THE THEATRE. "Make room and let him stand before our face!" O says the Doge of Venice at the trial of Shylock v. public eager to find seats at the Lyceum Theatre to witness the latest revival of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. All playgoers are anxious to see Mr. Henry Irving's Shylock, and when they have once seen it, they will be quite as ready to enjoy the pleasure of seeing it again. In no character, perhaps, has Mr. Irving so completely conquered his mannerisms or subdued his propensity to exaggeration as in this rendering of the revengeful Jew. Calm, shrewd, and satirical in the beginning, devoted to his race and proud of his own business capacities, he stifles all sense of insult in his satisfaction at spoiling the Egyptian, and only begins to show his capability of resentment when an opportunity is given him to torment the man, of all others, who has continually met him with studied rudeness and coarser ridicule. Mr. Irving's delivery of the lines beginning," Signor Antonio, many a time and oft on the Rialto, you have rated me, &c.," was given as no other actor we have could have delivered it, and probably as no other actor ever gave it. The simple irony was just weighted with sufficient hate to be a foreshadow of the tiger that migh tbe roused within him. Every word a barb, fixed with all the dexterity of a bull-fighter, goads Antonio to quick fury. It is the Christian, not the Jew, who loses his temper. Why look you! How you storm!" says Shylock. From this moment the Shylock now before us is seen to feed his hopes of revenge, and when, the same night, he returns to find not only his daughter but his gems and ducats gone, he gives himself up entirely to his cruel determination to kill Antonio. It is Antonio's friend who has carried off his Jessica, and she has carried off his jewels. For after all Shylock is more hurt at the loss of his goods than at the disappearance of his daughter, with whom there is evidently little affection, as Jessica's subsequent reproaches, and evident pleasure at finding freedom in escape, go to prove. 66 In the scene with Salanio and Salarino in the street, after his daughter's elopement, Mr. Irving was very fine. His pentup desires for revenge were given full scope. He would be delivered of the hornet that was always stinging him without descending to assassination. All the curbed fury within his Jewish breast breaks loose, and taking the bit in its mouth fairly carries off the old Jew, and with him the audience. Just here and there Mr. Irving relapsed into his old tendency to be hysterically unintelligible, but the whole impersonation is so full of talent and reality that we can well overlook such small defects where the jewel is cut with such rare power and accuracy. In the trial scene Mr. Irving returns to his former calm, this time no longer lightened by the sarcasms of the Rialto, but pregnant with hate and the fixed determination to annihilate his adversary. Murder wrinkles his brow, and he now no longer thinks of his tribe or his ducats, but sullen, revengeful, and certain of success, he waits the cruel issue of his verdict. Mr. Irving here gives us the Jew as the model of what Shylock should be, and will be, no doubt, in all future renderings of the part. We do not hesitate to say that henceforth "the Jew of Venice" for future actors will be after the interpretation of Mr. Irving. We congratulate him on the most complete representation of any Shakspearian part he has yet taken up. Mr. Irving's taste and judgment are also shown in the arrangement of the play and the choice of scenic artists. Mr. Telbin gives us a beautiful picture of Venice, its piazza and its palaces, while among the other scenes a front cloth by Mr.W. Hann, representing one of the canals in a bye street, and the last moonlit set by Mr. Hawes Craven, stand out as most artistically complete. This last scene is somewhat marred by the cut sky borders, which might have been so easily replaced by vine-covered poles or trellis work. The costumes are not as good as those produced at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. They are Elizabethan where they should be Venetian, although they are produced with taste and sufficient luxury. Mr. Irving's own dress, however, is quite a picture, and Miss Terry's are as nearly as possible the costumes of Cesare Vecellio. But, as Lorenzo says of Jessica in the original version, "And now, good sweet, say thy opinion, How dost thou like the Lord Bassanio's wife :" 520 Jessica replies, St. James's Magazine. "Past all expressing. The poor rude world hath not her fellow." YOR We quite agree with Jessica. A more exquisite Portia it would be difficult to find. Costumed with rare taste, we prefer her last