Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/524

490 the only specimens extant of easy, playful humor. Mr. Sothern is but a hortus siccus, a dried-up mummy, in the buckram suit of other artists' stage business, without the body and soul of reality. Here and there we may discern a vein of genuine humor, but for the most part the little acting worthy of the name is the result of accomplishment and talent matured, and sometimes misdirected by study and by practice. The number of theatres, not as in the privileged days of Drury and Covent Garden, tends to scatter instead of concentrating talent; but take the whole range of majors and minors and count them on your fingers and you will find how difficult it is to call out of them a first-rate company of comedians. In tragedy, on the other hand, the natural interest is strong, and mostly centres in the hero. The subordinate parts are less dependent on the individual performers; a general propriety of speech and action being sufficient, with the aid of scenic effect, to furnish a background to the principal character. This was the case in "Richard II." and in "Macbeth" as presented at the Princesses by Charles Kean, with such splendor of scenery and perfection of detail.

In Shakespeare's plays, the prodigal beauty of the language, the wit, sense, and pathos, the picturesqueness of the scenes and incidents, and the consummate art in the development of character, give to the drama an interest so powerful, that it must be bad acting that can destroy its influence. We doubt, indeed, with the exception of one or two of Bulwer's, if any tragedies but Shakespeare's could be revived with equal effect. People go, on the other hand, to see the old comedies more for the purpose of criticising the performance, and so identified are the principal characters with the great names of the old school of players, that a new performer has a formidable barrier of prejudice to overcome. It is the actors who have spoiled the audiences, and challenged the exercise of this critical spirit, by the starring system, where attention is drawn more to the player than the play. There is no other theatre in any portion of the world where these noble standard works of the drama can at this moment be even attempted to be presented, except at Mr. Wallack's theatre. If the writers who originated them, and the actors as a body who realized them, have mostly passed away, how much more should we treasure those who are left. Since the death of Mr. Wallack and Mr. Charles Kemble, the only representatives of this class of characters left are Mr. Charles Mathews and Mr. Lester Wallack. To fitly represent them, asks, indeed, the very highest and most delicate graces of art. Most of the characters of pure genteel comedy are such airy nothings—mere abstractions of the mode of the day—that there is no substance for a mechanical grasp to lay hold of; it is like an attempt to embody evanescence—to mimic the wave of a feather or the flutter of a fan. Whim, lightness, address, a genius for, trifles, the practical wit of manner, the air of grace and gaiety, native born, and no more to be acquired than the highest intellectual gifts, are essential to vivify these creatures of artificial life. All these Mr. Wallack and Charles Kemble had—Mr. Charles Mathews and Mr. Lester Wallack (the latter in the fullest sense) have. Not even the wit and vivacity of Sheridan or Colman can charm, from the mouth of a dull, hard, operative player. We see the grub instead of the butterfly.

Mr. Lester Wallack's greatest characteristic as an artist is, perhaps, his versatility. For the art of entering into the peculiarities of a variety of characters he is without a rival. What general expression is large enough to take in such a round of characters, in each of which he is without a rival, as Mercutio, Ben-