for laying cables which should not be overlooked. When our great submarine cable contractors have availed themselves of the suggestions which science has made, and when shareholders see the necessity of insisting that the cables shall not only be laid but maintained in perfect working order for a certain time, we feel confident that the era of disaster, as regards our means of sending messages under the sea, will have finally passed away.
“OTHELLO” AT THE PRINCESS’S.
Those of our readers who have obtained, or tried to obtain, places at the box-office in Oxford Street, on any Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, since October 23rd, will not be disposed to consider the Drama in a languishing or moribund condition. The audiences gathered by Mr. Charles Kean have been not only equalled, but surpassed in numbers, brilliancy and intelligence. This is, perhaps, not to be wondered at. The impersonation of Hamlet by Mr. Fechter was so novel, so scholarlike, so suggestive, that expectation has been nervously awake to catch any hints of the readings and situations to be anticipated in his delineation of the Moor of Venice.
Before we commence analysing the new performance with the care that its high artistic excellence and elaboration of detail deserve, we must make one remark intelligible to the majority of play-goers, but especially intelligible to the frequenters of the Princess’s under the old régime—we went to see a “Character,” we found a “Revival.”
It is true that the rendering given by the French tragedian has many points of novelty to an English audience. Though a performer whose name is well known to the frequenters of the theatres at Florence and the chief Italian cities, Signor Salvini has taken a view not altogether unlike that of Mr. Fechter.
As in the “Hamlet,” one sentence, viz., the passage—
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action,
was the key to the entire interpretation, so in the “Othello” the whole character of the hero hinges on the idea that the Moor is
One not easily jealous, but, being wrought,
Perplex’d in the extreme.
With this preface we open Mr. Fechter’s “Acting Edition” (pausing an instant, over its motto—faiblesse vaut vice), and from the “Dedication” learn his object. It is “to sap the foundations of that wormeaten and unwholesome prison where Dramatic Art languishes in fetters, and which is called Tradition.” We are by this announcement prepared to expect many deviations from the received mode of rendering the play in this country, and we are not disappointed. Mr. Fechter and Tradition are Plaintiff and Defendant, though the public, as Jury, acquit or condemn the words of the author in their grammatical and obvious significance.
The great issue is this. Has Mr. Fechter, in his anxiety to do something novel, and to free himself from the manacles of usage, sometimes allowed a rich and fruitful fancy and a keen eye for the picturesque and effective, to lead him into deviations from, and additions to the text, alien from the spirit of Shakspeare, and unwarrantable as the liberties which Dryden took with “The Tempest” or Tate with “Lear?”
It seems to us that, in two or three cases he has gone too far, and as we desire to get all the fault-finding over at once, we will quote the points where it appears to us he has overstepped his duty, and fancied he was annihilating Tradition when he was really unfaithful to the “Great Master” Himself. Indeed, the conduct of a lover who should compel his charmer to acquire, by cosmetics, a rosy blush when she was naturally pale, and to seek from her hair-dresser flaxen locks to conceal her own jetty tresses, affords no unfair type of Mr. Fechter in his treatment of the works of the man whom he professes to worship. Alas! perhaps, in every pursuit we bring with us that which we find.
First, we must protest against the tameness and the conversational tone assumed in the Address to the Senate. In so rendering this speech we conceive Mr. Fechter has failed to realise the situation of his hero. Othello was in considerable peril. The powers of the Ten were absolute—the privileges of the Ten sacred. The threats of imprisonment, uttered by Brabantio, in scene 2, were not empty words. The Duke himself, directly he is informed of the abduction, says:
Whoe’er he be, that, in this foul proceeding,
Hath thus beguiled your daughter of herself,
And you of her, the bloody book of law
You shall yourself read in the bitter letter,
After your own sense; yea, though our proper son
Stood in your action.
Besides, in the sixteenth century, the charge of having used witchcraft was something more than a figure of speech. The Moorish General of the forces of the Republic must have been more fortunate than any other general before or since, if he had not some enemies amongst the seignory who would delight in exaggerating a charge against him; indeed, we know that the “Three Great Ones of the City,” whom he had lately displeased by the appointment of Cassio as his lieutenant, were sitting at that very council board, and would not have missed an opportunity of resenting his slight to them. And the strangest part of the matter is, that of all this, Mr. Fechter seems fully aware, for he has given in his edition[1] stage-directions, indicating that he feels the Abduction should create great surprise and violent dissatisfaction amongst the magnificos. But yet he persists in making the General treat the matter as if it were of no moment. A few graceful waives of the hand, a deprecating look, and a complimentary stress on the second adjective in the line
My very noble and approved good masters,
- ↑ A general movement of surprise—“Murmurs in the Senate”—“Fresh murmurs.”—C. F.’s edition.
