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FANNY KEMBLE.
The rising hope and promise of the drama—the
bud—the blossom—the half-blown “rose and expectancy”
of the theatrical world—the pledge to the
rising generation, that, in their time, at least, Juliet
shall not lie buried in the tomb of the Capulets, or
Belvidera's sorrows be entrusted entirely to regularly
broken-in, thorough-paced, tragedy hacks. I
am well nigh tired of the mechanical woes and
shallow agonies of every-day tragedy—of picturesque
and passionless attitudinizing—of storms of
grief, according to the stage directions—“cross to
R. H. and burst into tears;” of violent beating of
the cold and insensible breast, and knocking of the
clenched hand upon the empty head. I am tired
of the mere pantomime of the art, without feeling
or common sense—tired of vehemence and impetuosity,
instead of passion; and particularly tired
of hearing such easy work characterized as the
gross and habitual exaggeration seems to pervade
nearly all the tragic exhibitions on the stage; and
if this be so, it is sufficient evidence of the absence
of feeling. Genuine feeling never exaggerates.
Those who are really touched by the parts they
assume, may, from that very cause, be so little master
of themselves as to fail in giving a finished portrait
of the character they have undertaken to represent;
but they never, by any chance, fall into
the opposite fault of “o'erstepping the modesty of
nature,” and becoming more violent than the hero
or heroine of the scene would have been in reality.
There is generally, however, an instinctive propriety
about true passion, which leads those under its influence
to do neither more nor less than they ought
to do; whilst the less easily excited feelings of others
wait upon the judgment, and it becomes a matter
of calculation how much grief or energy must be
used on certain occasions. But it is invariably your
hacknied, cold-blooded actors, without either passion
or judgment, and who off the stage laugh at
any thing like enthusiasm in their art as ridiculous,
that “out-herod Herod,” and affect a superabundance
of feeling to conceal their utter want of it;
just as ladies of questionable character make
an over parade of delicacy; or, indeed, as pretension
of what it has not by an ostentatious display
of the semblance of the quality it would be thought
to possess.
Now Miss Kemble does not exaggerate. I have
watched her closely, and have never, according to
my notions of things, seen, either in look, voice,
or action, the slightest attempt to impose upon the
audience by extravagance—to extract, as it were,
their sympathies by force, and storm them into approval.
She is not yet, in some respects, so “effective”
an actress as others of infinitely less ability—
that is, she does not so well understand how to produce
a sensation by “points” and “situations.”
She has yet much to learn and something to unlearn;
but she has that within her which cannot be
taught, though, parrot-like, it may be imitated—genuine
passion, delicacy, and feeling! and all that is
necessary for her to do to become a great actress is, in
acquiring the necessary business and technicalities of
the stage, to preserve pure and undefiled those rare
qualities. This is no easy task. Acting is an art in
which the noblest results have to be effected by the
most unromantic means. Bombastes Furioso itself
is not so much of a burlesque as the rehearsal of a
tragedy. To say nothing of Macbeths and Othellos
in surtout coats and pepper-and-salt pantaloons,
and Leghorn flats, the continual recurrence of
trivial directions in the midst of agonizing speeches
—“when I do so, mind you do so”—the familiar
and unseasonable colloquialisms, the everlasting appeals
to and from the stage manager, the scoldings
and the squabblings, are apt to fritter away all enthusiasm
in people of ordinary minds, until they
become a kind of speaking and attitudinizing machines—mere
actors and actresses, who occasionally
produce an effect by the beauty of the language
they deliver, or from the situations in which they
are placed; but who are, for the most part, incapable
of duly appreciating either the one or the other.
It is only those whose feelings lie too deep beneath
the surface to be ruffled or worn away by the habits
and jargon of their profession, and who, when
the curtain rises, step upon the stage creatures of
another element, that really become great actors.
There are plenty of anecdotes of Kean afloat,
weighty enough of themselves to apparently controvert
this assertion; but however that wonderful
creature may now have become hardened by habit,
he must have been at one time terribly in earnest,
and the effect which he still creates is produced by
a faithful recollection and copy of the feelings which
originally agitated him. It is to be hoped that Miss
artificial education, of which she has yet much to
receive, will not destroy the natural beauty and
freshness of her mind. At present her personations
are rather distinguished by feminine sweetness and
delicacy, and quick and violent transitions of passion,
than by sustained force and grandeur; but
there is something occasionally in the tone of her
voice—in her dark expressive eye and fine forehead,
that speaks of the future Queen Katherine and wife
of Macbeth. Her Juliet, with some faults, is a delightful,
affectionate, warm-hearted piece of acting;
and she is decidedly the least mawkish and most
truly loving and loveable Belvidera I have ever seen.
The closing scene of madness, where others fail, is
her greatest triumph. The tones of her voice, when
playfully threatening Jaffier, might almost touch the
heart of a money-scrivener. She is the only Belvidera
I have beheld play this scene twice. They
all contrive to make it either excessively repulsive
or ridiculous, and somehow or other manage to
bring to mind a very vivid picture of Tilburina
in the Critic; while their invariably going home in
the midst of their distresses, and after a partial
touch of insanity, to put off their black velvets and
put on their white muslins to go completely mad
in, because, as that lady says, “it is a rule,” by no
of ideas. Miss Kemble is at present the sole
hope of the English public in tragedy. She must
not disappoint them, for, if she does, there is no one
else on whom they can turn their eyes. But when
it is considered that this is only her second season
—that she is yet but a girl of eighteen or nineteen,
it may be fairly said that she has already done sufficient
to justify the most sanguine expectations.
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