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    Philip turns with abhorrence from his bride , and swears he will never again enter her nuptial chamber . He demands a divorce , and seizes on their relationship as a pretext . His willing bishops are easilypersuaded to declare the marriage null . Two years afterwards Philip marries Agnes de Meranie , leaving his wife Ingeburge in such destitution that she is forced to sell her very clothes for food . Hearing of the new marriage she again appeals to Home for succour ; this time with more effect . A new Pope—Innocent III . —has succeeded to the Papal chair , and being a man of vigour , courage , and resolution , he annuls the divorce , and threatens the King with an interdict upon all Prance unless he put aside Agnes . Philip defies him . France is placed , under the ban .

    The people rise . Deserted by the noblesse , the clergy , and the people , Philip tries in vain to force Ingeburge to demand in her own person the divorce he confines her in a miserable prison , her food is stinted , when ill a physician is refused her , a confessor is refused her , and Philip ' s minions daily reproach her with causing the miseries of Prance . But Ingeburge is resolute . In one of her letters to the Pope she frays : — " Believe nothing that violence may extort from me : my tongue may yield , my body flinch , but never my soul . I am a legitimate wife , as such I will die , happy to die in defence of the sacred sacrament of marriage . " At last , the King finding his defeat inevitable , consents to part with . Agnes ; and she dies of grief two months afterwards .

    Such , if you read history , and particularly the memoir in the Bibliotheque de VEcole ties Chartes ( which is not likely !) is the outline of this story , and a finer subject for an historical drama of the Shakspearian or Schillerian order cannot easily be found . See what materials it has in the injured Queen Ingeburge , her patient suffering , her indomitable courage ; in the wilful Philip ; in the grand supremacy of religious authority controlling the king ; in the turbulence of the noblesse , clergy , and people ruined by the king's obstinacy ; and in Agnes de Meranie , the loving and deserted woman ; it is full of historical movement and of dramatic collisions . But , fertile as it is in materials for historic treatment , it is almost barren in domestic interest . Love should not be the

    pivot of such a play . Perhaps it requires a Shakspeare to dispense with love . At any rate Marston has not ventured to dispense with it , lor , though he has faintly indicated these historic points , his whole force has been thrown into the love passages between a sentimental king and a loving woman . This is not an objection I am making , it is a simple fact which I record . The poet is at perfect liberty to use history for his own purposes , and I will not deny him the right of perverting it just as he thinks fit . All I say is , that Philip is a fiction not a portrait , and that the play might have been a grand historic poem instead of what it is—a love drama .

    Marston has thrown Ingeburge entirely into the back-ground . Probably he feared the resemblance between her position and that of Queen Katharine in Henry "VIII . But the fear has robbed him of half the wealth of his subject . Ingeburge is the real heroine of the story ; but he has given that place to Agnes de Meranie , whom from some unexplained reason he chooses to call Marie ( and by way of making it worse , the actors all pronounce that sweet name as if it were Mary . ' ) and the collision of his piece is that of ciffeetion versus the world . " When Philip reinstates Ingeburge on the throne , he flies to Marie in the hope that as she is his wife in " the face

    of heaven ; " she will not j ) art from him although Ingeburge bear the name of queen ; but Marie , with a respecD for convention , which the audience applauds , sets aside the fact of their being married "in the face of heaven" as nothing when opposed to the fact that they are not married " in the face of earth . " Now , although he has grouped round his subject several striking scenes , and produced an efFective play , yet to my mind he has missed the real greatness of his subject , and hns not compensated us for the loss by the substitution of a good domestic story such as one can easily carry away . In this respect I prefer the Patrician s Daughter nnd SlratJimorc . It is rather a collection of scenes than the evolution of

    an idea or passion . And I have a technical objection to make against the slowness of its movement ; there are too many scenes , and the situations are always too long in preparation . The consequence is , that when you have been fairly roused by a striking situation , the excitement is suffered to cool down again for some time , and in thinking over the play your memory alights upon certain points instead of continuously folio wine the evolution .

