Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/63

60 lovers of Shakspeare must venerate, is effacing the profane alterations of the poet's text; such mangling, for instance, as Garrick made of the last scenes of Lear; and, besides, is adding indescribably to the dramatic beauty of the representation by an elaborate conformity to the costume of the period which the play represents. Shakspeare himself would, I suspect, be somewhat startled by the perfection of scenic decoration and costume of Macready's presentation of Henry V. While the choruses are rehearsing by Time, there is a pictorial exhibition of the scenes he describes; and this is managed with such art as to appear to the spectator, not a picture, but an actual scene. As he finishes, a curtain, which seems like a dissolving cloud, is withdrawn, and discloses the actors.

Garden Theatre is much larger, more elegant, and more commodiously arranged than the best of ours. There is a certain indefinite pleasure proceeding from seeing a play of Shakspeare played in the land where he lived; where he has seen them enacted, and himself enacted them. It is something like going to a friend's house for the first time after a long and close friendship with him. A few days since we were at Southampton, and passed through the arch under which Henry led his army when he embarked for the "fair and lucky war." This, and the recurrence of the names of localities that are now within our daily drives, gave me the realizing sensation of which you may well be tired of hearing by this time. And, by-the-way, how