National Republican., 1883-02-01
THE DRAMA.
NATIONAL NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. AS LEAR.

/ aAs N1fAH-Ns
NATIONAL THEATER AS LEAR,
Whatever may be thought of salvini's King
Lear by those who constitute themselves
judges of dramatic art, IL is Il portraiture so
vast and noble, so splendidly sustained, so
full of power, that to have seen it is to have
enjoyed q very high privilege. Yisibly, and
in everything where the genius of the master
poet has left room for the exercise of an actors
individual mentality, it is study independ-
ent alike of precedent and tradition.
Salvini has wrought out his own
method of giving it Interpretation,
and in that the work is new almost to the
verge of frovelation. AS TO his reasoning and
the ground colors used, there may be room for
doubt and questioning. People used to the
tongue in which the tragedy was written,
and TO the greatest actors of our own stage,
may with very good reason hesitate before
according it such a place among the very
highest as the fame and genius of the actor
would seem to claim for it. King Lear is
too high an ideality to endure, without
warping, reduction to realism. If
salvini falls into error anywhere,
| it is in beginning his work upon the plane
Of commonplace. His first act shows us q
very unpoetic old man-almost a peevish-
from whose lips the roproachful lines of Lear
fall with the garrulity of querulous COM
plant. Ii is n condition scarce worthy the
splendid language put into his mouth, and of
doubtful value as prelude to the sublime
pathos that is to follow. 1t has in it
mono of that quality so admirably described
by Coleridge, of q stormy day beginning with
brightness, but a brightness that is lurid, and
anticipates the tempest. There are no pre-
montory rumblings of the storm-no shadow
of that awful cloud which is to descend in
terror and in darkness upon the king and
those about him. Involuntarily the mind
goes back here to Forrest, who sounded
in the first notes of this tragedy
tho mastcr-key of that terrific music
which rolls throughout its progress
The comparison may be unfair and if this
exception to Salvini's work were reGerable to
nothing else than memory of Forrest, itwould
not be made, The artist is entitled to stand
upon his own reading, and it is to this alone
exception isg taken. With Salvini tho abdi-
cation of Lear stands for the act of one already
gone in dotage. The mists of time have not
only stricken his limbs with chill of age
they have obscured his mind. lie is childish
alike in his lighter moments and in his dig
nifty. Until the harshness of Goneril rouses
him to fire, there is no hint of those magnif-
cent intellectual qualities, nor of the kingly
largcness of character, which struggle up and
light with so mournful ftfulness the agones
that follow. And even in this scene his ours
10 tI,n cfo nf
reused to himself by scalding and intoler-
able sense Of wrong than the vociferous blind
fury of one who is impotent in all but words.
But tho work as totality suffers little
from the point of view Mt which it is begun.
Salvini's Lear is ageworn, paltering, ruin
that has been crumbling in even the secure
state of prosperous royalty; that topples
and crashes headlong under the tempest.
Not until the finish of the scene with Edgar
upon the heath does it reach true level
of dignity. The anguish Of those few but
fearful moments pulses visibly through
him. The great heart cracks. Tho mind,
through the rifted and tottering walls of life,
filters in rays, broken but lustreus, that toll
how great man is dying there. How fully
and with what power of pity this is bodied
out it would be useless to try to tell The
tragedian meets the poet here, and hencefor-
ward walks with him.
There is no good reason why artifce should
not be brought to the aid of art, and conscious
reaching after an effect be permitted when
the effect is thereby gained and made bril-
liant. In no other performance that can now
be called to mind has there ever been q
greater amplitude of true and vivid
art, or a more deliberate employment of
merely theatric expedient The closing
moments of the second act, the recognition of
Cordelia, and the last scene Of all,
over Cordelias body, We're uncxpressibly
pathetic and affecting, and made so
by q fullness of real power such as no one
generation ever sees in any two men, On the
other hand the most marked touch in the
play, the point that is looked for much as peo-
pie used TO look for the "0f with his head I"
of Richard--thc reply to Gloster, "Ayel Every
inch a kingln is delivered with accOmpani-
ments that give its dignity u very hollow
sound. An artist so fertile in expression
need scarce have found ii necessary to provide
a hilloclS, a blasted tree and breakable dead
branch to fit his action in with and give
III uuo cncCt, Ino IilCk mlBnJ DC
thought unworthy, but that II seems to COM
pass the end desired as well as any other
might. That its employment Is not referable
to any lack of power nobody needs to be told
who knows how vast fund of power this actor
has. No height seems beyond him. His loftiest
moments are filled with naturalness and such
an ease as leaves an impression Of forces yet
beyond them, reserved and restrained.
1t would be unfair to an admirable actor to
leave this subject without reference to the
Edgar of Mr.. Lewis Morrison, This is a
mastery bit of work-though merely bit,
1t is saying everything for Mr., Morrison to
state that he was next to Salvini in the favor
of his audience, Notwithstanding Edga'
had been cut two'thirds out of the tragedy,
and bunglingly cut at that. The version is a
wretched one, so ragged and disjointed
that an audience unfamiliar with the
full text would find great diff
Guilty in following the action or piecing
it into any intelligent continuity. 1t has
been hacked away until tho merest back
ground is left for Lear, This may accord with