RICHARD III.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 754, 13 August 1886, Page 14

RICHARD 111.

There was a good attendance at the Theatre Koyal on Saturday night when Mr W. E. Sheridan’s company presented “ Richard the Third.” This is a play which suffers more, perhaps, by the alteration into an acting edition than any other of Shakespeare’s plays. When the compiler of the “ acfciDg edition ” has pruned one of Shakespeare’s plays down.; when the stage manager has altered it to suit bis stage and conveniences, and when, finally, the actors have judiciously improved the if parts, there i? little left of the original which appears to read very well in the book. This is what generally happens to these plays ; but in the case of " Richard the Third,” the genuis of Colley Cibber is called in to assist. A scene is introduced at the opening of the tragedy wherein Henry VI bears, in language which Shakespere never wrote, of the (to him) direful result of Tewkesbury field. Then we have Richard, apparently fresh from the field of battle, who takes up Shakespeare, beginning with ‘‘Now is the winter of our discontent.” After this, back we go again, and get one of the last scenes in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, where humpbacked Gloucester sends Henry Down, down to hell and say I sent thee thither.” So en, right through the £iece, Shakespeare’s name and Shakespeare’s characters are used, and mutilated to a degree which, In extent, at any rate, would have gladdened the heart _of Ben Jonson, who said, when told that a peculiarity of Shakespeare’s manuscript was that he erased no lines, “ Would he had blotted out a thousand !” Finally, at the ead of the play the character of Richard is seriously changed by the substitution of Cibber’s line 3—“ Hence, babbling dreams ; you threaten here again. ■Conscience avaunt ! Richard’s himself again” —for those of Shakespeare’s in which the King shows his apprehension by proposing to eavesdrop and ascertain whether his men are true, Hastings, “the good Lord Chamberlain,” does not appear in the play at all, »or does the widow of Henry, However, this is not the fault of Mr Sheridan, who is called upon to produce the acting edition and play Richard. Mr Sheridan’s Richard is a wild, snarling, greedy individual, loud and vicious in his passions, and not, oerhaps, so smooth of tongue as he had need to be or says he is. It is a wild, repulsive character, and either because of the prejudice on that ground, or from the actor’s inability to entirely change bis mood at a moment, the Duke does not appear honeyed enough to win the bereaved lady Ann in a moment. Apart from this, however, Mr Sheridan’s performance is a very fine and fairly consistent one. Mr Nunn made a capital Buckingham, but Mr Griffiths’ Richmond was not a success. Miss Davenport, though evidently ill-suited, played Lady Ann very carefully, and Miss Juno was very effective as Queen Elizabeth. A word of praise is also due to Misß Lizzie Lawrence and Miss Hattie Hayes, as the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York ; and to Miss Ella Carrington for her, Duchess of York. The staging of the piece was anything but good, the battle of Bosworth being particularly weak.