SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTH-WEEK FESTIVAL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2677, 5 July 1905, Page 71

SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTH-WEEK FESTIVAL.

(T. P s Weekly.) The book ■« hic-Ii supplies me with , material for an essay this week is a slim lntle pamphlet, consisting of half a dozen uaircs or so: it is, to be brief, a Ihcaliical

} rogian:vne, and it costs just sixpence. It io tiio pio.;iainni« oi the Shakespearian i-s-vivals which Mr Tree has been giving ;<t Hib Majesty's Theatre during the last week - My readtTo will, perhaps, welcome a slight departure on my part from my usual form of cssav, pud will periait me fsir or.cc I<> wander* into the mixed domain of literary end dromatic criticism. I. And fiist let me say a few woids on the very remarkable man whose productions have been the origin of this essay. 1 do not know that among the mauy remarkable personalities of our day and generation I woull put any higher in interest, in power, gifts, £>nd .achievement than Mr BeeiLohm Tree. Much ha* been said against the actor-man- , ager ; Ido nofc stop here to inquire w hether justly or unjuotly ; I want to try and mak® my readers realise what an aggregation of-; qualities that remarkable position requires, j The actor-manager, in getting off by heart; , i he words of his -part — or, as in the case ' oi Mr Tree last week, his many parts — j would have a task which, is a tremendous strain oi* any man's intellect. I used sere- i r»l years ago to go behind the scenes at a popular -theatre in the East End of London, and to this day I remember ■with a certain poignancy the look of almost agonised effort on the face of the managingactor who ha I to play several parts in* tho fame week. The brows knitted into a hundred wrinkles, the strained, eyes, the beads of perspiration, the nervous quivers of the slight frame of the unfortunate artist — all these things struck horns to me ; and by a trick of memory I was a tremulous schoolboy a,gain, trying to drum into an imperfect iremory the unintelligible rote lessons x>f my boyhocd. That actor's facewas not to much a revelation, perhaps, as a help towards realisation, and it has ever since helped me to understand what a labour the mere committing of words to memory must be to a great class, which some ill informed critics have sometimes regarded as idle and lazy. 11. But the preparation of his part is but a very small incident, one might almost say, in the life of the actor-manager He has to superintend, correct, modify the work of every other member of his company, from tho highest to the humblest ; .to arrange all the scenery ; to discuss with tailors as to the cut of a coat, with the dressmakers as to pleats and frills and muffs, with upholsterers as to chairs and sofas/ with gasmen and electricians as to lights, with 'andlords as to rents, with taxgatherers as to rates, and he has to be patient with a thousand caprices, disappointments, and discords which are certain to always exist in that world of highlystrung nerves which is the world behind the scenes. I have not exhausted, as my leaders will know, the different calls upon the time, thought, and intellect of ths actor-manager; but I have said enough, to supply some idea of what his gigantic task is. 111. TL re is ro actor-manager in the world who takes these things more seriously than Mr Tree. He is an artist to his very fingertips ; indeed, he is so much of an artist that the wonder to me often is how he is able to get outside the artist in him and to xniderstand cr manage the more piosaic part of his duties. "People," he said to mo once, "whom I know to be veracious, tell me that two and two make four ; but,'" he added, "I would otherwise be convinced that sometimes they make three, and some- ! times live, buc never, never four," — a selfrevelation which amid its humour is full of illumination as to his character. He has been a prosperous manager, I am glad to say; but I do believe that a more disinterested nature never was connected with theatrical enterprise, and that his first, h?s most absorbing, thought is to work out on tho stage those artistic ideas which hi-, active brain's inexhaustible resourcefulness suggests to him. IV. Last week Mr Tree resolved to celebrate the anniversary of Shakespeare in what I hold to be the best of all forms of Shakespeare celebration. Statues to Shakespeare are, to my mind, ridiculous. They are all founded on portraits which are more or less authentic, and which, for all we know, may have as much resemblance to the real man in his habit as he lived as have the illustrations we see in cheap prints to the human bedngs of our own day and generation". Shakespeare's greatest monument is in his works ; and the best way to make his memory seen and known to the world is to give these plays their proper setting. And now mark «t he taSk which Mr Tree set. himself. Il was no less than the production of six plays of Shakespeare in as many days; and a. matinee thrown in. The gigantic labour which such a task involves -i can safely leave to tha imagination of my readers. " Mr Tree himself s.iid laughingly to me the other night that a calculation wa,s being made of the number of lines he himself had to speak; I havrf not ye f got the calculation, but it will be interesting, I am sure, when it is concluded ; and I will present it to my renders. I whs unfortunately not able to be present at all the performances ; but I saw two of the most important of them: "Tht Merry Wives of Windsor"' and "Hamlet" without scenery. I know no role in Mr Tree's immense repertory which I think better than Falstaff. His make-up alone is a triumph. You sec the fat knight so living ljpfove you that it almost takes an effort to realise that the actor who is taking Mie pait is t lie tall ar.d, I had almost so id, exceptionally slight man whom Ye all know. There is-n't a look in the face which is not perfection ; terror, fun, desire, gluttony, all pass over the face. Even tho very oyc-s seem to be transformed in shapo and expression. Mr Treo has fine larce Hue eyes ; but ni Falstaff they seem to be channel into huge empty eyeballs, which have no intellectual exnression afc ;>ll, ;n.d are the- dull windows of a bestial soul. Ido not dwell on the performance 'His Maje-sh's Theatre: Proprietor and Manager, Mr liea. "i he Herrv Y^ivaa

