The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor Part 2

_Master Payne's performances concluded._

Of the characters represented by this young gentleman, those in which he has evinced greatest powers are Douglas, Tancred, and Romeo, while that in which he is least exceptionable, is Frederick in Lover's Vows. In his Octavian, which followed next after Douglas, some of the pathetic pa.s.sages were beautifully expressed. Mrs. Inchbald, in her prefatory remarks to the play of the Mountaineers, says, "_This true lover requires such peculiar art, such consummate skill in the delineation_, that it is probable his representative may have given an impression of the whole drama unfavourable to the author. Nor is this a reproach to the actor who fails; for such a person as Octavian would never have been created, had not Kemble been born some years before him. But, notwithstanding the difference of their ages, it is likely they will both depart this life at the same time." While the difficulty of delineating Octavian, and the merit of a living performer of it are such, that it is scarcely possible to think of the play without thinking of Kemble, it has so happened that scarcely any character has been attempted by so many actors of all qualities--nor is there one in which so few have come off with actual disgrace. Men who could scarcely be endured in third or fourth rate parts, have selected Octavian to figure in, on their benefit nights. One man who was laughed at in every other character, was supposed by a misjudging audience to play Octavian well; nay, to our knowledge, was preferred to Hodgkinson and Cooper in it. The reason is plain: to the portraying of madness, the injudicious can imagine no limits. The more a madman raves and roars, the better; rags, slovenliness, and matted hair, and beard too, are the usual a.s.sociates of awkwardness and vulgarity. Any man, therefore, who can rant and play the extravagant, no matter how ungracefully, may pa.s.s with some audiences for a very natural Octavian--an abominable absurdity! For these two reasons, Octavian is a very hazardous part for a performer who aims at substantial fame, to attempt. In Master Payne's performance of it, there was no extravagance to censure; nothing that had the least tendency to enrol him among the Bedlamite butchers of the character, nor was there, on the other hand, a complete uniform delineation of Octavian to afford him the same rank in that, which criticism willingly allows him in some other characters.

Not so Frederick, his performance of which was one consistent piece of natural, affecting, and indeed skilful acting. In the scenes of filial tenderness with his mother, and in the solemn but spirited remonstrances with the baron Wildenheim, he displayed such equal excellence that criticism might incur the charge of injustice by giving the preference to either. The character, as Master Payne acted it, was made up by him from the two antecedent translations of Mrs. Inchbald and Mr.

Thompson;--by a union of both of which this youth has produced a better acting play than either. He lately published it at Baltimore with an advertis.e.m.e.nt prefixed, written by himself, to which we refer our readers, with a strong recommendation to them to peruse it.

In the characters selected by Master Payne there are but four which we can think judiciously chosen. For the whole selection we should find it difficult to account, if we did not know that they had before been chosen for Master Betty; by thus closely walking in the steps of whom, Master Payne has, in our opinion, wronged himself. It is evident that in choosing characters for the infant Roscius of England, his instructors had it more in view to exhibit the boy as a prodigy, than the characters well acted. The people were to be treated to an anomalous exhibition, and the greater the anomaly the better the treat. What but a determination to inflame public curiosity to the highest pitch by a contrast as absurd as unnatural, could have induced them to put forward a little boy of twelve years old in the formidable tyrant Richard? like modern composers of music, their object was not to produce harmony or natural sweetness, but to execute difficulties. As the actor was a boy loitering on the verge of childhood, the plan, if not correct, was at least politic. But the public do not look on Master Payne in that light, and therefore, he ought to have selected parts more suitable to his time of life and talents. Parts calculated to aid and not depress him. What judicious actor is there now living who would not think it injurious to him to be put forward by a manager in Selim or in Zaphna? The united powers of Mossop in Barbarosa, and Garrick in Selim could barely keep that play alive. We have seen Mossop play it to a house of not ten pound, though aided by the first Zaphira in the world, Mrs. Fitzhenry.

From either of those characters Master Payne could not derive the least aid. His Hamlet we put out of the question--we did not see it.

On his Tancred we can dwell with very different sensations. Considering the materials he had to work upon, his delineation of the character was highly creditable to his talents. For the love part, little more can be done by a good actor, than by a good reader;--as poetry, it is soft, and sweet, and flowing; as a practical representation of that pa.s.sion it is mawkish: yet, in the performance of Master Payne, it was not entirely dest.i.tute of interest. In all the rest; in every scene with Siffredi, particularly in his warm expostulations with the honest, but mistaken old statesman; in his subsequent indignation and despair; in his lofty bearing and menaces to Osmond, and thence onward to his death, he was truly excellent, seemed perfect master of the scene, and in depicting the tumult of pa.s.sions which struggle in the bosom of the lordly Tancred, evinced that he possesses the legitimate genius, and true spirit that should inform the actor.

