Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/178

168 full of delicate perceptions, but he is in nowise the real Rip of Irving's story. Jefferson, indeed, is a good example of our modern art. His naturalness, his unaffected methods, his susceptible temperament, his subtleties of humor and pathos, are appreciated and applauded; yet his want of breadth and tone, sometimes renders his performances feeble and flavorless.

Let us not forget Harry Placide, that glorious old actor, now on the Long Island shore, who consents to forget, in sea-side sports, his early triumphs and a long-admiring public. I wish he would occasionally revisit the glimpses of the footlights, just to remind us how Sir Peter Teazle or Sir Harcourt Courtly ought to be acted. With him, probably, will pass away even the tradition of those parts. In his Sir Peter was exhibited a consummate art of which the more modern stage gives us but few examples. It was the ideal of an English gentleman of the olden time. When Placide and Gilbert are gone, Sheridan will have to be shelved.

Among all our actors there is none, in my judgment, who exhibits such power of imagination as Mr. James W. Wallack. Unfortunately, this great qualification is marred by mannerisms, and sometimes by extravagance. He is most effective in very salient parts; and nothing on the American stage is so intense in dramatic expression and characterization as his Werner, Gisippus, Melantius (in The Bridal), and the Iron Mask. He has many stage tricks, is apt to play idly with his voice, is angular in gesture, and not always natural in delivery. But he flings into his part a vivid imagination and passionate intensity of feeling that outweigh a thousand faults. Macready, faulty in the same respects, reached the head of the English stage. Wallack's style, moreover, mellows by time, and his performance last Winter of The Dangerous Game, by its grand reserve and artistic finish, disarms much of the censure just pronounced. In his Henry Dunbar the actor seems translated into the character. Wallack has the family insight into the picturesque resources of the art. His Richard III. is unlike any other actor's conception of the part; but that fine old actor, Mr. Barry, once said of it that "if played in London, it would be a great success or as great a failure." Of late years he has avoided the part. His Shylock is also a very original performance, and is worthy of being revived, for comparison with Booth's.

Mr. Booth is a born Hamlet. His youthful figure, graceful deportment, melancholy bearing, pale and intellectual face, large, ruminating eye, supply all the external requirements of the character, while his tender pathos, his power of passionate expression, united with his refinement of taste, susceptible temperament and sympathetic appreciation, render him the Hamlet of Hamlets. He exercises, too, a sort of magnetic power over the majority of his auditors, which bars criticism on their part. He is sometimes crude,