The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-10-09 00:00:00

THE THEATRE ROYAL.

Mr, Charles Kean is still playing his round of characters
at our theatre, with Mr. Cooper, as his second ; and with the
aid of Shakspeare's sterling plays, they draw good houses.
Having heard much of Mr. Kean's improvement, and there
not being any one character in which he performs, which
requires it so much, looking at the whole representation, as
his Duke of Gloater, in `''Richard III," we visited the
theatre last evening, hoping to see nature unfolded to us in
her most impetuous, and wiliest workings. An actor may be
said to have two objects in view; one, " to hold the mirror
up to nature," to represent the workings of the human
mind, and the dictates of the passions as they affect men,
and are the rules of action in life ; the other, to please
the not over thinking multitude that throngs the theatre.
To do the former requires a man to possess mind, else would
he in vain attempt to pourtray the workings of mind; he
must also possess exciteable feelings, which at the command
of a master-intellect shall be turned into such and such a
" vein," so as to produce the effects, in manner, demeanour,
and expression, which men naturally put on when possessed
by such and such feelings. This, in our idea, is the business
of an actor; and this process of thought and feeling carried
out to natural perfection, is what in our notion constitutes a
great actor. Nature has implanted in all men the tests of this
quality. When a man wants to appear pathetic, and makes
us laugh; nature tells us he is .not pathetic but ridiculous.
When an actor wishes to insinuate a deep and plotting de-
sign, and so emphasizes his words that the plot is discovered
at once, and the design is transparent; nature tells us that
may be acting, but it is not acting like reality—that such
would not he our emphatic discovery of all we meant to do.
When a man wishes to appear the over-bearing tyrant, iin-
petuous, unrestrainable, and self-willed, and instead of the
feeling of implicit yielding to his aathority, add the cowing of
the spirit, he but excites our pity that a man should be so
besides himself, and a wonder whether he is raving in the
fever of madness dr not; nature tells us such a tyrant is not
much to be feared, but is, indeed, a very harmless person.
The tests, therefore, of the true qualities of acting—as repre-
senting human nature as displayed in the actions of men,
are planted by nature in us, and if we take the trouble to
attend to them we cannot be mistaken; for when once
the keys of any passion are touched, the chord is immedi-
ately struck within ourselves, and sympathetic music fills us.
To please the unthinking multitude requires only to excite
attention, surprise, wonder, admiration, emotion ; all which
feelings may be aroused by what we will take leave not to
call acting as we have above explained it; but are feelings
capable of being completely drawn forth by an elephant
walking across a stage, a man jumping over six horses and
through a hoop, a merry Andrew turning thirty somersets
off the saw-dust, or a lad balancing himself on his head on
the top of a pole. All these thing.s will please and astonish
the multitude—will be rewarded with tremendous applause;
hut we do not call this acting. And though fashion, eas-
tern, or the applause of the multitude may dictate that the
soliloquies in " Hamlet" should be pronounced by an actor
balanced on his crown and with his feet in the air, and
the applause be proportioned to the cleverness of the feat,
yet so long as nature does not dictate• to men, whenever
they are in moody melancholy, animated by revenge, or
fired by passion, to knock their heels in the air and to ba-
lance themselves on their crowns, we take leave to say that,
however cleverly the feat may be performed, and however
great the applause which follows, that this would not be
acting, it would be playing the mountebank. On this plain
ground then, do we at once say, that one half of Charles
Kean's Richard the 111. is playing the mountebank; it is ab-
surd to call it acting. No man in his senses—who was not a
fit inmate for Bedlam, ever believed when "enterprises of
great pith and moment," were undertaken by him as Charles
Kean made the wily and ambitious and tyrannical Richard
appear to act last night. The greater part of the latter scenes
was worse than " tearing a passion to tatters :" it was down-
right impotent raving. Was Richard an impotent raver?
He was the very opposite. Then how absurd to represent
him as such. Bonaparte was right when he said there was
but " one'remove from the sublime to the ridiculous." Mr.
Kean, not satisfied with reaching that summit (which he can)
which would be sublime, takes a step over it, and tumbles
down the declivity of absurdity. In one or two points his
acting was beautiful. When soliloquizing while Tyrell was
murdering the children in the Tower, his speech was as na-
ture dictates; yet the multitude did not applaud; and for
the sake of this applause Mr. Kean will spoil his acting,
strain after effect, and get his reward—the clapping of hands
of a multitude who think it extraordinarily clever to rave in
such a way as would burst the blood vessels of most men.
We hope, however, to see him mend of this, and build his
fame on a sure hundation ; the applause of thinking men
may not be so loud, but it is worth the roars of millions, who
always eventually follow as they lead. Coopers acting as
the Duke of Buckingham, was very clever, and Mr. Fl(?w-
-ard's Earl of Richmond was as deficient. To-night " King
.bear" is to be brought out,