Part 9 (1/2)
Edmund Kean first played Hamlet in New York in the month of December, 1820, Junius Brutus Booth in the October of the following year. Concerning these men and their rivalry volumes have been written; each had his enthusiastic admirers, and the Hamlet of each has become a matter of history. That Kean believed in his own Hamlet in his younger days there can be no question now, and he gave to it the closest study until the widow of Garrick induced him to alter his reading of the ”closet scene,”
and to adopt the manner of her band; an innovation which left him ever after dissatisfied with himself in that part of the tragedy. Hazlitt considered Kean's kissing of Ophelia's hand, in the famous scene between them in Act III., ”the finest commentary that was ever made on Shakspere.... The manner in which Mr. Kean acted in the scene of the play before the King and Queen,” he adds, ”was the most daring of any, and the force and animation which he gave it cannot be too highly applauded. Its extreme boldness bordered 'on the verge of all we hate,' and the effect it produced was a test of the extraordinary powers of this extraordinary actor.” The younger Booth, writing of the elder Kean, defends his father's foe in the following n.o.ble words: ”The fact that Kean disliked to act Hamlet, and failed to satisfy his critics in that character, is no proof that his personation was false. If it was consistent with his conception, and that conception was intelligible, as it must have been, it was true.
What right have I, whose temperament and mode of thinking are dissimilar to yours, to denounce your exposition of such a puzzle as Hamlet? He is the epitome of mankind, not an individual: a sort of magic mirror in which all men and all women see the reflex of themselves, and therefore has his story always been, is still, and will ever be the most popular of stage tragedies.”
That Edwin Booth should not have written concerning the Hamlet of his father in the same charming vein is greatly to be regretted. There are men still living who recollect the elder Booth in the part--he played it for the last time in New York in 1843--and to these it is one of the most delightful of memories. Thomas R. Gould, writing in 1868, sums up as follows his own ideas of the Hamlet of this great man: ”The total impression left by his impersonation at the time of its occurrence, and which still abides, was that of a spiritual melancholy, at once acute and profound. This quality colored his tenderest feeling and his airiest fancy. You felt its presence even when he was off the stage.”
This famous decade of the New York stage saw other great actors and other great Hamlets, some of whom in point of time preceded Kean and Booth.
Joseph George Holman played Hamlet at the Park Theatre in September, 1812, James William Wallack, on the same stage, in September, 1818, Robert Campbell Maywood in 1819, John Jay Adams in 1822, William Augustus Conway in 1824, Thomas Hamblin in 1825, and last, but not least, William Charles Macready in October, 1826.
[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM C. MACREADY.]
Of the Hamlet of John R. Duff there is, strange to say, no record in New York, although he played here occasionally between the years 1814 and 1827. He was very popular in Boston and Philadelphia, and a writer in the Boston _Centinel_, in the autumn of 1810, does ”not hesitate to say, that in some of the scenes [of _Hamlet_], and those of no ordinary grade of difficulty, he has never been excelled on the Boston boards.” His wife is still considered by certain old play-goers to have been the best Ophelia ever seen in the United States, and no account of the tragedy in this country can be complete without mention of her name. As Ophelia, in New York and elsewhere, she supported the elder Booth, the elder Kean, the elder Conway, Cooper, Payne, Wallack, and other stars; and Mr. Booth wrote to George Holland in 1836 that he considered her ”the greatest actress in the world.”
Mr. Macready was the first of a trio of remarkable Hamlets who came to this country from England at about the same period. Charles Kean was the second, in 1830, Charles Kemble the third, in 1832. Of Macready's Hamlet he says himself, in his _Reminiscences_: ”The thought and practice I have through my professional career devoted to it, made it in my own judgment and in those [_sic_] of critics whom I had most reason to fear and respect, one of the most finished, though not the most popular, in my _repertoire_.”
In Cole's _Biography of Charles Kean_, inspired by its subject and written under his direction, if not at his dictation, is the following account of his first attempt at Hamlet: ”The new Hamlet was received with enthusiasm.
