I conceived that the proprietors should Drury Lane, extending over four seahave co-operated with me. They, how-sons, only three pieces survive; and ever, thought otherwise, and I was re- indeed, not many more were attempted luctantly compelled to relinquish, on-spectacular revivals substituting oridisadvantageous terms, my half-achieved ginal production. These three plays enterprise. Others may take up that gave two new authors to the stage, Sir incompleted work, and if inquiry be Edward Bulwer Lytton, and Mr. Marssought for one best qualified to under-ton; the first, one who had previously take the task, I should seek him in a commanded a position on it,-the theatre which, for eight years, he has second, a young and untried poet, who raised from its degraded condition-in has since amply justified the manager's that theatre which he has raised high preference. The only living writer, bein the public estimation, not only as to sides who owes his present dramatic the intelligence and respectability of existence to Mr. Macready, is Sir Thothe audiences, but by the learned and mas Talfourd. tasteful spirit of his productions. With a heart more full than the glass which I raise to my lips, I return you my most grateful thanks for the honour you have done me." We have not mentioned, as almost unworthy of record, the very serious disturbance in America, occasioned by the admirers of Mr. Forrest, offering a violent opposition to Mr. Macready in his performance. But the quarrels of authors have been recorded, and those of actors should have a Parthian glance thrown at them ere we close. Suffice it had such a riotous opposition in the Theatre from the partizans of Forrest, that he was driven from the stage, and obliged to seek safety in flight. Nor did the affray end here. The military were called out, and were obliged to fire upon the mob, occasioning, we believe, loss of life. Mr. Macready in disguise reached his hotel, and immediately sailed from those shores, which had in every other instance proved to him so hospitable. It would be unjust to take leave of Mr. Macready, without enumerating the original plays which he has been, either directly or indirectly, instrumental in producing, and estimating there-to say, that in New York, Mr. Macready by the amount of benefit which the new drama of England has received from his patronage. Earliest on the list is, we believe, the tragedy of Mirandola,' by Barry Cornwall,-and next Sheridan Knowles's Virginius.' Then comes Haynes's 'Damon and Pythias,' Shiel's 'Huguenot,' Miss Mitford's Julian,' Knowles's Caius Gracchus' and ' William Tell,' Byron's 'Werner,' Knowles's 'Alfred the Great,' Browning's Stafford,' Byron's Sardanapalus,' Lovell's' Pro- Mr. Macready's personal appearance vost of Bruges,' Talfourd's Ion,' Bul- is striking; his forehead is broad and wer's 'Duchess de la Valliere' and high; his eye small, but full of fire; Lady of Lyons,' Knowles's 'Woman's his nose is the most faulty feature of Wit, Byron's Two Foscari,' Bulwer's his face; his lips are constantly comRichelieu' and 'Sea Captain,' pressed, giving to his face a determinaHaynes's Mary Stuart,' Talfourd's tion, which is borne out by an abrupt Athenian Captive,' and' Glencoe.' and somewhat harsh manner. 6 His Serle's Master Clarke, Bulwer's Money,' figure, though tall, is not graceful, and Troughton's 'Nina Sforza,' Gisippus,' he appears to disadvantage in modern by the author of 'The Collegians,' Dar- costume. ley's Plighted Troth,' Byron's Doge On the retirement of Mr. Macready of Venice,' Marston's Patrician's from the stage, the newspapers were Daughter,' Knowles's 'Secretary,' Brow-full of sketches of his life, and of critining's Blot on the Scutcheon," White's cisms on his acting. The majority of 'King of the Commons,' and Taylor's 'Philip Van Artevelde.' these papers were laudatory, and perhaps too much So. But on the Of these, how many have retained other hand, some severely commented possession of the stage?- Virginius,' on his behaviour to his brother acDamon and Pythias,' William Tell,' tors, and especially on his hauteur, Werner,' Ion,' The Lady of Lyons,' and distant and proud bearing to'Richelieu,'' Money,' and The Patri- wards the younger professors of his cian's Daughter,'-nine out of a list of art. With this kind of criticism we thirty-three. Of Mr. Macready's own have nothing to do, but the ablest managements at Covent Garden and purely critical paper we insert, recom mended as it is, by its acute analysis and poetical appreciation: and moreover by a personal knowledge of the actor, and opportunities which few others could have had. those only a limited number: grief on its petulant side, rage on its demoniac, pathos and affection, but all modifications of himself, not representations of a person. Thus all his performances "A career of thirty-four years admits are alike; and are only variations of of many vicissitudes; we can remember certain general characteristics, such as the whole of Mr. Macready's, though a straddling totter for age, and a defiant many years his junior. We have wit- gait for youth. Now this generalizing nessed its entirety as amateur and cri- personification is the mode of the old tic; and may have said in a slight de- French tragedies, and of our vague and gree to have participated in it. We vapid dramas founded on them. Therehave seen him on and off the stage; in we have the general, but not the