88

HER ANGIOLINA IN MARINO FALIERO.

[1842.

Mr Macready was indeed unfortunate in the selection of his next production, Plighted Troth, a Dramatic Tale, by Mr George Darley, in five very long acts. It was produced on the 26th of April, and, down to its actual performance, Mr Macready thought it had the chance of a brilliant success. Acute and experienced critic and scholar as he was, he must have been blinded by the poetical beauty of much of the writing to the absence of both dramatic situation and character. This defect was quickly felt by the audience. In the words of the Atlas critic, "The inconsistency between the incidents of the scene and the atmosphere of poetry by which they are surrounded became at last so apparent, that the most pathetic parts of the action produced only ludicrous effects. Mr Macready died amidst the most uncritical laughter we ever heard in a theatre." Such a verdict was not to be resisted. The play was at once withdrawn ;-and all the long hours and thought expended by Mr Macready on the hero, and Miss Faucit on Maddalene the heroine, were found to have been utterly wasted.

The only new character which Miss Faucit was called upon to embody down to the end of the season, on the 23rd of May, was Angiolina in Byron's Marino Faliero. It was produced for Mr Macready's benefit on the 20th of that month, and was so warmly received, that it took its place upon the standard roll of plays repeated from time to time at Drury Lane during Mr Macready's management.

CHAPTER V.

ON the close of the Drury Lane season, Miss Faucit accepted an engagement to play with Mr Macready for a few nights in Dublin, beginning on May 28. She was a stranger, and the Dublin public seem not then to have been aware of the distinguished position which she held in London, and to have concentrated their attention upon Mr Macready, who had long been a favourite there. At all events it was not till she came among them three years afterwards that they awoke, and awoke enthusiastically, to the consciousness that a great actress had been among them, and they did not know it. She carried to Dublin in 1842 an introduction from Mrs S. C. Hall to Mrs Hutton of Elm Park, a lady of exceptional accomplishments, who occupied a prominent position in Dublin society. In this lady's house she made the acquaintance of some of the Professors of Trinity College and other leading literary and scientific men, who were afterwards to become her warmest admirers. Here also she was introduced to Dr William Stokes, the eminent physician, who afterwards became a most attached and valued friend, and who at once recognised the woman of genius in her performances. To her the Dublin visit was chiefly memorable from the circumstance of her being called upon to play Lady Macbeth for the first time. It was not the first time by many that she had been suddenly required to play important characters without the time for the necessary previous study and rehearsal. But here she was put forward before a notoriously critical audience to play this most difficult character with only one rehearsal. In speaking of this performance, she writes, that she is reminded

How little the public knew of the disadvantages under which, in those days, one used sometimes to be called upon to play important parts. To an

90

APPEARS IN DUBLIN

[1842.

artist with a conscience, and a reputation to lose, this was a serious affair. After the close of the Drury Lane season, in June, I acted a short engagement in Dublin with Mr Macready. Macbeth was one of his favourite parts, and to oblige the manager, Mr Calcraft, I had promised to attempt Lady Macbeth; but in the busy work of each day, up to the close of the London season, I had had no time to give the character any real thought or preparation. Indeed the alarm I felt at the idea of presuming to go upon the stage in such a character made me put off grappling with it to the last possible moment.1 The mere learning of the words took no time. Shakespeare's seem to fasten, without an effort, upon the mind, and to live there for ever. Mr Macready at our one rehearsal taught me the business of the scene, and I confided to him the absolute terror I was in as the time of performance drew near. He kindly encouraged me, and said from what he had seen during the rehearsal he was sure I should get on very well. At night, when it was all over, he sent to my dressing-room to invite me to take the call of the audience along with him. But by this time the poor frightened "Lady" had changed her sleep-walking dress with the extremest haste, and driven away home. I was rather scolded the next day by Mr Macready, who reminded me that he had asked me to remain, feeling assured the audience would wish to see me. This I had quite forgotten, thinking only of the joy of having got over my fearful task, and desirous of running away from and forgetting it as quickly as possible.

I have no remembrance of what the critics said. But Mr Macready told me that my banquet and sleep-walking scenes were the best. In the latter, he said, I gave the idea of sleep, disturbed by fearful dreams, but still sleep. It was to be seen even in my walk, which was heavy and unelastic, marking the distinction-too often overlooked--between the muffled voice and seeming mechanical motion of the somnambulist and the wandering mind and quick fitful gestures of a maniac, whose very violence would wake her from the deepest sleep-a criticism I never forgot, always endeavouring afterwards to work upon the same principle, which had come to me then by instinct. Another remark of his about the sleep-walking scene I remember. He said, "Oh, my child, where did you get that sigh? What can you know of such misery as that sigh speaks of?" He also said that my first scene was very promising, especially the soliloquy, also my reception of Duncan, but that my after scenes with him were very tame. I had altogether failed in

66

chastising with the valour of my tongue."

