Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/223

EDWIN BOOTH for mobility, and his most expressive results are produced by liftings of the high-arched brows and the play of passions about the flexible mouth. The natural line of his lip, not scornful in itself, is on that straight border-ground where a hair's breadth can raise it into sardonic curves, transforming all its good to sneering evil. In his rendering, Iago must become a shining, central incarnation of tempting deceit, with Othello's generous nature a mere puppet in his hands. As Richard III., we should look to find him most effective in schemeful soliloquy and the phases of assumed virtue and affection, while perhaps less eminent than his father or Edmund Kean in that headlong, strident unrest, which hurried on their representations to the fury of the retributive end.

To give the distant reader our own impression of a great actor is a slow and delicate task, and perhaps the most we can accomplish is to set him before others somewhat as he has appeared to us, and to let each decide for himself the question of histrionic rank. But have we not unconsciously defined our view of the excellence of Booth's genius, and hinted at its limitations? The latter are by no means narrow, for his elastic, adaptable nature insures him versatility; and, despite the world's scepticism as to the gift of an artist to do more than one thing well, he is acknowledged to surpass our other actors in a score of elegant parts. Amongst these are Pescara, Petruchio, and Sir Edward Mortimer; while in a few pieces of the French romance-school, such as Ruy Blas, and that terrible The King's Jester, he has introduced to us studies [209]