have enacted a Shakesperean part to particular. In all Shakespeare's chahim; have seen him in the green room; racters we have the particular. A perhave constantly criticised him in all the fect man, as true as if we had known new parts, and studied him in the old; him fifty years. No mere tyrant, no and have thus as intimate an acquaint-mere age, no mere youth. Shakespeare ance with his stage life as is well possible for a public writer to have. We have no feud with him, for we never were in a position to quarrel; we have no partiality, for we only know him as an artist. Thus sure, if truth is to be found in criticism, it might be hoped for in this memorial; and we are desirous to record an opinion that, unbiassed by either a base or a generous partizanship, shall give a faithful character of one who has filled so prominent a part in theatrical matters. created his style; it was his in its full perfection alone; and probably will so for ever remain. "It may be said, in answer to the charge of the want of personification, that Mr. Macready has a great deal of reality; that he is logically correct. True; but we want imaginative truth, and not harsh facts. It is true Macbeth might find his state of man shaken when he goes to murder Duncan, but he is very different from a cowardly burglar. Lear is a choleric, barbaric chief, "It is now only to consider the oft- but he would not bully every one he mooted question,-is Mr. Macready a comes near. lago is a designing ruffian, Shakesperean actor? Or, in other but he is not an exaggeration of deceit. words, is he an actor of the highest No rationale in the world will supply genius? To this we must reply in the the want of an entire and perfect imanegative; and our reason is, that he is ginative conception. Neither Brown essentially a man of great and culti- nor Dugald Stewart could supply lanvated talents but has little impulsive guage nor logic to make Hamlet comgenius. To elucidate Shakespeare re-prehensible to a mere mathematical quires something of the same plasticity mind. For these reasons we must say, of imagination, the same wonderful as Godwin said of James I., Mr. quality of conception, a facility minute and keen in its operation, but easy as a cheverel glove;' as bounteous, as full of spirits, as graceful, as prodigal in the richness of its fancy, as the poet himself. No actor can study himself into Shakespeare. He must have the lightning flash which reveals all at a glance. There is no reducing his perfect creations to an analytical process. Now, truly, it seems to us that to Mr. Macready is denied plasticity. He has not the essential attribute of an actor. He cannot personate. He has not a particle of the Protean power. Instead of being subdued to the character, he subdues the character to himself. Like Le Brun he can give you certain abstract passions, but of Macready has chosen a wrong trade. It is true he has professionally succeeded; but he has not artistically. He has won his way to a high position; by what means principally, we have shown. He has commanded admirers ; and, to a certain extent, deservedly, we do not deny. But it is not for his powers as a personator-as an actor; but for merits and demerits that are the very contrary of those of a great or true actor. He is a capital reciter; he has a vehemence that kindles emotion. He has strong powers of declamation. He appears thoroughly in earnest. knows how to suddenly introduce a reality of action or tone, that surprises the unreflecting and the unimagina tive into admiration. Still it is Mr. He Macready we hear, see, and know under that phase. He has the power of a declaimer, an orator, a rhetorician, but not of an actor. His self-consciousness is of a most robustious kind. His personality is utterly unsubduable. He is a very clever man who has a perfectly logical perception of the author's utterance; but has no power to embody that and lose himself. As, however, the vehement religious enthusiast excites the generality of the audience who hear him, because emotion of whatever kind is contagious, so do all vehement actors. Such expression may not convey the idea intended by the author, but if it call up a strong sensation it will pass for excellence. Most persons like to be mentally exited; and are careless of the means. And those not easily excited are led frequently by a common-place logic, and banishing the idea of illusion, or being impervious to it, make an analysis of the performance, and are satisfied if the facts cohere rationally. Neither of these states answer to that which the appreciator of Shakspeare must be in. To him must be awarded some portion of that plastic imagination belonging to the poet himself. The suggestive power of the dramatist leads him to weave for himself the pictures and the characters before him. He is neither carried away by a spurious enthusiasm, nor misled by the untimely contagion of some abstract emotion; nor is he the slave of a low logic which turns the action of the piece into an arithmetical problem. But the play and the performance is as a fine strain of music; as a noble and a cohering stream. It is never thought of as a reality. The vision is perfect as the creation of magic, and melts away into the same unsubstantiality. It is a thing of the soul and not of the body. