ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE."

Otago Witness, Issue 2370, 3 August 1899, Page 56

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE."

WHAT MR' GEORGE C. MILN, THE SHAKJJ.SPEREAN ACTOR, THINKS OF SIR HENRY IRVING. . . A year oi two after I began playing, I drifted into • the ' habit of speaking too slowly. It was a fault peculiarly liable to the constant speaker .of blank verse, especially if he admires his author. He gets insensibly into die habit of . dwelling on the passages which attract him. Nowj my author, for the most part, was Shakespeare, and the attractive passages to me in Shakespeare are in every line! At any rate, I ! had got into the habit of lingering over the text without due regard to light and shade. About this time I went to Chicago to play an engagement- in the Columbia Theatre, after an absence of nearly two years. I fell into the hands of Barron — as charming and sincere a friend as he is a just and impartial critic. And this is what he wrote of me: — " Mr Miln's performance of Hamlet, compared with his earlier ones, is disappointing. He drags the text out to undue length, and lingers on the words as though he were utter-ing them for his own satisfaction only. Now, life is short at this end of the century. He should remember this, and postpone these deliberate utterances for that future world in which time is without limit. His present performance is admirably adapted for eternity i" Severe? Yes. But well meant, eminently just, and it did me a lot of good. Actors, for some occult reason, are notoriously bad critics of their own performances. They invariably select their worst parts, and think of them as their best. This is a rule with but few exceptions. Perhaps this may account for some of the glowing accounts that have been handed down, about the actors of other days. They were their own critics. A good story is told of Kemble and Garrick, which may or may not bs true. The former stately actoi was seen by Mrs Garrick, some time after her husband's death, passing her house in a particularly gloomy mood. " What's the matter? " she exclaimed ; "What's the matter, Mr Kemble?" " Oh ! nothing much," quoth the tragedian — " only those critics nave been making mincemeat of me again.'' " La ! sakes ; don't let that trouble you, Mr Kemble. You should do as Davy did. Davy used to always write his own criticisms! " Which, if true, might cast a shade upon that triumphant genius whose electrical performances are still held up to admiration. As I am writing these memories very much al fresco, and allowing them to crystallise after their own vagrant way, I shall be pardoned if I follow my impulse in a pleasant direction. It leads me to the single occasion upon which I figured as a critic, and as that was a pleasurable experience, I can afford tc obey its "friendly lead." As I write these lines, Sir Henry Irving is delighting London with his magnificent rendering of Robespierre in Sardou's brilliant play. Well, 1 figured as a critic for the first and last time in writing of one of Sir Henry's pcrfoimanccs. And I relate the incident because it gives me the opportunity to make a sly thrust at myself, and to speak as 1 want to of a man for whose abilities and whose gpnial nature I have always cherished unqualified admiration and affection. I have already said that criticism often resolves itself intc fulsome eulogy on the one hand, or undiscriminating abuse on the other. Certainly my criticism of Irving came under the head of eulogy, though I hope there was nothing fulsome about it. It was upor the occasion of Irving's second visit to America, and he was " playing to the capacity," as theatrical folk say, which means that the theatres were full. I had told Sir Henry, before his first visit to the States, that when he came " the theatres wouldn't hold the people ! " So I had the pleasant .feeling that I was a prophet who