dress, which reminds one of a portrait by Paul Veronese, never offending the eye with a misplaced gesture or ungainly pose. Delivering her lines with an ease of repartee in the comedy and a full appreciation of the beauty of the text in the more serious speeches, Miss Ellen Terry looks like the living embodiment of Petrarch's sonnets and Boccaccio's stories, with memories of Titian's mistresses and Sir F. Leighton's most poetical creations called up by the charming pictures every movement brings before us. We could wish, for her sake, that Bassanio were worthy of her. But no! Mr. Barnes is thinking about the rounding of his legs much more than of the charms of his affianced wife, and in the love scenes appearsto be taking orders for furniture, so calm and self-satisfied is his bearing. Can it be believed? He chooses the right casket--the leaden one-and finding there the miniature and the scroll, Turn you where your lady is, And claim her with a loving kiss, this leaden lover just kissed the counterfeit, and then takes her hand coldly in his. Why! man alive! Look at her! She is there the picture of everything bewitching, only waiting to be loved! Take her to your arms! Kiss her as if she were all to you and the world well lost, and let there be some show of ecstasy! Fair lady! by your leave: I come by note, to give and to receive. Not a bit of it! Salario or Salarino might kiss her hand like that. Well! well! It does not follow because a man has good calves that he should be blessed with much brains. But Ellen Terry's Portia is a poem, Spring and Summer all in one. Of the other characters general mediocrity characterises the majority. Miss Florence Terry is not a Nerissa, and was never meant to be. Mr. Tyars makes a good Prince of Morocco, and delivers his lines well, but we think the visible beauty of the casket scene would be much enhanced if Mr. Irving were to give him a purple and gold caftan and turban, instead of the white Algerine sortie de bal, which does duty as a mantle. There are too many weak-tinted costumes in the scene: one strong bit of colour would be invaluable. We have been to see Duty again at the Prince of Wales; and there is no doubt that it is the weakness of the piece, not the absence of Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft from the cast, which causes a falling off in the audiences. The second act ought never to have been produced, and would be dull in the extreme were it not for the wonderful comic powers of Mrs. John Wood. The acting of such a part as Mrs. Trelawney, and with the parvenu who has risen from the position of a circus-rider to that of head of a county family, could not be played as well by any other actress we know of. Well-bred vulgarity is heightened with just enough of the rouge of exaggeration that the artist's hand knows so well how to add. The whole performance of this part is the most enjoyable thing in the comedy. Mr. Conway shows more power and tenderness than he has ever attempted before, and takes a higher position, by one great stride, in his profession. Miss Linda Dietz plays an unpleasant part with great skill and good taste. Mr. Arthur Cecil supplies an exeellent setting to a part which otherwise would be most colourless, but we have seen him to far greater effect in other parts. The other characters are more or less successfully rendered. Mrs. Vezin lends her great experience, and Miss Marion Terry her good looks and accomplishments, to perfect the whole; but no acting and no amount of brass ornaments and Turkey carpets will ever make it a good piece. The absurdity of Sir Geoffrey's reticence, in the first place, giving a rendezvous to a modiste at 10 o'clock at night, when it would have been so simple to communicate the note to his fiancée beforehand, and get her permission, which any lady would accord, to see the young person on particular business; and in the second place the evident facility of settling the whole matter by setting the facts before the old uncle, and so arranging the business to everyone's satisfaction, without annoying the confiding widow, must strike the most unsophisticated observers. We hail with delight the announcement that Tom Robertson's play Ours is very soon to be reproduced. After our wars in Afghan and Zululand, and with our natural distrust of the Russians, the success of such a play, with the excellent cast promised, is quite certain to be immense. THESPIS. DOUBLE ACROSTIC NO. 12. Dans peu de jours tout un peuple eu liesse, Correct answers received from-Brevette; Beolne; La Belle Alliance; P. V.; Benedictine; Victor You Go; Albatross; Lalla Rockh; Alcestis ; Quite a Young Thing Too; Nursery; Shark; What, Never ?; and Black Beetle. 14 correct and 42 incorrect. Total, 56. |