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirit, and Unless poetry be read and played as such it is incongruous nonsense, or mere prose upon wheels. "Such being our notions of acting and the drama, we have never been able to see in Mr. Macready the true Shakesperean power. But we have always acknowledged in him strong prosaic talents. Capacity to kindle and move mixed audiences by an abstract expression of some of the passions, considerable acquirements, stage intelligence, and the utmost comprehension of his author that a highly-cultivated understanding could give. But we must conclude, as we began, by saying that his imaginative power is small, and that consequently he lacks entirely the power of personification; and that he is consequently rugged, disjointed, fragmentary, and inharmonious; a forcible declaimer and expounder, but not a poet, and consequently not an actor.” In reviewing the past life of a man who has won so high a position and in so arduous a profession as Mr. Macready, we cannot but be struck with admiration and gratitude when we consider that he has never done anything to degrade but on the contrary everything to elevate his art-he has endeavoured in every way to depress any vicious tendency which exists either on the stage or in the lives of those who are devoted to it; he has shown by his own conduct that an actor has a profession which is elevating, instructive, and moral, and which, if rightly professed, might be brought to the aid of the pulpit itself. Schlegel has well remarked that "the life of an actor is but the record of his art," and if this life presents few romantic incidents, no great contrasts of poverty or wealth, no vivid struggles to emancipate a people, or deep study to reform the laws, it yet shows the earnest devotion of one to a noble, though a misunderstood art, and his continued and unremitting attempts crowned with a partial success, to rescue it from the contempt and degradation to which professors less worthy than himself had reduced it. H. G. 61 THEODORE EDWARD HOOK. THE brilliant meteor which, during its | lastic power; and on the first night of brief but dazzling existence, outshines all the other stars of heaven, and then fades into impenetrable obscurity, is speedily forgotten when its transient radiance has passed away. So is it with the witty conversationalist-the man of clever sayings-the unsalaried jester, whose pleasant sallies have so often "set the table in a roar." He is remembered while amusement is born with his smiles, while his lightest words are echoed in peals of laughter, and while even the mere rolling of his eye is a provocative of merriment; but when sickness or age have lain their fingers upon his brow, or the tomb has closed upon him, he rarely occupies even the humblest place in the memory of his former admirers. Hook formed no exception to this rule. He was the "comet of a season," praised, flattered, worshipped; but when he vanished, the momentary inconvenience occasioned by his loss was remedied by less gifted but equally amusing successors. In the mad whirlpool of fashion and pleasure he had been hurrying round year by year, drawing closer to the fatal vortex, and when at last he was engulfed beneath the tide, the waters dashed on as rapidly and as laughingly as before. his entrance into Harrow School-whither he was soon after sent he gave another illustration of his disposition, by throwing a large piece of turf at the window of a bed-room, in which a lady was retiring to rest. There had been, of course, not the slightest provocation; and it would appear that no malicious spirit influenced the deed. It was merely done, at the suggestion of Lord Byron, then a mischievous inmate of the School. Fortunately, a broken pane of glass was the only damage occasioned by the act. Theodore Hook did not prove an attentive scholar, and obtained no distinction by his studies. He confesses that he had no application; that tasks which could be done quickly he could do well: but that to devote himself assiduously to any study, especially that of languages, he was quite unable. What progress he might ultimately have made, what effect upon his nature the stimulus of rivalry might have exerted, it would be idle now to discuss. Unfortunately the death of his mother, to whom he was deeply attached, prematurely terminated his school life. He went home, his father found relief from sorrow in the lively conversation of his young son, and would not hear of his return to Harrow. Theodore had no THEODORE EDWARD HOOK was born desire to revisit that seat of learning. in London on the 22nd September, He preferred to remain with his father. 1788. His father was for many years Town talk was better than school musical director of Vauxhall Gardens, teaching. The last new song at Vauxand composed the music of upwards of hall was worth the whole Latin Dic2000 songs for operettas, vaudevilles, tionary, and we suspect he went little and other light dramatic pieces of that farther into that language than the day. An elder brother of Theodore was exempla minora. Accordingly Theodore destined for the church, took holy or- remained at home; but he was not alders, and became Dean of Worcester, together idle. Secretly, and no doubt but the embryo wit manifested decided with some little fear and trembling, he symptoms of unfitness to follow in the wrote two or three songs, composed the same course. At a very early age he music for them, and one day, to the displayed a talent for practical joking, astonishment and