For his benefit he personified Romeo. The house was so crowded, and in all places that were accessible after the doors were opened, there was so much pressing, confusion, ill-mannered noise and struggle, and rudeness, that few but those who had places taken in the front boxes could see or hear the play out. From the upper gallery, where with difficulty we at last got a seat, we indistinctly saw what pa.s.sed on the stage, and could hear a little by s.n.a.t.c.hes. What we did hear and see induced us to lament our not hearing and seeing more, and to wish that we may speedily have another opportunity of witnessing a performance respecting which there is but one opinion, and that highly favourable to Master Payne's reputation.

MR. COOPER.

Scarcely had master Payne disappeared in his transit southward, when Mr.

Cooper followed, and, in describing his annual orbit, was seen here for nine nights; during which he performed the following characters.

Friday 29th Dec.--Richard the Third.

Sat.u.r.day 30th.--Zanga in the Revenge.

Monday 1st Jan.--Leon in Rule a Wife and have a Wife.

Wednesday 3d.--Oth.e.l.lo.

Friday 5th.--Macbeth.

Sat.u.r.day 6th.--Pierre in Venice Preserved.

Monday 8th.--Hamlet.

Wednesday 10th.--Hotspur.

Friday 12th.--Michael Ducas in Adelgitha.

Sat.u.r.day 13th.--Penruddock--and after it Petruchio.

Of all the actors we have ever seen in the old world or in the new, he who imposes the most difficult task upon the critic is Mr. Cooper. It is scarcely possible to generalize his acting. The great inequality of his performance, the defects of some parts, the doubtfulness of others, and the amazing beauties which he frequently displays, forbid the critic, if he have a due regard to truth, to give to the different parts of any one character Mr. Cooper performs the same measure of praise or disapprobation.

Hardly have our nerves ceased to vibrate, and our hearts to leap in consequence of perhaps a series of electrical strokes of irresistible effect and beauty, when our patience is put to trial by some defect, or our feelings left to grow cold and languid for want of an appropriate continuous excitement. To walk step by step with him through those alternations, and to decide in circ.u.mstantial detail upon this gentleman's t.i.tle to critical applause, would require a minuteness of description incompatible with the scheme of this publication; yet, since the high rank which he very deservedly holds in his profession renders it important that just opinions should be formed upon the subject of his performances, and that his merits should be as closely as possible canva.s.sed, and as precisely ascertained, it would be inconsistent with the duty of a public critic wholly to decline the task, however difficult and laborious he may find it.

We have now before us a criticism upon Mr. Cooper which once appeared in a periodical publication at Charleston S. C. and in which I find the following pa.s.sage.

"Nature husbands her gifts so carefully that where equality appears in all the parts of any object, supreme excellence is rarely seen; where great beauties are found, they are generally mixed with some considerable alloy. Of all the actors we have ever seen, Mr. Mossop was the one whom Mr. Cooper, in this respect, most resembles. With him, when it was not a blaze, it was a cloud. No man, not Garrick himself ever equalled his beauties; but his defects were great. The beauties, however, were so far superior in numbers to the defects, and in quality, to the excellencies of all other men, that he obtained from the greatest critic of that day, the tide of the _Tragedy Sheet Anchor_." All this is strictly true; but there is this difference between that great actor and Mr. Cooper, Mossop never committed a fault from negligence; studiously, I might almost say superst.i.tiously, devoted to the cultivation of his professional talents, he left nothing undone which industry could accomplish, and whenever he went wrong, failed from an almost pedantic desire to do too much--from a stiffness and stateliness of deportment, and an embarra.s.sment of which he had begun to get rid but a few years before his death. Mr. Cooper labours under no obstruction of this kind.

The natural talents displayed by Mr. Cooper in most of his performances forbid it to be believed that his failures result from incompetency; or that there is any excellence, to which the actors of the present day attain, too great for his grasp, if his industry were nearly equal to his personal endowments. But the honest and zealous critic loses all patience, when he sees _first talents_ supinely contenting themselves with less than _first honours_. What are the natural or acquired endowments of Kemble or Cooke, whether mental or corporeal? Certainly not superior to those of Mr. Cooper. How do they respectively stand in the records of professional fame? It would be invidious to give the answer.

If one could, with certainty, estimate a player's actual performance from his untried talents, and were asked what disqualifying circ.u.mstance exists to prevent Mr. Cooper from playing Richard, Oth.e.l.lo, Zanga or Hotspur as well as any man--we should answer none! But when, having seen him act, we come in the capacity of public critics to adjudge him his rights, we feel the mortifying necessity of speaking other language.

