Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/235

1885.] However great the strain – I too often felt it – of so engaging the minds of my audience, as to make them forget the poverty of the scenic illustration, I would at all times rather have encountered it, than have had to contend against the influences which withdraw the spectator's mind from the essentials of a great drama to its mere adjuncts. When Juliet is on the balcony, it is on her the eye should be riveted. It should not be wandering away to the moonlight, or to the pomegranate-trees of Capulet's garden, however skilfully simulated by the scene-painter's and the machinist's skill. The actress who is worthy to interpret that scene requires the undivided attention of her audience. I cite this as merely one of a host of illustrations that have occurred to my mind in seeing the lavish waste of merely material accessories upon the stage in recent years. How often have I wished that some poetic spirit had been charged with the task of fitting the framework to the picture, which would have made the resources of the painter's and costumier's art subordinate to the poet's design, and have furnished a harmonious and unobtrusive background for the play of character, emotion, passion, humour, and imagination, which it was his object to set before us!

Of course, there are plays where very much must depend upon the seating in which they are placed. Who that saw it, for example, can ever forget Stanfield's scene in "Acis and Galatea," when produced by Mr Macready? The eye never wearied of resting upon it, nor the ear of listening to the rippling murmur of the waves as they gently rushed up and broke upon the shore of that sun-illumined sea. Such a background enriched the charm of even Händel's music, and blended delightfully with the movements of the nymphs and shepherds by whom the business of the scene was carried on.

Nor, as I have been told, was his revival of the "Comus" less admirable. You may have seen it, dear Mr Ruskin; and, if you have, you can judge of its merits far better than I. For as I acted "the Lady," I can, of course, speak only of the scenes in which she took part. These impressed me powerfully, and helped my imagination as I acted. The enchanted wood was admirably presented, with its dense, bewildering maze of trees, so easy to be lost in, so difficult to escape from, with the fitful moonlight casting broad shadows, and causing terrors to the lonely, bewildered girl, whose high trust and confidence in Supreme help alone keep her spirits from sinking under the wild "fantasies," that throng into her memory, "of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire." It seemed to me the very place the poet must have pictured to himself. Not less so appeared to me the Hall of Comus – so far as I could see it from the enchanted chair, in which the Lady sits spellbound. It was a kind of Aladdin's garden, all aglow with colour and brilliancy. And then the rabble-rout, so gay, so variously clad, some like Hebes, some like hags; figures moving to and fro, some beautiful as Adonis, others like Fauns and bearded Satyrs! Add to this the weird fascination of the music, the rich melody, the rampant joyousness! All served to quicken in me the feeling with which the poet has inspired the lonely "Lady," when she sees herself, without means of escape, surrounded by a rabble rout full of wine and riot, and