delight of his father, and scholastic rule, as may be supposed, produced these precocious evidences of was one of the first subjects against talent. That day decided Theodore which it was directed. From an aca- Hook's fate. There could be no more demy in Soho Square, at which he had schooling after such a display of genius, been placed, he absented himself with- and, as author and composer, father and out permission for a fortnight. An ac- son now entered into partnership. But cident revealed this truant conduct of the young musical bard soon grew amthe boy, and parental hands soon pu- bitious; mere song-writing and songnished it. But to eradicate that, which singing-in both of which arts he had in Hook's case appears to have been become proficient-did not satisfy those inherent, was beyond parental or scho-yearnings for applause with which the extravagant praises of indulgent friends tioneering contest for Westminster, the had filled his breast. His pen took a whole of the company were amazed by higher flight, and in 1805 his first dra- the power which Hook displayed. Shematic effort, "The Soldier's Return," ridan was gratified beyond measure with (the music of which was composed by the young author, congratulated him his father,) was produced at Drury Lane upon the possession of such peculiar Theatre. This piece, flimsy enough in and brilliant talent, and afterwards itself, and no doubt borrowed without mentioned his name in terms of high acknowledgment from some French eulogy to many aristocratic friends. author-as almost every piece produced Thenceforth Hook became a 'lion." at the present day is-met with a high- He was invited to noble houses to disly favourable reception, and Theodore play his surprising genius-as profesHook, at the age of sixteen, found him- sors of parlour legerdemain are intro self a successful dramatist. To all those duced into festive parties at Christmas mysterious fascinations generally sup-time-and delighted his high-born paposed to exist "behind the scenes," trons with an exhibition of wit and Hook was now admitted. The com- cleverness, which quite enchanted them panion of Liston, Terry, Mathews, and by its novelty. Even royalty became other popular actors, he kept the green anxious to hear the performances of room and the entire company of the Mr. Hook, and one evening, at a suptheatre in a constant state of merriment per in Manchester Square, the Prince by his sprightly manners, his witty of Wales attended for the express pursayings, and his practical jokes. While pose of gratifying his curiosity, gracepassing through this dangerous exist- fully acknowledged the pleasure which ence he did not forget to exercise those the improvisatore had afforded him, and talents which had thus early received left Hook in a perfect flutter of delight. the stamp of public recognition and In fact, it was not surprising, at such approval. In rapid succession he con- an early age, with a mind comparatively tributed several farces, vaudevilles and unstrengthened by education, and filled melodramas, to the Haymarket and with the most extravagant ideas of its Lyceum theatres. Of these pieces own powers, that he should become inscarcely one is now to be met with on toxicated with the incense of flattery the stage. Tekeli," a violent melo- and applause which had risen around drama, of the transpontine school, is him. He soon felt a distaste for his occasionally performed at some of the dramatic avocations, and looked upon minor theatres of the metropolis, and the stage with the most intense conKilling no Murder," Hook's best tempt. The glimpses he had seen of farce, now and then undergoes repro- fashionable life were sufficiently dazduction: but despite its real wit, the zling to render him discontented with coarse and meagre character of the a less glittering existence. He began plot renders the piece disagreeable to a to fancy himself fitted only for that modern audience. But Hook soon be-sphere in which he had gained so much gan to be known in another capacity distinction. He entered into all the besides that of a successful dramatic gaieties and amusements of the town, writer. As an extempore versifier and soon rendered himself famous by and composer, he had by turns asto- the originality and impudence of his nished and delighted a large circle of exploits. He formed a "Museum of friends. He would sit down to the Practical Jokes," in which knockers, piano and pour forth verse after verse sign-boards, barbers' poles, gigantic of unpremeditated song,-some incident Highlanders, &c.—the glorious trophies that had occurred during the evening, of many a midnight deed-were dissome peculiarity in the name or appear- played for the gaze of admiring friends. ance of the guests, interwoven with Hook, therefore, had the miserable disallusions to passing topics and well tinction of founding, that cruel, thoughtgarnished with puns-generally form- less, and unmanly school of practical ing the material of these efforts of im-jokers, the greatest disciples of which provisation, which, although brilliant, were the Marquis of Waterford, and had in them no real merit. His fame certain medical students. Foreign naspread rapidly. At a dinner given by tions looked with surprise at an Engthe actors of Drury Lane, to congratu-lish lord going about attended by a late Sheridan on the success of his elec- prize-fighter, who, at a sign by his lord 66 66 |