was witnessing the fulfilment of his owtf predictions. One evening as I was sauntering through the foyer of M'Vickar's theatre in Chicago, where Irving was then playing, I heard a pleasant voice exclaim: "Halloa! Miln. What are you doing here"? I thought that you were playing." It was Melville Stone, then editor of the Chicago Daily News. "No," I replied, "I am reorganising my company for my next campaign." " Well — will you write a criticism for me on Irving's 'Faust"/" " No, that I won't." "Why?" "Because if "I like it, and say so, I^shall be accused of flattery. If I don't like it, and say su, I shall be accused .of-vpetty jealousy." It was, I should say, "a condition that I should sign the article. (Stone, however, was a man not easily refused, and he had often "Been kind to me ; and when he said, "Oh! nonsense; you do it — it. will be all right/ I consented. I look back upon the result with pleasure. The performance was "Faust," with Sir Henry as "Mephistopheles. And what a masterful and gigantic presentation fromthe standpoint of mere staging it was ail who saw it will remember. * As for the apt-ing—-well, I'm going to indulge ■• myself-by-putting down here a. part. of what I theii wrote : — "Mr Irving's Faust.— -I nave .been asked to set down my impresssions of- Mr Irving's most recent and most notable dramatic -achievement— Faust. .It is a positive pleasure to comply with this invitation for more reasons than one, but chiefly because, in looking through the record of the impressions made upon my mind by witnessing the performance, I find nothing which calls for a single adverse word. "Mr Irving is _the Disraeli of the stage. He possesses in an eminent degree all those qualities which made the great Premier the first man of his times, and which have made him also the chief figure upon the stage during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. "Mr Irving has never made his skill as an actor and his ability as a manager so evident as he has in his production of Faust. I have tfeen all his great achievements, first- and last, but I have never seen anything approaching the effectiveness — from an intellectually spectacular standpoint — of tins great work. I say 'intellectually spectacular,' for it jvould be a great mistake, a very cheap' form of detraction, to insinuate that Mr living's '-Faust.' may be placed side by side with the merely sensuous spectacle such .as is furnished by Harris in London, by Kiralfy here. He who fails to perceive the steady and unwavering progression of a philosophical - and ethical - purpose through' all ' the marvellous metamorphoses of scenery and of light with which Mr Irving x has staged ' Faust ' has simply indicated his own deficiency in a correlative quality- " It' takes brain to perceive brain. Irving has brain' on hie side the footlights, but I think some of his critics have come into the world 'with their legs forward' and never have been set right. " Mr Irving is too much of a man of the world to misunderstand me when I say that even in those performances in which his dramatic adaptability may be questioned there is always present a calm, self-poised, and commanding intelligence. Irving is nofc only a man of brain, he is an educated man ; that is, he has the use of his brain. I know nothing of his early schooling: he may not hold diplomas, but he is a thoroughly educated man, for his will absolutely controls, estimates, and directs all his faculties. This is education. I notice that several of his critics criticise his Mephistopheles as being based upon an erroneous conception. Of course, that is a matter of taste and judgment of .the individual. For myself, I cannot speak with authority. I am not acquainted with the devil. That is, the old man of all. I know a large number of journeyman devils, so to speak, and I recognise between^ them and Mr Irving's devil many very strong points of resemblance. Irving has modernised the devil. With him indeed, 'the devil's polished.' " I am at a loss to know upon what the gentlemen who find fault with his conception base their own. Are they more familiar with Satan? After all, when" we get down to the marrow of it, the word 'devil'" is simply a. phrase. It is Oriental superstition transferred to the nineteenth century of "a person embodying evil. The, forces « which run-counter to the welfare of the individual, and through the individual of society, have been called 'devil.' Goethe has wrapped up this personification in one of the saddest stories with which the pen of man ever stained a white sheet, and Mr Irving has interpreted this force in his marvellous succession of stage pictures better than any living man could have done. "I do not think his devil is quite enough of a Teuton to fit Goethe's ideal. He has anglicised it a bit ; but, then, he is an Englishman, and is playing to Englishmen. Of the qualities usually attributed to' Satan, surely not many are absent from; his -performance. He has added a touch' of grim humour — all his own — which relieves the^. performance marvellously. And why not? Who can grudge the devil his little laugh? To me it is really reassuring to find that if, after all, there are a devil and a hell, I shall at least be able to relieve the tedium of my future home by joining the devil in a joke ! "Of Mr Irving's personal dramatic work — since I saw him several years ago — I think it is true to say that any apparent change has been in the direction of a more intense and subdued style. Glamour has been altogether eliminated from his declamation. Noise has no place in it. Language is harnessed to thought. It means something every time.- His intense and unique personality abides the same, and always will, and always should. He is Irving because he is what he is — a man apart ! And when his record is at last made up, he will most truly write his epitaph who says, 'Here lies a man of unflinching, indomitable, unconquerable will ! ' . . " ' Faust,' as given by Mr Irving- and' his confreres, is, in my judgment, the 'highest achievement of dramatic art as yet reached, acd is prophetic of a lolwar piiesion, before

bile actor than that with which popular sentiment charges," him." — Daily News, Chicago. It is 14 or 15 years since I wrote the above. Melville Stone sent me a cheque for lOOdol the next day; but pleasanter far to me has it been to witness the triumphant progress of this great actor] who still leadg the English-speaking stage, across the intervening years. And I venture to say, in closing this chapter, that his impersonation of Sartlou's "Robespierre " will become famous as the high-water mark of his genius, and in future years will be spoken of as the most "effulgent gem in his triple crown of vie- " tory?