    I have done with objection . The play was entirely successful , as it deserved to be for its variety , its line poetry ( what a grand image is that where Philip , hastening to his dying Marie , calls for his horse " to outride Death ! " ) , its effective situations , its scenery , ond its acting . Helen Faucit made her first appearance these three years , and was welcomed with a hurricane of cnthu .-iasm ; she seemed in excellent hoalth , and played Marie as if she were in love with the part . But I must return to this matter of the acting , spuce being already run out , and alter recording thut G . V . Brooke , who looked magnificent , reappeared hero in the part of Philip , with his voice partially

    recovered , but still incapable of doing him justice , and acting better than I have seen him act for some time past , I pass on to a serious critique of

    MACREATTE S SHYLOCK . Perhaps , of all Shakspeare ' s leading characters , Shylock is the easiest of comprehension : drawn with firm bold strokes , it is more scolpito than the rest , and is not perplexed by the same involved complication of motives which renders Macbeth , Hamlet , Othello , Lear , and Leontes so easily misunderstood . Shylock stands as the representative of a persecuted race . Despised and hated by all around him , his religion scorned , his bargains thwarted , his losses

    mocked at , his friends set against him , his enemies heated , and all because he is a Jew ! Even the mild and good Antonio—the pattern man of Venicelikened unto the best of ancient Romans—even he spits upon Shy lock ' s gaberdine , and calls him " misbeliever , cut-throat dog . " What is the consequence ? Shylock , to hereditary hatred of the Christians , adds his own personal wrongs , and his malignity is the accumulation of years of outrage silently brooding in his soul . Much has he borne " with a patient shrug . "

    " For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe . " But as a Jew and as a man the incessant insults have made him lust for vengeance . Hence his exultant cry " If I can catch him once upon the hip . I will feed fat the ancient grudge 1 bear him . " He does catch Antonio on the hip . The man who hates the Jew's * ' sacred nation , " and rails at him for his usury , " has fallen into his power ; and so fierce , so relentless is his lust for vengeance that it conquers even his passion of avarice , and he refuses thrice the

    sum of his bond . Observe , in the great anguish of his heart at the loss of his daughter , the lost ducats hold an almost equal share ; yet even his ducats he will lose rather than lose his vengeance on Antonio ! Nothing can , I think , be clearer than the malignity of Shakspeare's Jew , and its justification . We may perfectly acquit Shylock of being a " demon , " though we admit the fierceness of his malignity . I put in this clause for a reason which will soon be apparent . I want to keep Shylock ' s human nature steadily in

    view . Does Macready represent the Shylock of Shakspeare ? To my apprehension not at all . It is apart in which even staunch thoroughgoing admirers do not applaud him ; and the secret of his failure , I take it , lies in a radical misconception of the character ; for assuredly so fine an actor could not be feeble in a part he truly seized . His Shylock is flat and ineffective ; yet , as his ingenious critic in the Times observes , it is a logical carrying out of his conception . There , then , lies the error—pHncipium et fans . Macready drops the malignity of the part , and makes Shylock argue the question as if it were a matter of abstract injustice rather than one of personal outrage : hence the flatness of his opening scene—that scene in which Kean was so terrific in sarcasm ! —

    and the strange misconception of the trial scene , where , instead of gloating upon his coining vengeance , instead of eyeing Antonio with exultant vindictiveness , he remains lost in abstraction and is roused from it only into bursts of irritability by the taunts and questions of others , relapsing into reverie as soon as he has answered them . Shylock has caught Antonio on the hip , and here ho is in the judgment hall ready to feed fat his ancient grudge , scorning all proffers of money , impatient of all appeals

    to mercy , his whole being centred in the one iierce passion of hatred about to be satisfied ; and in this state Macready represents him as self-occupied , gloomy , irritable ! Of course he has a reason for this interpretation ; so careful a student of Shakspeare is not likely to have erred except upon consideration—though it is not iinlikely that the desire to give a version of the part different from Kean ' s may have influenced him ; but upon what theory of human nature , upon what principles of Shakspearian criticism he was led to his interpretation , I confess

    Whatever he may to his oppressors , the Christians , he is a man with a man ' s affections to his own tribe . He loves the memory of his lost Leah ; he loves Jessica . Shakspeare has given the actor an exquisite passage wherein to indicate the husband's tenderness ; and I believe that in the scene with Jessica an actor may effectively show paternal tenderness . It is true the actor must read into the scene that which is not expressly indicated ; but precisely in such

    interpretations consists the actor ' s art . I have no hesitation in saying that to omit the paternal tenderness is to alter profoundly the tragic structure of the play ; for observe , if Shylock is a savage , bloodthirsty wretch , the whole moral is lost ; if his fierceness is natural to him , and not brought out by the wrongs of the Christians , all the noble philosophy of the piece is destroyed ; and the only way of showing that his fierceness is that of retaliation is to show

    how to others he is not fierce . It may be objected that when Shylock discovers her flight he raves as much about his daughter as his ducats , which does not speak of great affection on his part . But I do not wish to paint him as an idolizing father , —I wish merely to show that he is not without fatherly affection , and even fond fathers might very well utter such fearful imprecations as those which .

