmities, and beg him to be pru-
dent, When at length the dream dis-
solves—a pang seizes her, and she is warned that
in a few hours she must be dust. She commands
her court to leave her; and, stretched upon her
couch, is forced to contemplate her fate. The
thought of Essex has come back to wring from her
a wail of mingled penitence and passion, and enforce
her dying estimate of all her delusions and posses-
sions. She has outlived everything—youth,
beauty, and personal homage—and now she
finds herself alone with the spectres of
Essex and Mary. In her terrors she becomes
senseless, but is restored to a last consciousness by
the entrance of the young king. She bids him
kneel, and crowns him. His dignity is proclaimed
to the people beneath her window, and their hapPY
shouts assail her ears just as her senses are depart-
ing. Love and vanity are gone, but pride is still
unconquered. She rises with a wild effort—plucks
the crown from the king's brow, and planting it on
her own, falls back a monarch, even in death.
Such, in as few words as we can describe it, i 8
the stirring action of this play ; and, if it possesses
no other merit, it will be seen it is no narrow plat-
form for the powers of a great actresss. Here are
character and incident worthy even of a Ristori,
whatever may be the limitations imposed by the
meagre writing. How she grasps them is a
matter which it is not so easy to describe. That
her Elizabeth, on the whole, must be regarded as
her greatest triumph, we are entirely convinced ;
but we arc aware this assertion conveys but a very
vague idea of what this triumph really invoices.
The Medea revealed to us her grace and passion,

but we required the Elizabeth to shin us the

singular plasticity as well as vigour, which
could pass in such
quick succession to emotions the
roost opposite, and by certain abiding qualities,
forming the media of the transit, make tiaem as
truthful as they are vivid—gay ono moment with the
lightest vanity—flaming the next with the fiercest
rage—trembling now with the tenderest feeling—

maddened anon with the deepest hate. There Was

no emeess in there transitions, her great art or sense
of truth enabling her to grasp the central ideas of
Queen and Lover, availed her easily to modify
and harmonise their expressions. As a Pie"
Euro of the agonies cif a proud but Pas"

sionate heart, her struggles in the fourth act,
whilst awaiting the ring from Essex, and yet
compelled to sign the warrant, we have never seen
excelled. And yet her fifth act was unquestionably
the triumph of the night. The bent and withered

being that then tottered in before us, fo fearfully

contrasting with the regal bloom of her frst EtP"
pearance—the strong will that even could control
and keep death in abeyance, supplying to this

shrivelled tenement a power almost superhu-
man a bearing still majestic, or, if failing,

only broken by remorse, and not by time---

What a picture stood before us and yet,

if possible, more marvellous, as it was un-
doubtedly more terrible—when, stretched upon her
couch, she surveyed the approach of death, and
teied to chase away its phantoms by lingering self-
deceptions—when hoping against hope her vanity
revived, and, straining her fainting limbs to catch
a last look at her glass, she gazed upon a faco

scarcely less spectral than her faucies.—What a
picture was again there, as truthful in its present-
ment as it was pro Found in its instruction.

It is but a trifling note to wake that Maclaine
Ristori throughout fhe play, as the Queen both in her

bloom and her decrepitude, is perhaps the most strik-
ing stage resemblance that has been given in our time.
Her praise is something higher. She is an embodi-
ment of the woman which either a painter or a poet
could study with advantage. It is scarcely necessary
to add that her performance raised the audience to the
highest state of excitement,their applause throughout
its course rising to an enthusiastic summons at the
close of every act, which became, and very properly,
a double one at the conclusion. Madame Ristori
was ably supported by Signor Pezzaua, in the cha-
racter of Essex, whose indignant denunciations at
the close of the third act were very deservedly ap-
plauded. Madlie. Glech, also, was very effective in
i.he character of Lady Howard.