Punch (68.1875)

April 24, 1875.]

PUNCH, OP THE LONDON CHARIYAEI.

181

DE MORTUIS NIL NISI
MALUM.

Thanks, Sir William Fraser ! ’tis
now-a-days daring

To protest against slander, though
false as unsparing:

Death gives men the power in our
weakness to revel,

And courtiers and kings are still
cursed with their G revtlle.

The publisher’s gold is still ready to
glisten,

For the memoirs of all who can libel
and listen:

Cads like to see great ones brought
down to their level,

And there still is safe sale for the
smudge of a Greville.

Yes, safe as Burke's Peerage, the
British snob’s Bible,

Is a salaried eavesdropper’s post-
humous libel;

But then there ’s the question, ‘1 How
deep is the evil

That the antidote carries, of authors
like Greville ?”

Athletic Sports for Ladies*

Jumping at conclusions.

Walking round a subject.

Running through a novel.
Skipping dull descriptions.
Throwing the hatchet: and, during
the holidays,

Boxing the ears of troublesome
younger brothers.


PRICE FOR AGE.

Mr. Green. “You needn’t be afraid of that Glass of Wine, Uncle. It’s Thirty-Four
Port, you know.”

Uncle. “ Thirty-Four Port I—Thirty-Four Fiddlesticks ! It’s no more Thirty-Four Port
than you are ! ”

Mr. Green. “ It is. I can assure you! Indeed, it’s really Thirty-Six; and Thirty-
Four if you Return the Bottles / ”

rite and wrong.

The practices of the Ritualist par-
sons are calculated seriously to mis-
lead and delude the ignorant masses.
It is probable that there are many
uneducated persons who fully believe
that Ritualism is another word for
what they often spell riteousness.

A SALYO TO SALVINI.

Punch is rejoiced to see that a representative body of the London
Actors lately made express application to the great Italian Player,
now displaying his art for London’s behoof, to give a morning
performance of Othello, at which they could be present. Salvini
answered the application with an Italian’s courtesy, and an artist’s
feeling with his fellows. Remembering how, when Punch was
young, an illiterate English mob once howled and hooted a French
company from the stage of Drury Lane ; and how, when the noblest
Actor of his generation, William Macready, published a protest
against the cowardly outrage, in which he associated his brother
Actors with himself, a large body of those Actors disclaimed such
association, and denied William Macready’s right to speak for more
than William Macready—Pxmch cannot but rejoice in the present
indication of a larger and less “ porochial ” spirit of appreciation.

The actors who had the good fortune to see Salvini on Monday,

| have seen a _ great artist, in the ideal sense of the word—one
whose art “in the very storm and whirlwind of his passion, can
beget a temperance that gives it smoothness ; ” whose voice keeps
its music even in rage or agony, and whose action can be graceful,
even in its moments of utmost vehemence; and this without for-
feiture of force, or sacrifice of truth. It is of secondary im-
portance whether or not those who hear Salvini understand Italian.
They are sure to know the text of Othello; and Salyini’s look,
tone, and gesture speak the universal language.

They must have marked the breadth and calmness of his style,
the self-restraint that never betrays effort, and the grandeur result-
ing from this element of large effect. They will have seen how
superior to points and petty tricks and clap-traps he is from first
to last; how completely the Moor, steeped at first in the stately
! Oriental calm that almost looks like languor, till love lights in his
eye and mantles in his face, or doubt begins to torture, and sense
of wrong gathers and glows to fury, and a rage, far more terrible

and unsparing than a wild beast’s, works to madness in his brain.
They cannot have failed to note how terrible Othello is always,
when roused to self-assertion even by short and sudden passion;
and how the possibility of the last scene is already shadowed forth,
when he breaks upon the wassail brawl at Cyprus; how his love
differs from the love of a Western lover, at once fiercer and less
deferential, yet how inexpressibly full of protection in the earlier
scenes, and how hopelessly ruthless in the last.

Only one defect they must have felt as a set-off to all this ex-
cellence—the over-vehemence of Othello's final agony, where Shak-
speare has indicated a heart-broken calm ; and, above all, they
must have longed to turn away from the death-scene, as at once
false to the text, and beyond the limits of art in its realistic horror.
But some points of this we hear that this great Actor—who in
Shakspeare’s own country and on Shakspeare’s own stage should
not be above taking a hint on the acting of Shakspeare—has
already corrected. It is to be hoped that these are such points of
offence as the hacking and hewing at the throat, instead of the
sudden single stab ; and the substitution of the hideous strident
noises and quivering limbs of death, resulting from division of
the great vessels, for the swift, and untroubled sinking that follows
on a stab home to the heart.

These last passages of Salvini’s performance excepted, it may
be said, with the profoundest respect for the great Actor who
last passed away from among us—leaving a title to respect
strengthened by every word of his that has seen the light since his
death—that London has seen no such Othello as Salvini in this
generation. And none who wishes to know the highest expression
of ideal tragic acting should fail to see this famous Italian Actor,
only now revealed to London.

With such an Actress as Risiori among the women of the Italian
Stage, and such Actors as Salvini, and before him Modena, among
its men, who shall say that the glory of Italian Art, in this field at
least, has departed, or will depart while they are spared to it ?

I