From his entrance to the close of the performance the applause was unanimous and incessant. The celebrated 'Is it the King?' in the third act, produced an electrical effect. To use a favorite expression of his father's, 'The pit rose at him.'”
Concerning the Hamlet of Charles Kemble, his daughter wrote, in 1832: ”I have acted Ophelia three times with my father, and each time in that beautiful scene where his madness and his love gush forth together, like a torrent swollen with storms that bears a thousand blossoms on its turbid waters, I have experienced such deep emotion as hardly to be able to speak.... Now the great beauty of all my father's performances, but particularly of Hamlet, is a wonderful accuracy in the detail of the character which he represents,” etc.
All of this would seem to be _ex parte_ evidence, but it is interesting nevertheless; and neither Mr. Macready, Mr. Kean, nor Miss Kemble, perhaps, was very far astray. On the other hand, George Henry Lewes (_On Actors and the Art of Acting_) says that ”Macready's Hamlet was, in his opinion, bad, due allowance being made for the intelligence it displayed. He was lachrymose and fretful; too fond of a cambric pocket-handkerchief to be really effective.... It was 'a thing of shreds and patches,' not a whole.” The flouris.h.i.+ng of this handkerchief just before the play scene gave great offence to Forrest, who had the bad taste to hiss it in Edinburgh; and thus began the wretched feud which nearly convulsed two continents, and ended in bloodshed at Astor Place, New York.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES KEMBLE.]
Confessing that the elder Kean could not have surpa.s.sed the younger in certain melodramatic parts, Lewes adds that it was never an intellectual treat to see him (Charles Kean) play any of Shakspere's heroes; and the author of _The Actor_ says: ”Charles Kean's Hamlet has many beauties, but he is physically disqualified to do justice to any character in tragedy.... Nature has given him a most unmelodious voice, the sound of which seems to flow rather through his nose than its appropriate organ, a face altogether unsuited to the character he attempts, and we doubt if she ever intended him for an actor.” Apropos of Kean's difficulties in the utterance of certain of the consonants, particularly _m_ and _n_, the London _Punch_ acknowledged his antiquarian researches, and thanked him for having proved Shylock to be a vegetarian by his reading of the following lines:
”You take my life When you do take the _beans_ whereby I live!”
Macready described Charles Kemble as a first-rate actor in second-rate parts, and said that ”in Hamlet he was Charles Kemble at his heaviest,”
while other critics dismiss his Hamlet as ”pa.s.sable.” Thus do the doctors of criticism disagree.
It was said of Forrest, many years ago, that ”his Hamlet seemed like some philosophical Hercules rather than the sad, unhappy youth of Denmark.” If this was true of him when first spoken, it was much more true of him in his representation of the part during the later years of his life, and as he is only remembered by the large majority of the play-goers of the present. Forrest was too great an artist to play badly any part he ever undertook, but his Hamlet certainly was the least pleasing of all his Shaksperian _roles_. Physically, he was altogether too robust. His too, too solid flesh was bone and muscle. The soul of Hamlet, as drawn by his creator, and as conceived by every thorough Shaksperian student since Shakspere's day, could hardly have existed in a frame so magnificent as that which nature had given Edwin Forrest. No subtle mind, wily as was Hamlet's, whether it were sound or unsound, was ever found in so sound a body. Forrest, when he was young enough to play Hamlet, never knew what nerves or indigestion were. He gave to the part no little thought, and no doubt he understood it thoroughly; but that it did not suit him physically, and that he realized the fact, seemed often manifest when he was playing it. He presented the tragedy at Niblo's Garden in 1860, Edwin Booth--at the Winter Garden--appearing in the same part at the same time; and the contrast between the powerful robustious figure, deep chest tones, and somewhat ponderous action of the elder actor, and the lithe, poetic, romantic, melancholy rendition of the younger, was very marked.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES KEAN.]
