MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. "" SIR HENRY GARRICK OF TRADITION "KING LEAR" is the greatest of all modern plays. To find a fit companion for it we must go back to the "Edipus Coloneus,' a masterpiece of like pathos and equal loftiness. It is great in the intense simplicity of its purpose. The stern interest of the drama is not weakened by irrelevant emotions. The foolish generosity of Lear and the base ingratitude of his daughters are its unchanging theme. And lest so grim a tragedy should horrify the spectator with a sense of reality, Shakespeare has enveloped it in the rare atmosphere of poetic imagination. In no other play does he carry us so far from the world of common things, or endow his characters with so high a strain of eloquence. Even in the First Act, that the sacrifice of Lear should not appear extravagant, we are in a province of fairyland. This is not Britain, where Lear bids his daughters tell him, "Since now we will divest us both of rule, Interest of territory, cares of State, Which of you shall we say doth love us most?" It is the land of folk-lore. Goneril and Regan are Psyche's sisters. Cordelia is but Cin It derella in another shape. "The jewels of our father, with wash'd Henceforth we ask no veri- "Doth any here know me? This is Doth Lear walk thus, speak thus? Are lethargied. not so. Ha waking? 'tis Who is it that can tell me who I am?" 1909.] "King Lear”—the Greek Restraint of the Play. 571 And then at the end of the hand of Sophocles has written Second Act the consciousness of what is to come flashes upon him. "O let me not be mad," he cries; "not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper, I would not be mad." There There is concentrated in two lines the true horror of the play, a horror which we could scarcely endure to read or hear if the Fool were not there to lighten the burden of our distress. The scene wherein Goneril and Regan avow their traitorous ingratitude is informed with a Greek dignity and restraint. Lear never scolds, as some actors have supposed. His anger and sorrow lie too deep for scolding, and though his reason totters, he is still master of his pride. Not in a single line does he abrogate his kingship. He is, as he says presently, "every inch a king." He speaks no words, he has no thoughts, that are not kingly. When he invokes the heavens to "give that patience, patience he needs," his invocation would soften the hearts of stones: "If it be you that stirs these daughters' hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger of words at once 80 simple and so poignant as these. And then, that the tension be not too great, Cornwall interposes with a line commonplace: "Let us withdraw; 'twill be a storm." This has the same effect as the knocking in "Macbeth." It bids the tragedy halt; it softens the anguish of the reader; it prepares him to bear the heavier tragedy that is to come. And, as the Act closes, Cornwall again speaks, and pictures in two lines the callous hearts, the wanton insensibility of the king's enemies: "Shut up your doors, my lord; 'tis a wild night: My Regan counsels well: come out o' the storm." They at least are well housed. What matters it to them if the aged Lear must face uncovered on the heath the wind and the rain? No subtler prelude than this shutting up of doors could be devised for the terrific scene which follows. The poor mad king confronts the storm with none but outcasts to bear him company. His faithful Fool, the outlawed Edgar, Kent in disguise, and presently the loyal unhappy Gloucester, follow him over the heath and take shelter with him in the You think I'll weep; hovel. Such is the ragged bodyguard that Shakespeare gives the king, and for which he holds undivided the sympathy of the audience. To us, it may be admitted, they seem stranger than they did to their own age. A king's fool And let not women's weapons, waterdrops, Stain my man's cheeks! No, I'll not weep: I have full cause for weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!" No other hand except the And with this horrible object, from low farms, Remembers not these garments.” It is thus that Lear comes back from madness to sanity, and in this instant of high emotion Shakespeare, with a splendid propriety, uses none but words of the plainest fashion, the μéσos Xóyos, such as Sophocles would have employed. In truth, "King Lear," of all our English dramas, comes nearest to the Greek Poor pelting villages, sheep - cotes, ideal. Only one incident, the and mills, Such is the band which endures for its king the perils of the storm, which makes light of "cataracts and hurricanoes. Before the grandeur and sadness of their folly the whole world of princes and armies shrinks to nothingness. King Lear arraigning his daughters before the judgment-seat of Mad Tom and the Fool, or calling in fancy to "the little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart," is still kingly and sublime. At last madness surrenders to pathos. There is no speech more beautiful than the speech of Lear when he awakes to find Cordelia at his side. "Pray do not mock me," he says, "I am a very foolish, fond old man, Fourscore and upwards, not an hour more nor less; And, to deal plainly, putting out of Gloucester's eyes, would have been impossible in the theatre of the Athenians, That, in the age of Sophocles, would have been more discreetly and more properly described by a messenger. For the rest, "King Lear" is Greek in its directness and its simplicity, Greek in its theme, Greek even in the comments which here and there illustrate the action: "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for the sport." Might we not find this trite and plain reflection, made by the Chorus, in the last lines of a Greek tragedy? "The Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted," said Charles Lamb, and in a