iit length; it is too well known to require lengthened criticism; and with ail Km extra•ndinary spirit of fur,, "'J he Merry Wives" 1-. not Shakespeare ;it his best. The tradifion is that it was written in a couple ot v.-ook>, and just to please the caprice of Klizibeth. It is brood farce, and it is in the E piril of broad faico that it ii piayed. Rollicking from the fir^t word to the last, lit v.n in mai.y places by beautiful groupin^., of rich colours and' vast crowds, Mr Tree's production of tho piece is extracrdinaiily popular. On tha night when 1 »ftw it produced, tho cinwded house was bo envaptired with th-a whols thing that it se°med> unwilling to depart. Again mil again — lix to seven times i>i succession — Mr Tree was railed befor* the cuitain. All the oompany went in a bi(> pi oce^sion , and dancing as "they i^assed before the curtain ; but that did not satisfy the audience. Then they all went past a second time : but "still ih* audience were not satisfied. ;;nd even when Mr Treo made bis seventh appearance, there were still cries from a crnwdrd and e<rs;er house, and som« of the* audience wore indeed absurb enough to nsk for ar speech. It was a memorable and even a touching moment for those who were present, as well as for the artists themselves Ir, was London's Trillins and generous tribute to one of London's greatest enter tamers. V. I conic to the performance which mas interested me ; the production of "Hamlet" without scenery. It is futile to discuss tho question whether there should bo rich sta?e ■scenery in the production of a plajr of Shakespeare. Ko manager could less defend a meagre reproduction than Mr Tree- for scan of his greatest triumphs, like "Twelfth ■Night ' and "Midsummer Night's Dream ' were the most remarkable and the most magnificent pi eductions of Shakespeare fhe world has ever seen, with the exception of tome of the productions by Sir Henry Irving. And yet there was something verY imprwssive and very welcome in this curious experiment of 'Hamlet"' without scenery; though of course that phrase must not be taken too literally. As one critic has pointed out in The Times, all tho latest resources of lighting were employed in the play, and electric lights moved by the quick and skilful hand "of an operator were not known to the friends who crowded to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. But, all the same, there was something wonderfully impressive— at least to me— ln the severe simplicity of the production. The principal things which caught your eye were massive green curtains that stretched behind the back of the stage, that occasionally were draped up. Otherwise there was, no change. From first to last almost you , saw the same three- chairs: one for th 3 King, one for the Queen, and one for HamIst. Even when the scene was transported from the corridor in which Hamlet has the mterdew vri+h his mother and kills Pi'lonius to the graveside of Ophelia, it seems still tie same stago; the changes made are quite small; nothing makes a d.fference between the preceding scene and this but a new-made grave in the centre of tho same plain boarded floor. Again, wh-eu the scene shifts from this to the duel in which Ibe play ends, it is the same three chair*, the saino dark green curtains at the back; in short, it is as if the whoio play were performed without practically n, change in the surroundings of the play from the fh'st scene to the 'ast. VI. I can only describe the effect of this forn. of production on myself, and the effect ou me was to make me feel much nearer to Shakespeare than I would have done with scenery more elaborate. Somehow or other, I had a feeling as if I were m the pit a*, the C4]obe, and ;-,s if Sliakespearo wero somewhere behind the scenes, if I only could see him. Perhaps it was a meio trick of the imagination, but old London seemed to rise before me, ."iid all the ccn turies that siand between were sorldenly dissolved into nothingness. And I did feel that 1 was nearer to tho heart of the play, because I saw it in something like th-j setting in •which it originally was produced. All its pity, all its pathos, all its sense of inevitable ond tragic doom were accentuated for nut. This, again, I 'say, may be a mere trick of the imagination ; but it was so powerful an impression with me " that I did feel as if I had never seen <ir realised "Hamlet" so much and so truly before ; and I would strongly advise every Shakespearian student, when he has the chance of seeing Mr Tree's production of "Hamlet" in this guise, to take advantage of it, and to see the play. I think he -will .agree with me as to the vast increase in the impressivpness of the dram:; from the severe simplicity of the surroundings. VII. * I do not ki'ow whether others feel Jiko me; but, familiar as "Hamlet," is to me, i I never witness the play without feeling a strange, haunting, and consistent sense of [ sadness for days afterwards. Was there ever produced by the human pen anything which brought out with such eloquence and. force all the tragedy of human existence so absolutely and so completely? Hamlet is at oneo a human being and symbol. He becomes so intense a personality that you I feel for him as though he were but an in- | dividual whom inauspicious stars led to inj f-vitablc doom. But, at the same time, you have th<9 feeling that lie stands not merely for himself, but for all humanity — for all i tho irexplicable borrow, the unmerited wrong, the- unavoidable doom in the strange riddle of the universe. And when he ends, anid the slaughter-house of the last act, you, somehow or other, have a certain poignancy of feeling, as though it wero someone well known and deeply loved thfi had bid farewell to this rough worldVITI. And yet. it you were to consider tlve ( play critically, was there ever a play raora • curiously contradictory? Like the King, it is of shreds and patches. It represents a mosaic of not only different, but warring religious creeds. It belongs to the Christian era. and yet it is pure heathen in its morality. The highest and most sacred