Forrest first played Hamlet in New York at the Park Theatre, in the month of October, 1829, when he was but twenty-three years of age; and at his last public appearance here, November 22, 1872, he read portions of the tragedy at Steinway Hall. Mr. Eddy, Mr. Studley, and other tragedians of Mr. Forrest's ”school of acting” were not more satisfactory in the part of Hamlet than was Mr. Forrest himself. John McCullough, however, a pupil of Forrest's, and his leading man for a number of years, met with more success. Although a native of Ireland, his professional life was begun and almost entirely spent in America, and he may be considered a native Hamlet, to this manor born. His voice and action in certain scenes where loud declamation is demanded by the text were quite after the manner of Forrest, but as a whole he excelled his master in the part. He was free from mannerisms, his figure was manly and striking, he was neither too puny nor too burly, his sentiment was not mawkish, nor was his honesty brutal.
George Vandenhoff made his first appearance in America at the Park Theatre, New York, on the 21st of September, 1842, in the character of Hamlet, when Miss Sarah Hildreth, afterwards the wife of Gen. Benjamin F.
Butler, was the Ophelia. The Polonius was Henry Placide, whom Mr.
Vandenhoff, in his _Leaves from an Actor's Note-Book_, called ”the best Polonius and the best actor in his varied line in this country”; the Ghost was William Abbott, a superior actor in the higher range of parts; the Grave-digger was John Fisher, very popular and very able; the Horatio was Thomas Barry, who won for himself in later years no little distinction in New York and in Boston in the highest tragedy _roles_; and the first Mrs.
Thomas Barry, an actress of some ability, was Mr. Vandenhoff's Player Queen.
[Ill.u.s.tration: EDWIN FORREST.]
The Hamlet of Edward L. Davenport was never so popular as it should have been, nor was Mr. Davenport himself properly appreciated as an actor during the last years of his life. He was out of the fas.h.i.+on so long that until a far-sighted management engaged him to play the part of Brutus, during the famous run of _Julius Caesar_ at Booth's Theatre in 1875-76, he was only known to the younger generation of theatre-goers, when he was known at all, as Miss f.a.n.n.y Davenport's father! That Mr.
Davenport, at the close of his long career, should have been banished to the Grand Opera-house, and to Wood's Museum, in upper Broadway, is a stronger argument in favor of the alleged degeneracy of the drama in this country than is the unhealthy popularity of the current variety shows, and the emotional plays from the French.
The faithful band of Mr. Davenport's friends who followed him to the west side of the town, during his occasional visits to the metropolis, found nothing in his acting to wean them from their allegiance, while he made many new and enthusiastic friends among the G.o.ds of the gallery, those keen and appreciative critics whose verdict, although not always the general verdict, is ever, in an artistic way, the most valuable and pleasing to the actor. But galleries, alas! do not fill managers' pockets, nor do they lead the popular taste; and Mr. Davenport, at one time a universal favorite in New York with galleries, boxes, and pits, lived to find himself, through no fault of his own, and to the lasting discredit of metropolitan audiences, neglected and ignored.
Hamlet was not Mr. Davenport's greatest part, as it is not the greatest part of many of the popular Hamlets of the present; his Sir Giles Overreach, his Bill Sikes, his Brutus, and his William, in _Black-eyed Susan_, were as fine as his Hamlet, if not finer; nevertheless it was a singularly complete conception of the character--scholarly, finished, and profound. In his younger days he played the part many times, and with some of the ”finest combinations of talent” which the records of the stage can show. On the 16th of October, 1856, at Burton's Theatre, New York, Mark Smith was the Polonius, Burton and Placide the Grave-diggers, Charles Fisher the Ghost, and Mrs. Davenport the Ophelia to his Hamlet--a combination of strength in male parts almost unequalled. At Niblo's Garden, in 1861, Mrs. Barrow was his Ophelia, William Wheatley his Laertes, Thomas Placide his First Grave-digger, James William Wallack, Jr., his Ghost, and Mrs. Wallack the Queen; and at the Academy of Music, on the 21st of January, 1871, he played one act of _Hamlet_ to the Ophelia of Miss Agnes Ethel, on the occasion of the famous Holland Benefit, when the audience, as large as the great house would hold, was the only audience to which Mr. Davenport played Hamlet in many years that was at all worthy of the actor or his part. Miss Ethel was a perfect picture of the most beautiful Ophelia. It was her first attempt at anything like a legitimate tragedy part, and was decidedly successful.