Punch: Punch (76.1879)

January 11, 1879.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

9

SPORTING FIXTURES.

{The Present Variable Weather Permitting.)

Monda r.—An Ice Regatta at Hen-
ley. Sledge races on the Thames, to
be followed by a skaters' steeple-
chace: course, from Maidenhead to
Monkey Island. At sunset, a snow-
ball by electric light. Mr. Jack Frost
will officiate as Master of the Cere-
monies.

Tuesday.—North Polo Match upon
the lake at the Welsh Harp, which,
it is confidently expected, will play
on the occasion. Sides, United Arc-
tics v. Baltic Bluenoses.

Wednesday.—Meeting of the Drags
of the Humane Society, in conse-
quence of the sudden thaw in all the
parks, and rapid liquefaction of the
ornamental waters.

Thursday. — Grand
Cricket Match at Lord's.
Oxford and Cambridge
Colts against Ojibbeways
and Esquimaux. Gate-
money to be given to the
Umpire's Emigration Fund,
for supplying English um-
pires throughout the States
and Colonies.

Friday.—Butterfly Shooting at the Gun Club, and a Grasshopper
Hunt at Hornsey. In the evening, Cockney Swimming Contest for
the Championship of the Serpentine; to be decided in three heats,
provided that the temperature be not below freezing-point.

Saturday. — Ladies' Lawn-tennis Match at Wimbledon: to be
followed by a pic-nic on the Common, and al fresco Fancy Ball,
with comic songs, charades, and archery by moonlight.

HAMLET AT THE LYCEUM.

It is pleasant to see any one who has laboured earnestly,
honestly, and in a difficult and honourable career, attain the end
for which he has worked. None of Mr. Irving's public could have
sympathised more sincerely than Mr. Punch with Mr. Irving,
when, standing before a crowded house, thrilling with enthusiasm,
and tumultuous with applause, after more than four hours' close
attention to the play that, above all other plays, taxes the mind, he
told them, that this was what he had been working for all his life
—not meaning the applause, of course, but the opportunity, of pro-
ducing Hamlet in a theatre under his own whole and sole manage-
ment. It is a worthy ambition for an intellectual Actor, which Mr.
Irving is; and for a Manager bent on turning his opportunities to
the best account, which Mr. Irving now proclaims himself to be.
Happy man! He has the opportunity, as well as the will. How
ready his public is to give him credit not merely for good, but the
best, intentions, was very apparent among the audience of that
opening night,—one of the heartiest, most responsive, and readiest to
take the will for the deed, that Punch ever had the pleasure of
figuring among. At the same time, it is neither true, nor fair, in
the critics to say, that such a presentation of Hamlet has not been
seen in our time. "Our time" is an elastic phrase. In Punch''s
time, there have been at least three productions of the play—by
Macready, at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, by Charles Kean,
at the Princess's, and by Phelps at Sadler's Wells—not less complete,
tasteful, and careful, in scenery, stage-management, and appoint-
ments ; and as regards the cast, apart from the Hamlet and the
Ophelia—a point, after all, at least as important as scenery,
machinery, dresses, and decorations—infinitely better.

It is not fair to forget this so soon. There ought to be hope that
a Manager's memory may outlive his life forty years. It is not so
long as that since the earliest of these three managements; and yet
Punch seems to be the solitary critic who has ventured to give
one more new rendering of Horace's pregnant line—" Vixere
fortes ante Agamemnona " — " There have been Managers before
Irving."

Mr. Irving has given good earnest of his good intentions by taking
Mr. Marshall into council about the text and scenic arrangement
of his Hamlet.

The mounting of the play at the Lyceum leaves little or nothing to
be desired. The giving the Ghost the full range of the platform of
Elsmore for his martial stalk, in the opening Scene, is a con-
spicuous improvement, though not a new one. But Punch is not
yet satisfied that the Ghost has any business out of the Castle.

It is no sufficient reason for showing the apparition in the third
scene on the "dreadful summit of the cliff," that Horatio thinks
he may tempt Hamlet thither. Ghosts are strictly local institutions.
They always haunt particular places ; and the Castle of Elsinore is
the walk of his late Majesty of Denmark, when he "revisits the
glimpses of the moon." But the change gives us an impressive and
effective stage-picture, and is an immense improvement on the close
glen shut in by mountains which it replaces at the Lyceum.

