Shadows of the Stage | Page 9

the part to be derived from Goethe's poem.
There is every warrant for it in the apprehension of this tremendous
subject by the imagination of a great actor. You cannot mount above
the earth, you cannot transcend the ordinary line of the commonplace,
as a mere sardonic image of self-satisfied, chuckling obliquity. Mr.
Irving embodied Mephistopheles not as a man but as a spirit, with all
that the word implies, and in doing that he not only heeded the fine
instinct of the true actor but the splendid teaching of the highest
poetry--the ray of supernal light that flashes from the old Hebrew Bible;
the blaze that streams from the Paradise Lost; the awful glory through
which, in the pages of Byron, the typical figure of agonised but
unconquerable revolt towers over a realm of ruin:--
"On his brow The thunder-scars are graven; from his eye Glares forth
the immortality of hell."
Ellen Terry, in her assumption of Margaret, once more displayed that
profound, comprehensive, and particular knowledge of human
love--that knowledge of it through the soul and not simply the
mind--which is the source of her exceptional and irresistible power.
This Margaret was a woman who essentially loves, who exists only for
love, who has the courage of her love, who gives all for love--not
knowing that it is a sacrifice--and whose love, at last, triumphant over
death, is not only her own salvation but that also of her lover. The point
of strict conformity to the conception of the poet, in physique and in
spiritual state, may be waived. Goethe's Margaret is a handsome, hardy

girl, of humble rank, who sometimes uses bad grammar and who
reveals no essential mind. She is just a delicious woman, and there is
nothing about her either metaphysical or mysterious. The wise Fiend,
who knows that with such a man as Faust the love of such a woman
must outweigh all the world, wisely tempts him with her, and infernally
lures him to the accomplishment of her ruin. But it will be observed
that, aside from the infraction of the law of man, the loves of Faust and
Margaret are not only innocent but sacred. This sanctity
Mephistopheles can neither pollute nor control, and through this he
loses his victims. Ellen Terry's Margaret was a delicious woman, and
not metaphysical nor mysterious; but it was Margaret imbued with the
temperament of Ellen Terry,--who, if ever an exceptional creature lived,
is exceptional in every particular. In her embodiment she transfigured
the character: she maintained it in an ideal world, and she was the
living epitome of all that is fascinating in essential
womanhood--glorified by genius. It did not seem like acting but like
the revelation of a hallowed personal experience upon which no chill
worldly gaze should venture to intrude.
In that suggestive book in which Lady Pollock records her recollections
of Macready it is said that once, after his retirement, on reading a
London newspaper account of the production of a Shakespearean play,
he remarked that "evidently the accessories swallow up the poetry and
the action": and he proceeded, in a reminiscent and regretful mood, to
speak as follows: "In my endeavour to give to Shakespeare all his
attributes, to enrich his poetry with scenes worthy of its interpretation,
to give to his tragedies their due magnificence and to his comedies their
entire brilliancy, I have set an example which is accompanied with
great peril, for the public is willing to have the magnificence without
the tragedy, and the poet is swallowed up in display." Mr. Irving is the
legitimate successor to Macready and he has encountered that same
peril. There are persons--many of them--who think that it is a sign of
weakness to praise cordially and to utter admiration with a free heart.
They are mistaken, but no doubt they are sincere. Shakespeare, the
wisest of monitors, is never so eloquent and splendid as when he makes
one of his people express praise of another. Look at those speeches in
Coriolanus. Such niggardly persons, in their detraction of Henry Irving,

are prompt to declare that he is a capital stage manager but not a great
actor. This has an impartial air and a sapient sound, but it is gross folly
and injustice. Henry Irving is one of the greatest actors that have ever
lived, and he has shown it over and over again. His acting is all the
more effective because associated with unmatched ability to insist and
insure that every play shall be perfectly well set, in every particular,
and that every part in it shall be competently acted. But his genius and
his ability are no more discredited than those of Macready were by his
attention to technical detail and his insistence upon total excellence of
result. It should be observed,