In Oth.e.l.lo and Zanga, the inequality of Mr. Cooper's acting is strikingly conspicuous. Of the great distinction between the colloquial familiarity suitable to ordinary dialogue, and the solemn, dignified, and lofty delivery becoming the orator in a great public a.s.sembly, Mr.

Cooper seems to have entirely lost sight in the celebrated speech to the senate, the first lines of which may serve as a lesson how the whole should be spoken.

"Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors, My very worthy and approved good masters."

The pompous sound of these words, as well as the awfulness of the place, and the august character of the a.s.sembly to which they are addressed, sufficiently indicate the manner in which they ought to be uttered.

Instead of this Mr. Cooper (no doubt with the view to avoid pomposity and bombast) threw into them an air of familiarity like that of a person narrating a private transaction to an intimate friend or acquaintance: Yet no sooner does he come to the impa.s.sioned parts, where strong emotions call forth the manly energies, than he flames up with the character. In the third scene of the second act, he displays much force and dignity in the following lines:

He that stirs next to carve for his own rage, Holds his soul light; he dies upon his motion.

Silence that dreadful bell, it frights the isle From her propriety.

And afterwards:

Now by heaven My blood begins my safer guides to rule; And pa.s.sion, having my best judgment collied, a.s.says to lead the way: If I once stir Or do but lift this arm, the best of you Shall sink in my rebuke, &c. &c.

And indeed through the whole of that scene he was impressive and important: nor, with the exception of those occasional lapses which we have to regret in almost every character he plays, even in his Macbeth, and the liberties he occasionally takes with the text, was there any reason to complain, while every now and then, he emitted some of those splendid scintillations of light which distinguish his acting from that of every compet.i.tor in America.

In the last act, his performance was superlatively great. So great indeed, that if all the other parts had been _nearly equal_ to it, we should not at all hesitate to put it in compet.i.tion with the Oth.e.l.lo of any man now living. As it was, we pay it no compliment in saying that it was in every part much superior to that of Pope, the _quondam_ Oth.e.l.lo of Covent Garden.

ZANGA.

The character of Zanga would at first sight seem to be well calculated for Mr. Cooper's talents: yet we cannot say that we very much admire him in it. That in his _execution_ of the part Mr. Cooper goes beyond Mr.

Kemble is certain, while his conception of it is nearly the same. In the latter, both are deficient. If there ever was a character which only one man in the world could play perfectly, Zanga is that character, and Mossop was that man. In a mixed company some years ago at Mr. Foote's, the celebrated doctor John Hill lanched out in praise of Mossop. Foote likewise admired him, but could not refrain from ridiculing and mimicking some of that great actor's stately singularities; upon which Richard Malone said, and Garrick was present, "You must own this one truth, however, because I have it from the highest authority (bowing to Garrick) that Mossop is the only man who was ever known so to act a character that the judgment of a nation has not been able to mark a fault in it." "I have often said," replied Garrick, "that Mossop's Zanga is perfectly faultless--but that is too little to say of it--it is a brilliant without a speck."

Upon that extraordinary actor's performance of Zanga, every word and action of which Fancy, while we are writing this, whispers in our ears and figures to our eyes, we build our conception of the character; and, in conformity to that conception, p.r.o.nounce Mr. Cooper and Mr. Kemble to be both wrong in material points, chiefly in the first part of it. In the year 1800 we saw Kemble attempt the Moor, and endured great pain from his efforts; for not only his _reading_ (as it is called) of the part was erroneous, but his organs were too feeble for the character; a defect of which Mr. Cooper has not to complain.

Of Mossop's Zanga, there was not one line from the beginning to the end which, while he was uttering it, a spectator would not believe to be the best. In every part the grandeur of Zanga's character broke through the clouds of horror and humiliation that surrounded him; and in the very first scene the magnanimity of the poet's Moor, was exalted to something of more than human sublimity, by the player. In the disclosing of his discontent to Isabella, the painting to her of his mental agonies, and the avowal of his hatred to Alonzo, the emotions which Mossop excited in the spectators were too awful and interesting to be imagined by those who have not felt them. The deep and affecting solemnity of his narrative, interrupted by the occasional flashes of pa.s.sion which burst from him, was in strict congeniality with the dreadful elementary storm in which it is introduced. In the hands of other actors this part makes little impression.

Hear then. 'Tis twice three years since that great man, (_Great let me call him for he conquered me_) Made me the captive of his arm in fight.

The loftiness of the Moor's nature, and his conscious pride were by the peculiar delivery of the second line, as perfectly unfolded as they could be by volumes. Again:

One day (_may that returning day be night, The stain, the curse, of each succeeding year!_) For something, or for nothing, in his pride He struck me. (_While I tell it do I live?_) He smote me on the cheek.

