Punch (74.1878)

March 23, 1878.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI_ 121

RUSSORUM DELICTA.

(Inclyto quodam Russophobo decantata.)

eati Possidentes,"
Insidiis opprimentes
Jura, rura, gentes,
Sen Portce incum-

bentes
Sive Asiam distra-

hentes,
Palmam prseferen-
tes

Sed pistrinam me-

rentes,
Persas per terrentes,
Indos cupientes,
Anglos irridentes,
Ostris illudentes,
Romanis impen-

dentes,
Germanos metuen-
tes,

Italos flocci pen-

dentes,
Congressu inso-

lentes,
Mir a pollicentes
Pollicita spernentes,
Hie et illic cres-

centes,
Tarn corpora, mores,
mentes,

Quam, gulas, ungues, dentes,
Russi partes Ursorum,

In saecula Efcculorum,
Gnayiter peragentes.

OUR REPRESENTATIVE MAN.

On " Louis the Eleventh " at the Lyceum, Saturday, March 9th—
Also a Postscript and a Musical Note.

Sir,—What a fine play Louis the Eleventh might haye been, and
what a poor one it is! Its sole merit lies in the opportunities
afforded to the Actor who undertakes the part of Louis.

That Mr. Irving should haye chosen the character for himself
was both natural and judicious ; but that he should haye been
content with the existing piece is, to me, inexplicable. There was
far stronger dramatic necessity for altering and amending Louis the
Eleventh than there was for re-arranging the Courier of Lyons.

That Mr. Irving's Louis the Eleventh will be one of his most
remarkable successes is, already, a certainty. But this result will be
due to the Actor, and not to the play.

The character of Louis the Eleventh, considered dramatically,
stands, as it were, on so narrow a border line between high tragedy
and low comedy, that the startlingly rapid transitions from one
domain to the other, incur the risk of bringing into undue promi-
nence a certain ludicrous eccentricity of expressive action, wherein
lay the late Mr. Robson's remarkable power in such parts as Daddy
Hardacre and Desmarets in drama, and in Medea and Shylock in
burlesque; and wherein lay, also, the secret of his inability to
attempt the higher range of sustained impassioned tragedy.

Now, Robson, to my thinking, is the very example, of all others,
of the kind of Actor whose peculiarities would be exactly suited in
such a character as that of Louis the Eleventh, with the single
exception of the death-scene, where the opportunities offered to
Mr. Irving for painting a companion picture to the death of Mathias
in The Bells, and. of Richard on Bos worth field, offered a tempta-
tion so irresistible, as, doubtless, to have determined, him in his choice.
With Mr. Irving this scene is the feature of his performance. It
awakes in the spectator emotions of pity for the sufferer, it excites
his sympathy; and the sight is so painful, that, when, at last, the
monarch falls forward dead, the audience give a sigh of relief, and
thank Heaven that his physical tortures are ended at last. Of his
troubled conscience, of his craven fear of death, we are shown but
little in his last moments. We are witnesses of his bodily torture, but
only from their previous acquaintance with his evil life can those who
assist at this terrible death-bed, judge of the agony of his soul.

Of course, in dealing with this scene the dramatist has chosen the
historian Philip de Commines for his guide, who compares the
well-merited tortures of the King's death-bed with the numerous
cruelties he had inflicted on others. But how much grander and
greater scope for Dramatist and Actor would there have been, had
he followed the same historian further than Sir Waiter Scott did
in his Preface to Quentin Durward, and shown the fierce conflict
between good and evil, and the final penitence of the King, whose

conversion seems to have been effected by Francis of Paula, to whom
he recommended his three children, and in whose arms, exhausted
by physical suffering, he peacefully died.

The short cut to the character of Louis the Eleventh, as popularly
accepted, is of course to be found in Quentin Durward, and that
Mr. Irving has made a close study of Sir Walter Scott's Louis is
evident from those excellently-played scenes where he shows him-
self so familiar with his inferiors and his " gossips." The interview
with the peasant's wife (capitally played by Mrs. Chippendale,
than whom no selection could have been better) was a proof of the
great attention the Actor had paid to this part, at all events, of the
character of Louis.

