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A DRAMATIC CRITIC tude of her speeches to her husband pro- duced an indescribable effect of the terrible and the piteous in combination. A spectacle it was of a great love, driven by its impulse to minister to the loved ob- ject; being itself utterly and fatalistically hopeless and barren of comfort and of the power to comfort. But, on the whole, Miss Cushman's impersonation of the Queen Katharine of Henry VIII. must be accounted her crown- ing achievement, and, therefore, the high- est histrionic work of any American ac- tress. I shall merely note, with little detailed comment, the grandeur and sim- plicity of the character as she presented it in the first three acts of the play. Here, her Katharine was a document in human flesh, to show how a heavenly minded humility may be a wellspring of dignity, how true womanly sensibility may exalt the queenliness of a sovereign. The bear- ing of Katharine at the trial, in the second [ 86 ]
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN act, has been discussed till the theme is trite, and Mrs. Siddons's interpretation of the scene and of its most famous line has been enforced, I suppose, upon her suc- cessors. The great daughter of the house of Kemble may, perhaps, have made the attack upon Wolsey, in To you I speak," " Lord Cardinal, more prepotent and tremendous than it was possible for her transatlantic sister-in- art to make it; but it is not to be be- lieved that any player could have sur- passed Miss Cushman in the unstudied eloquence of the appeal of the wife and mother to the hard heart of the Royal Voluptuary, who sat " under the cloth of state," his big red face, as Mademoiselle de Bury says, almost " bursting with blood and pride." It was in the second scene of the fourth act that Miss Cushman's genius and art found their loftiest and most exquisite ex- [ S7 ]
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CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN<br />
act, has been discussed till the theme is<br />
trite, and Mrs. Siddons's interpretation of<br />
the scene and of its most famous line has<br />
been enforced, I suppose, upon her suc-<br />
cessors. The great daughter of the house<br />
of Kemble may, perhaps, have made the<br />
attack upon Wolsey, in<br />
To you I speak,"<br />
" Lord Cardinal,<br />
more prepotent and tremendous than it<br />
was possible for her transatlantic sister-in-<br />
art to make it; but it is not to be be-<br />
lieved that any player could have sur-<br />
passed Miss Cushman in the unstudied<br />
eloquence of the appeal of the wife and<br />
mother to the hard heart of the Royal<br />
Voluptuary, who sat " under the cloth of<br />
state," his big red face, as Mademoiselle<br />
de Bury says, almost " bursting with blood<br />
and pride."<br />
It was in the second scene of the fourth<br />
act that Miss Cushman's genius and art<br />
found their loftiest and most exquisite ex-<br />
[ S7 ]
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