The only criticism I remember on this my first attempt, besides Mr Macready's, was that of a most highly cultivated and dear lady friend [Mrs Hutton], who said to me a day or two afterwards: "My dear, I will never see you again in that terrible character. I felt horror-stricken. Lear says of Cordelia, 'So young and so untrue!' 'So young and yet so wicked!'"

I should say of your Lady Macbeth,

Hurried as her study was, she never, as she has told me, saw

1 It was played as the last of six performances, preceded by Virginia, Sophronia, Mrs Beverley, Pauline, and Angiolina.

1842.]

AS LADY MACBETH.

91

cause afterwards to deviate from the general conception of the character, as it revealed itself to her from her then perusal of the play. Of what that conception was, a more fitting time to speak will arise hereafter, when dealing in detail with her impersonations of the character, and with the commentaries of many of our best Shakespearian scholars, both English and foreign, to which it gave occasion.

On her way back to London, she played for a few nights in Birmingham with Mr Macready. A vacant day enabled them to visit Trinity Church in Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakespeare lies, and the house where he was born. Their names, inscribed on a beam in the principal room there, though faint, are still discernible, and are eagerly sought for by countless visitors. Close by them Robert Browning has, in later days, placed his bold autograph,-well pleased, no doubt, that it should be near to those of the two artists to whom he had owed much.

A welcome and sorely needed three months' rest from the labours of the theatre now followed. It was taken at Scarborough and elsewhere in the country. How scanty and inadequate a preparation it was for the work before her may be judged from the fact, that from the 5th of October 1842, when she reappeared at Drury Lane, onwards to the 13th of June 1843, when Mr Macready retired from management, she was performing week by week in every important play, old or new, which he produced.

She found him, on her return from her holiday, busily preparing for the production of King John, in which he had allotted to her the part of Constance of Bretagne. The play was produced with a completeness of effect, in costume and mise en scène, never surpassed by the most elaborate of the Shakespearian so-called revivals with which the London public has since been familiar. But what was of more importance, Mr Macready was able to enlist in its performance a body of accomplished actors such as no English stage has since been able to bring together. The result was a triumphant success, toward which, by general consent, the Constance of Miss Faucit mainly contributed. The only drawback to the completeness of her performance was the want of physical power to give full force to her conception in

92

APPEARS AS CONSTANCE OF BRETAGNE.

[1843.

some of the more violent passages. Thus, the critic of the Atlas

writes:

Miss Faucit, as the high-souled Constance, attracted well-deserved applause of more than usual vigour. It is no derogation from her merit, that she lacks the physical power necessary for this most arduous character, although this consideration prevents her reaping the full reward of he admirable performance. What could be effected by energy, skill, and taste she did, and if occasionally her words failed of the force of blighting execration, the want of such extra power leaves room only for regret.

What wonder if a woman so young, and whose strength had been for years taxed to the uttermost, should here and there have fallen short of the physical power needed to give effect to her own conception of what Shakespeare meant Constance to be, in the great first scene of the third act, where she is torn by grief and, from the first words she speaks, strung up to the height of imaginative passion, ending in the great cry of anguish, in which her grief culminates as she passes from the scene? And it was only at this point that the want of power was felt by any of her audience. They little knew, that, as she left the scene, she was generally carried fainting to her room.

What she might have been as Constance at a later day, when her powers were more mature, and her health stronger, she never had sufficient opportunity to show; for with the dissolution of Mr Macready's Drury Lane company, the adequate production of King John became all but impossible either in London or the provinces; and Constance had therefore to be omitted, much to her regret, from her list of parts.1 But, fortunately, her impersonation has been so well described by those who saw it at Drury Lane, that it is possible to form a very clear idea of what it must have been.

Of what it was a lasting record exists in a masterly analysis of the performance by the late George Fletcher, which originally appeared in the Athenæum, in 1843, in a series of papers on The Female Characters of Shakespeare, and some of their present Representatives on the Stage.2 No one had a better right to deal with

1 She played Constance during one engagement in Dublin, and one in Glasgow, but nowhere else.

2 Subsequently published, along with several additional papers, as Studies of Shakespeare, by George Fletcher. Longman, 1847.