Punch must still protest in as unqualified terms as ever against
the absence of visible pictures in the Closet Scene. "Counterfeit
presentment" can by no fair stress of words be made to mean the
image of his father and of his uncle which Hamlet carries in his
mind's eye. The passage is shorn of its best pith and point and
effect on the audience when visible pictures are dispensed with. The
only recommendation of this novelty, as far as Punch can make out,
is its singularity. What does Mr. Marshall say to it? Another
reading of Mr. Lrving's, which seems to Punch equally irreconcile-
able with the text, is Hamlefs sinking down when the Ghost dis-
appears, thus making his " sinews grow instant old," at the very
moment when he calls upon them not to do so, but "to bear him
stiffly up."

Nor can the transfer of the fencing-scene to an open gallery looking
on the Palace orchard be reconciled (as Mr. Mot Thomas has pointed
out), with Hamlef s cry—"Ho ! let the door be locked." Though, here
again, we get a pretty stage-picture, which may well excuse the dis-
regard of Hamlef s words.

The discovery of the Gravediggers at their work instead of
letting them walk on, is decidedly a change for the better, even
if Mr. Irving and Mr. Marshall have not been the first to
make it.

After Hamlet, Ophelia, and the Ghost, the Lyceum Gravedigger's is
by many degrees the best acted part in the piece. Mr. S. Johnson, whose
name is new to Punch, played without any of the conventional false
emphasis and exaggeration which have crusted over this, like most
of the short parts in Shaespeare's plays whose good or bad luck
it has been to fall into the hands of leading actors. He spoke
with good emphasis and discretion, and went about his business
like an honest, " even" gravedigger—losing none of the points, but
forcing none, and leaving the perfect conception, presented in the
best words, to work its way. The man did not, in this case, jar with
his part; as did, with but few exceptions, all the actors of the
secondary parts in the Lyceum cast. In plain English, the play was
not well cast—and that not measuring excellence by any ideal
standard; not by any means as well cast as it might have been
with a more judicious choice of available actors ; at least if no better
were to be had, Mr. Irving must have been exceptionally unfortunate.

Mr. Mead's Ghost is unexceptionable.

It would not be easy to find on the stage a better Queen than Miss
Pauncefort. Mr. Chippendale in Polonius, so far as his failing
strength allowed him to carry out his conception, was grave and dig-
nified as a high Court officer should be, even supposing him to be a
" tedious old fool." The Osric had the youth, good looks, and self-
satisfied air that are wanted for the part, but either lacked the art
to give them their full effect, or perhaps Mr. Irving fails to appre-
ciate, or does not care to develope, the significance of the scene in
which he appears.

" The rest is silence."

There is nothing good to be said of the other actors of the secondary
parts, and it would be superfluous to say harsh things of them. It
was not that they did not do their best, but their best was out of
tune with the noble music of Shakspeare.

The Hamlet and Ophelia are the two pillars of the play. Of the
strength and weakness of Mr. Irving's Hamlet it is unnecessary_to
repeat in detail Avhat Punch has said before. The sum of his praise
is, that from first to last, the.actor is in his part, that his reading_ of
Hamletys character, moods, and mental states, is consistent with
itself, intelligent, and intelligible—a presentment of the part which
all thoughtful students of the play may follow with interest and
profit, if not always with acquiescence.

In its essentials Punch believes Mr. Irving's performance to
be based upon, and true to, the great lines of the Poet's thought.
He shows us a mind ticklishly poised on the line between great wit
and madness—and so naturally assuming the mask of madness, from
under which to shoot his wild and whirling words, the better to
prosecute the purpose which he has not strength of wTill to carry,
deliberately, to its issue. Any great shockcan send this unstably-
poised mind over the boundary between sanity and insanity. Some
great shocks—as the revelations of the Ghost, the rooting up of his
love, and the sudden tidings of Ophelias death—are sufficient to
rouse him to frenzy. The Prince's weakness of will is due partly to
the excessive development in him of the reflective element over the
active, wffiich makes him so lengthy a soliloquiser; so ready to_ go
off into disquisition on the slightest provocation at the most critical
moment; glad to talk to anybody who will talk to him, and able to
find in everything a text for speculation, and a peg on which to hang
disquisition and generalisation.