The words comprehended in parentheses, are occasional starts of digression dictated by rage, and should be uttered pa.s.sionately, we do not mean loudly, but with vehement indignation! So Mossop uttered them, changing his key and speaking the words with the rapidity expressive of rage--and then, after a struggle, falling down to the solemn level of his narrative again. These, however, Mr. Kemble spoke rather in a tone of whining lamentation. The limited organs of Mr. K. might make it policy in him to do so; but Mr. Cooper has not that plea to offer. Be that as it may, the character is defaced by it. The Moor's fire is not supposed to be extinguished; it is only covered up, to break out with more terrible fury, when the accomplishment of his purpose will allow it. In going over the sad recital of his woes, to a confidential friend, the poet, in order the more perfectly to unfold his character, makes the hidden fire burst forth in momentary blazes. To sink this is to deprive the character of one of its most essential beauties; to give it the directly opposite expression of piteous lamentation is, indeed, reversing the n.o.ble character of the Moor.

One of the wonderful excellencies of Mossop in this part was his artful display of hypocrisy in the words and purpose, while his external port silently a.s.serted his superiority, and the native majesty of his looks and manner bespoke the magnitude of the sacrifice he was making to vengeance, thereby giving a deeper colouring to the inexorable vindictiveness of his nature, and more forcibly ill.u.s.trating the inflexible firmness of his soul. All other actors that we have ever seen reduce Zanga to a mere slavish croucher in all points; and destroy the very basis of the character by an overacted humiliation, highly improper because too glaring not to excite Alonzo's suspicions. He must be a dull Alonzo indeed, if he could not look through such flimsy dissimulation.

Yet with all these defects, for which, as well as many other transgressions, the modern crop of young actors are indebted to the example of Mr. Kemble, Mr. Cooper gave us in several places as great satisfaction as with our remembrance of "THE Zanga," we ever hoped to experience. From the time he avows his villany to Alonzo, on to the end, he deserved unqualified praise; nor can we imagine how any one who had not made up his mind upon the great original, to whom we have alluded, could wish or conceive it to be more happily performed.

Mr. Wood's Alonzo was an animated and respectable piece of acting.

RICHARD III.

Mr. Cooper conceives that crookbacked usurper with sufficient accuracy, reads it with tolerable correctness, and acts it with great spirit. In this character he evidently has the greatest model extant [Cooke] in his eye. When first, some five years ago, we saw Mr. Cooper perform Richard, we thought he played it tolerably, but wanted weight. He is much improved in this respect since that time, and has acquired in those few years a sufficiency of the personal importance requisite for the character of Richard.

VENICE PRESERVED.

PIERRE is a character admirably suited to Mr. Cooper's talents. There are but few of his performances to which we sit with more pleasure. Few in which he is so little exceptionable. On this occasion he was supported by his friend JAFFIER in a manner that reflects much credit on Mr. Wood. And Mr. Wood is not a little indebted to _his_ Belvidera also.

Could we speak as favourably of his Iago, we should have introduced him in the proper place. Mr. Cooper's grenadier's cap, added nothing, to say no worse of it, to his appearance.

A fas.h.i.+on has prevailed for some years (introduced by the doctors of the perspective and statuary school of action) which sometimes increases the difficulty of giving verisimility to the scene, or rather destroys it altogether. We allude to the actors, in all possible cases, entering from the back, or near it. This though sometimes right, is peculiarly improper when the entering character is to speak _aside_ as he enters, and is supposed by the cunning of the scene not to be heard by the character who is on the stage before him. It was particularly observable in the performances of Oth.e.l.lo and Venice Preserved. In the third scene of the third act, when Oth.e.l.lo, followed by Iago, enters to Desdemona, Emilia, and Ca.s.sio, (which last takes his leave suddenly on the Moor's approach) and Iago, in prosecution of his plan, exclaims, so as to be heard _by Oth.e.l.lo only_, "HA! I LIKE NOT THAT," Mr. Cooper and Mr. Wood entering too far from the stage, rendered it necessary for the latter to utter those words (_aside_) so loud, that they must necessarily have been heard by _all_ the other characters on the stage.

Again, in Venice Preserved, in the night-scene on the Rialto, Jaffier being on the stage in his proper place, soliloquizing, Pierre enters and says what certainly neither Jaffier nor any but the audience should be presumed to hear. Mossop, Sheridan, Henderson, _et id genus omne_, entered so near the stage, that the voice of Pierre might be supposed to reach the audience, without pa.s.sing through Jaffier's ear. Side speaking ought always to be done in that way. Mr. Cooper, on the contrary, entered from the wing next the back scene, so that Jaffier stood between him and the audience, and must of course be supposed to have heard him, if the audience heard him; as they did, very distinctly too, from the remote end of the stage, say aloud,

"Sure I've staid too long: The clock has struck, _and I may lose my proselyte_."