In brief, it may be said that as long as Mr. Irvlng was exhibiting
physical infirmity, physical suffering, concentrated hate, craftiness
of design, abject dread, triumph of cuniring, and jocularity with his
inferiors, not a fault could be found with his performance. But
it was otherwise, when he dealt with that subtle exhibition of the
superstition to which the King's fears had degraded his religious
belief. Here, in two instances, the Actor was more to blame than the
Dramatist. I dwell on one. When, while Louts is arranging with
Tristan VErmite for the murder of the Envoy, he is interrupted by
the sound of the Angelus—(and let me parenthetically remark that
this sound was no more like the ringing of the Angelus than it
was like the Hallelujah Chorus ; but that is a detail, compara-
tively unimportant)—he suddenly breaks off, and holding his cap
before him, makes absurd grimaces at the traditional silver images
fixed in its front. These grimaces are supposed to represent the
King saying the Angelus. Now Louis was superstitious, but he
was no fool: he believed and trembled: he prayed because he
feared : he sinned, because his faith was without love. His devo-
tion, the result of his perfect belief in, and abject terror of, an
Eternity of Punishment and Reward, was most intense; it never
could have been, in outward expression, contemptible buffoonery.
To have seen the attitude of Louis in prayer would have rejoiced a
saint; to have known his heart at the time would have made angels
weep. Mr. Irving can have no authority for this grotesque, nay
burlesque, devotion, for had he even been guided by Sir Walter
Scott, he would have found that Louis "doffed, as usual, his hat,
selected from the figures with which it was garnished that which
represented his favourite image of the Virgin, placed it on a table,
and, kneeling doivn, repeated reverently the vow he had made."

Mr. Irving can easily correct this, and it is well worth his atten-
tion. I have not time to do more than allude to those two other
blots, for which both Author and Actor are equally to,blame; namely,
the prayer before the image of Our Lady, and the absurd scene
of the confession to Francis of Paula.

The well-known "prayer of Lotus the Eleventh," as overheard
by his own jester, and, as the improbable story goes, related by him
in the King's presence, is yet a different affair from even its develop-
ment by Sir Walter Scott, who, in a note, deemed some sort of
apology necessary for its introduction and its treatment in the
romance. It was a'mistake on the part of the Dramatist to repro-
duce it in this play : it was a mistake on the part of the Actor to
suggest to the audience, by the King's attitude and facial expres-
sion, that he was not most intensely in earnest in his attempt to
win over the Saint whom he was addressing to his own view of
his crimes in the past, and his intention in the future.

But if Mr. Irving will once more study this very scene in Quentin
Durward, he will find the key-note of Louis's conduct in his
turning away from the crucifix. At all this the audience should be
compelled to shudder, but never invited to laugh.

I do not think I have dwelt unduly on what appear to m;
blemishes on an otherwise admirable performance. With the pubh;;
the whole will be successful. In a work of Art no detail is un-
important. The play is most effectively put on the stage, and the
cast throughout is a good one; though as far as the female interest is
concerned, in the part of Marie, daughter of Philip be Commines,
there is very little for Miss Virginia Erancis to do, more than to
play prettily the scene between herself and the Dauphin (Mr.
Andrews), to whom the greatest praise is due for his performance
of a most difficult part. As the Dauphin, only sixteen years old, in
all the scenes with his father he won the sympathy of the audience,
and was most deservedly applauded.

No more, at present, on this subject, from

Your Representative.

P.S.—Never shall it be said that Your Representative wittingly
or witlessly does an injustice. Least of all to such a brother scrib-
bler (if I may be permitted to say so) as his friend Mr. W. S.
Gilbert. Last week, in remarking on the manifesto signed by Mr.
Neville, which had appeared in the papers about the withdrawal of
the Ne'er-do-weel, I said, not professing to quote exactly, but
giving the gist of the statement, " Ten per cent, of Mr. Gilbert's
pieces were adaptations." I find that the exact words of the above-
mentioned manifesto were, " Out of more than fifty, only three
were adaptations." One of these adaptations was The Wedding
March, which was quite worthy of the Author of the Bab Ballads.

VOL. LXXIV.

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