Punch, or The London Charivari | Page 6

afore!
Joe. Yes, I should ha' stuck to it. (_To O.B.F._) I'll bet ye two bob on the next go--come!
_O.B.F._ Well, I don't like to say no, though I can see, plain enough, you know too much. (_JOE pricks; O.B.F. pulls away the strip, and leaves the skewer outside._) I could ha' sworn you done me that time--but there ye are, ye see, there's never no tellin' at this game--and that's the charm on it!
[_JOE walks on with MELIA in a more subdued frame of mind._
_The Sm. Y.M._ (_in the ear of the Spotty-faced One_). I say, I got a job o' my own to attend to--jest pass the word to the Old Man, when he's done with this pitch, to turn up beyind the swing-boats there, and come along yourself, if yer can. It's the old lay I'm on--the prize-packets fake.
_The Sp.-F.M._ Right--we'll give yer a look in presently--it'll be a little change for the Ole Man--trades's somethin' cruel _'ere_!
* * * * *
HIS MAD-JESTY AT THE LYCEUM.
Except when HENRY IRVING impersonated the hapless victim of false imprisonment in the Bastille, whence he issued forth after twenty years of durance, never has he been so curiously and wonderfully made-up as now, when he represents Lear, monarch of all he surveys. Bless thee, HENRY, how art thou transformed!
[Illustration: Rather mixed. Mr. Irving as "Ophe-Lear."]
Sure such a King Lear was never seen on any stage, so perfect in appearance, so entirely the ideal of SHAKSPEARE'S ancient King. It must have been a vision of IRVING in this character that the divinely-inspired poet and dramatist saw when he had a Lear in his eye. For a moment, too, he reminded me of BOOTH--the "General," not the "particular" American tragedian,--and when he appeared in thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, he suggested an embodiment of the "_Moses_" of MICHAEL ANGELO.
A strange weird play; much for an audience, and more for an actor, all on his own shoulders, to bear. A one-part play it is too, for of the sweet Cordelia,--and sweet did ELLEN TERRY look and so tenderly did she play!--little is seen or heard. With Goneril and Regan, the two proud and wicked sisters,--associated in the mind of the modernest British Public with Messrs. HERBERT CAMPBELL and HARRY NICHOLLS, as is also Cordelia associated either with Cinderella or with Beauty in the story of _Beauty and the Beast_--we have two fine commanding figures; and well are these parts played by Miss ADA DYAS and Miss MAUD MILTON. The audience can have no sympathy with the two wicked Princesses, and except in _Goneril's_ brief Lady-Macbethian scene with her husband, neither of the Misses LEAR has much dramatic chance. Pity that Mrs. LEAR--his Queen and their mother, wasn't alive! Let us hope she resembled her youngest daughter Cordelia, otherwise poor Lear must have had a hard life of it as a married man.
Why should not Mr. IRVING give the first part of this play reconsideration? Why not just once a week try him as a different sort of _Lear_? For instance, suppose, to begin with, that he had had a bad time of it with his wife, that for many years as a widower he had been seeking for the opportunity of disposing of his daughters, handing over to them and to their husbands the lease and goodwill of "The Crown and Sceptre," while he would be, as King, "retired from business," and going out for a lark generally. Thus jovially would he commence the play, a rollicking, gay, old dog, ready for anything, up to anything, and, like old Anchises, when he jumped on to the back of ?neas, "a wonderful man for his years." In fact, Lear might begin like an old King Cole, "a merry old soul," a "jolly old cock!" And then--"Oh, what a difference in the morning!"--when all his plans for a gay career had been shipwrecked by _Cordelia's_ capricious and unnatural affectation.
[Illustration: Mr. Terriss as the Good Fairy.]
Then must commence his senility; then he would begin to break up. A struggle, to show that there was life in the old dog yet, could be seen when the old dog had been out hunting, in Act II., and had shot some strange animal, something between a stag and a dromedary, which no doubt was a native of Britain in those good old sporting days. However, more of this anon. Suffice it to say now, that our HENRY IRVING'S Lear is a triumph in every respect, and that the audience only wanted a little more of Cordelia, which is the fault of the immortal and unequal Bard.
To those unacquainted with this play, Mr. TERRISS'S sudden appearance in somewhat anti-Lord-Chamberlain attire, as he bounded on, with a wand, and struck an attitude, was suggestive of the Good Fairy in the pantomime; and his