    escape Shylock ( "I would my daughter were dead at my feet , the ducats in her coffin , " &o . ) on discovering that their daughters had not only fled with lovers of a hated race , but added robbery to elopement . As a set off against those angry words , read the sorrowful exclamation in the fourth act , . These be the Christian husbands ! I had a daughter ... would any of the tribe of IJarrabas had been her husband rather than a Christian . "

    Further , the tragedy is heightened if we suppose Shylock to be fond of his child ; for then the rebellion of ' his own flesh and blood" comes with a tenfold bitterness . To be sure this makes Jessica more odious ; but she is odious ; and—I dare to say it—Shakspeare has committed a serious blunder in art by the mode in which he has represented Jessica , when he might easily have secured all he wanted by throwing more truth into the conception . That a Jewess should love a Christian , for him forsake her home , and abjure her religion , is conceivable ; but it

    was for the poet to show how the overmastering passion of love conquered all the obstacles , how love conquered religion and filial affection , and made her sacrifice everything to her passion . Instead of this Shakspeare has made her a heartless , frivolous girl , who robs her father , throws away her mother's turquoise for a monkey , speaks of hor father in a tone as shocking as it is gratuitous . Were a modern poet so to outrage nature and art no mercy would bo shown him . But I have little doubt that many readers are indignant at my temerity in accusing Shakspeare of such gross errors !

    To return , however , to the principal point , I say if Shylock be not represented as having the feelings of our kind , The Merchant of Venice becomes a brutal melodrama , not a great tragedy . It is therefore imperative on the actor that lie seize every possible occasion to indicate these feelings . No Shylock that I have seen does this ; but Macready above all ought to have done so , because his Shylock is less demoniac than the others .

    That there are some fine touches in his acting you will readily conceive . The bewilderment and rage of the great scene in tlic third act were admirable ; still more so the look with which on his final exit ho answers the taunts of Gratiano—iirst flashing out upon him as if about to turn against his persecutor , and then , overcome with a sense of his helplessness and ruin , sinking his sorrowing head upon his breast he totters off a broken man . Indeed his whole demeanour during the trial scene—viewed according to his conception , which I have said seems to mo profoundly erroneous—was that of a great actor . I

    have been thus minute in criticism because Shylock is a part he rarely plays ; indeed I have never seen him play it before , though an old playgoer ; and it is for the interest of the drama that we should fully discuss the conceptions of great actors , especially when , as in Macready'a case , they are great students of Shakspeare . In all that has been said hero I have been simply opposing my individual impressions to what has obviously been the result of careful study on his part , and I assume no more authority for them than what they carry in themselves . I have given my reasons , it is for the reuder to weigh them . Vivian .

    myself unable to divine . Macready ' Shylock is an abject , sordid , irritable , argumentative Jew—not a haughty , passionate , and vindictive man whose vengeance is a retribution of wrongs to his sacred nation and to himself ; and yet , although the devilish malignity has been suppressed , them is no restitution of the human affections in this Jewish bosom . Kean played Shylock as the personification of vindictiveness ; yet in his ruthless bosom I always missed that affection for his child which even a malignant Jew inustbe supposed to have feltin some degree , at least . But the absence in Macready ' s version is less excusable . Koan took what one may call

    the obvious view of Shylock , representing all that the plain text has given , and not troubling himself about anything lying involved in the text ; hence , as Shakspeare given no language of tenderness towards Jessica , Keau represented none . But Macroady swerves from the obvious path—drops the ferocious malignity and lust for personal vengeance—yet never seems to * have asked himself whether Shylock had the affections of his kind ; accordingly , in the single scene with his daughter , lie is harsh und irritable , when he might so truly and effectively have thrown in a touch of paternul tenderness . As I said before , we must not keen Shylock ' s humanity out of view .

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    We have little else to record in the theatrical world . Charles Mathows , who was wounded in the hand during the duel in My Heart's Idol , continues incapable of enlivening the Lyceum with his acting , but is announced to reappear on Saturday ; on which night also the long-expected play of The Templar \ v \ W be produced at the Princess ' s , where the old pieces have been played during the last week , varied by a rcvival of The Merchant of Venice , as performed at Windsor . We must loavo " Vivian" to sit in judgment thereon , if ho think ( it , and content ourselves with merely chronicling the fact of revival . At the Haymarket Mucready , has played to overflowing houses .

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    Nov . 9 , 1850 . ] ® t ) $ $ Leaiiet . 787

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 9, 1850, page 787, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1858/page/19/