Inhaltsangabe
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 Excerpt: ... was doomed to fizzle out amidst the lukewarm applause of a somewhat discomforted audience. II. I would fain say joyous things about the performance from an histrionic point of view, but with the best of intentions it is not possible to deny that Sir Henry Irving was ill-advised to attempt the characterisation of a personage exacting, beyond all other things, full possession of youthful vigour and a thundering voice. I doubt whether in his earlier days Sir Henry's subtle, gentle, I would almost say atmospheric genius, would have been equal to the overwhelming task of ruling the seething masses of uproarious Rome with his voice, where his personality alone could not have sufficed. At any rate, at the present moment, however great and unimpared are his intellectual faculties, and the trenchant mode of his utterances, Sir Henry labours physically under a disadvantage which no effort could overcome. That there were beautiful moments in his impersonation; that hi8 dignity carried us away even when his voice failed; that in his tenderness--in the few moments of tenderness which the play allows--he just managed to bring across the foot-lights such an impression as only a great actor could make, dealing with such scant material, goes without saying. But on the whole I would have preferred that Sir Henry, if he desired to remain faithful to Shakespeare, should have selected a character riper in years and better suited to the now somewhat delicate fibre of his powers. Almost the same remarks somewhat transposed, would apply to Miss Ellen Terry. She has ever the indestructible charm of the Terry family, and when she bleaches her locks to matronly white, she is outwardly the picture of a motherliness as sweet and as comely as anything our imagination could well conceiv...
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