The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1899-11-13

citation Of the power and beauty Of this
great play one must see 1t acted.
But here, again, another difficulty
arises. Great as the play King Lear"
is, it deals with situations SO improbable,
1t supposes character and conduct so I'M
usual. it calls for the impersonation of
intellectual qualities so closely bordering
upon the fantastic and grotesque. that
unless acted with consummate skill the
play ceases to be of the realm of serious
drama and becomes absurd melodrama.
Only the greatest actors should play in
king Lear Only the greatest actors
really can play in 1t.
This difficulty was realized early IN the
history of the play. We have no evil
dence indeed that king Lear" was ever
popular in the form in which Shakes
peare wrote 1t until within comparatively
recent times.
In 1881. three-quarters Of a century af-
ter the play was first written, there was
made a version of the play. long known,
from the name of the person who made
1t. as "Tate's version" and this king
Lear" Is the only king Lear" that for
nearly hundred and fifty years was
ever heard OF.
The principal differences between the
amended version and the real version
were two In Tate's king Lear" the
play ended happily; otherwise" says
the author at must have incumbered the
stage with dead bodies. which conduct
makes many tragedies conclude with I'M
seasonable jests." In the amended YER
sion, also, the part Of the Fool-one Of
the most delicately pathetic but difficult
" realizable parts in the whole Shakes
pearean repertoire-was omitted.
When, then, we read of king Lear" or
Of actors playing king Lear" in the
whole Of the eighteenth century or in the
first two decades of the nineteenth CEN
fury, we must remember that 1t is not
Shakespeare's king Lear" that Is meant
but Tate's or some other version of the
play Shakespeare's great creation was
as yet but imperfectly understood.
Though Betterton, Barton Booth and
Quin all played King Lear" there does
not seem to have been any really great
king Lear" till Garrick's time. Then
there were two-GarricR himself and Gar
ricks great rival, Spranger Barry.
In the year 1856 Barry began to play
king Lear" in Covent Garden. Garrick,
with whom from the first the part had
been one of his very best. considered this
a challenge, and at once responded by re-
viving king Lear in Drury Lane. Lon
don, and indeed all intellectual England
became divided into two camps-the be-
levers in Garricks art and the believers
in Barry's. Here is one Of the epigrams
Of the day:
The town has found out different ways
To praise the different Lears.
To Barry they give loud huzzas;
To Garrick-only tears.
Here is another:
A king-nay, every inch a king
Such Barry doth appear.
But Garrick's quite another thing
He's every inch King Lear"
These jeux desprit of course were IA
vorable to Garrick; and indeed If their
point be founded on fact, and there is
little doubt but that it is, they concede
to Garrick a place in his art the very
highest.
But not all the wits Of the town were
with Garrick. 1t was said that Garrick
was jealous of his younger rival, and so
much so that there was more than clev-
erness in the following epigram, got off
with purpose to wound him; there was
real point and sting in it:
Critics, attend and Judge the rival Lears,
Whilst each commands applause and each your
tears
Then own the truth-well he performs his part
Who touches, even Garrick, to the heart
Subsequent to Garrick's day king