! of all duties in the eyes of Hamlet is the - duty of avenging the death of his father — which, though it may represent much of Christian practice, is certainly not Christion precept. And, from the Christian view, what can be more terrible than that scene in which Hamlet, finding the King | at his prayers, hesitates to kill him, because if be does so the soul of the criminal may fly to heaven, while Hamlet wants it^ to be damned?. It is curious that a mind like Shakespeare's should be so little acquainted with the essential spirit of Christianity as to put such thoughts and words into the mouth of a character whom, of course, he meant to be sympathetic. And is not the strange insensibility of Hamlet to killing a curious glimpse of the vast gulf that separates the ideas of our timo from those of Shakespeare — or, at least, of Shakespeare as he represents himself in "Hamlet." Hamlet rushes to t'lie arras behind which Polonius is hiding ; he kills him ; he gives him but. a scant word of sympathy ; and then, turning to his mother as though nothing had occurred, he continues his fierce indictment of her morality. Take Hamlet's conduct to Ophelia ; there is a strange and inexplicable hardness in it, too. IX. I have spoken of the infinite resourcefulness of Mr Tree ; you see plenty of proofs of that quality in this particular production of "Hamlet." He displays, of course, an audacious boldness which the strict sect of Shakespearians might snarply criticise ; but these strokes add to the impressiveness and, so to speak, to the humanity of the play. For instance, at the end of the scene Avith his mother he gives a long look of pity to the corpse of Polonius. Even more striking innovations occur in the scenes with Ophelia. In the "Get thee to a nunnery"' scene, Mr Tree turns back after his last word, and, leaning over the prostrate body of the woman whose heart lie has broken, kisses her hair. And at the end of the scene of her burial, wlien all the stage has emptied, and even the gravedigger and Laertes have disappeared, Hamlet, as personated by Mr Tree, returns, and throws 5 - himself sobbing by the side of the new-opened grave where Ophelia lies. It is a strange softening of the hardness with which tne- text of the .play seems to exhibit Hamlet. X. One or two words finally of the play. Is there any production, again -I ask, of ths human pen that shows more conclusively the omnipotence of literature? I will not speak of the familiarity of Hamlet to all of us ; of his reality ; of his immortality. He is the one being of Elizabeth's time, outside Shakespeare himself, who is absolutely known to all of us. He is our only personal acquaintance among all the millions that lived on the soil of England in that time. But let us look to another factor in the play which reveals even more strangely and curiously this , power of literature to recreate itself. jHaraletj , alter all , was a Prince ; and as "such'k hef 'stood out from his fellow men evert. in v his' own time. But, mark this, and note it. Of all the Kings and Queens, of the Dukes and Marquises ; of all the courtiers and politicians of the days of Elizabeth ; of all the dazzling knights who knelt before her ; of all the mighty Archbishops and Bishops with their mitres ; of them all, wbich is remembered to-day? Students of history can recall some of their names ; others are inscribed on the roil of history by- some deed the consequences of which remain to this day, as, for instance, those who helped to destroy the Spanish Armada. But-- with all their trappings and their power, their achievements, their splendour, which one of them has half the immortality of the First Gravedigger — that rough-spoken labourer ; that poor creature that plies one of the most squalid and even odious of trades? He o'ertops to-day all the power and principalities of his time. It is one proof that literature at its greatest is — to speak paradoxically — more real than reality — more vital than Life. — T. P.