certain sense this is true. Lear cannot be acted with the realism which has been the bane of the modern stage. "The greatness of Lear," as Charles Lamb tells us, "is not in cor poral dimension, but in intel- in them the seeds of madness lectual; the explosions of his and kingship, and that they passions are terrible as a vol- were capable of out- roaring cano: they are storms turning the property thunder itself. up and disclosing to the bottom that rich sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind that is laid bare." And as the process of laying bare a mind cannot be exhibited on the stage, Lear must depend for his effect not upon action, but upon the words which Shakespeare has put into his mouth. That is to say, the part must be spoken, not acted. The essence of the play is grandeur, elemental, Titanic, and not even histrionic genius can represent the splendour of Shakespeare's imagining. Nor indeed did Shakespeare mean it to be represented. Stage scenery, violent gesture, the actor's ambition of "creating" parts, were follies unknown in the sixteenth century. The poet was master of the theatre, not the actor, and all he asked of his subordinates was harmonious elocution. If his lines were spoken clearly and without comment, he was satisfied, no doubt, and the public was satisfied too, since it came to the theatre to hear the play, not to watch the antics of an original comedian. But the restraint and reticence which Shakespeare exacted have long since fled our stage; and if the Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted, that is because the meaning of the verb "to act" has been forgotten, and because most of those who have had the vanity or the courage to essay the part of the mad king believed that they carried VOL. CLXXXVI.—NO. MCXXVIII. It is a difficult and thankless task to recall the triumphs of dead actors. When eye is closed and voice is silent, we can know those triumphs only at second-hand, and through a distorting medium. We are told that Garrick was eminent in the part; that Dr Johnson resolved never to see him repeat it, lest its terrific and overwhelming effect should be impaired. That is no more than a sentiment of vague approval, which may mean no more than that Garrick did not come impertinently between the critic and the text. The story, preserved by tradition, that, when Garrick was in the middle of the mad scene, his crown of straw came off without interrupting the actor's speech, is a high tribute to the mastery which he had obtained over the audience. But these fragments of criticism give us no hint of Garrick's method. Was he quiet, or did he rant? Did he base his representation of madness, as one foolish actor is said to have done, not on the study of Shakespeare's lines, but upon the observed antics of real lunatics? Did he speak his words with the reticence which their sublimity demands, or did he tear the passion and pathos of the king to tatters? We cannot answer any one of these questions. Our only certitude is that he used the text of Tate, a perversion which chimed with the taste of the time. Of Kean we have a 2 P far more vivid impression. For He must set them in this it was Kean's good fortune to find in Hazlitt a critic who not merely appreciated his romantic style, but understood, as few critics have understood, the art of acting. And Hazlitt, when he saw Kean act Lear, was frankly disappointed. He had expected a masterpiece, because Kean, whose opinion was generally trustworthy, esteemed it his best part. He was sure that when the public came to see him over the body of the dead Cordelia, it would think better of him than ever. Unfortunately, and against his own will, Kean too was asked to interpret the version of Tate, and it was even rumoured that he played the part as he did out of spite. This is improbable. But we may take Hazlitt's word for it that he failed. "He did not go the right way about it," says Hazlitt. "He was too violent first, and too tame afterwards. He sunk from unmixed rage to mere dotage." He made the curse a piece of downright rant; he stripped it of its solemnity and elevation. In the mad scenes Hazlitt noted a perversity, a determination to interpret the text as no other actor would interpret it. And, as we have said, "Lear" is a work which cannot bear the intrusion of an interpreter. Indeed, Kean's failure is precisely what might have been expected from his turbulent method. He was an actor of romantic genius, who could never have been content to repeat the lines of his author with patient fidelity. light and that. He must recast them in the mould of his own intelligence. He must bring new meanings into old words. To see him act, said Coleridge, was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning. He who acts Lear should never attempt to rival the storm on the heath. There is only one method of rendering Lear the method of classical serenity; and that was not, and could never have been, the method of Kean. In In our own memory there have been few actors bold enough to attempt the desperate adventure, and one of them still comes back to us with the force of a nightmare. We can recall nothing so unlovely, so devoid of grace or meaning, as the Lear of the late Sir Henry Irving. the first place, it was wholly and absolutely inarticulate. Lear himself sent hardly a line across the footlights. The gift of clear and eloquent speech, which should belong to every actor, was never Irving's; but he rarely sank to such a depth of unintelligibility as he reached Lear. If he may be said to have had any conception of the part, it was of a doddering, infirm, and petulant old man. Not one inch of him was kingly. Not one line was spoken with dignity. Not a gesture was rendered with grandeur. It was a thing to shudder at and forget. Unhappily forgetfulness is impossible. Those who were luck in |