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A DRAMATIC CRITIC American engagement. None of these as- sumptions showed Mr. Irving in any new- lights. His Dr. Primrose was suave, be- nignant, and winning, the combination of simpHcity, rusticity, nobility, and essential refinement of Goldsmith's creation being beautifully reproduced. Mephistopheles was intellectually interesting and spectac- ularly effective. Robespierre was chiefly valuable because of the shrewd skill with which the softer side of the terrible patriot was contrasted with his hard cruelty. Mr. Irving's Macbeth, which was first shown in America during the season of 1895-96, was what might have been ex- pected in every particular of its strength and its weakness. It was admirably self- consistent, and at its highest moments was briefly pathetic or fantastically impressive. The Scottish soldier, assassin, and usurper was presented as a subtle, crafty hypocrite, introverted, superstitious, sneakish, void of moral scruple, almost wanting in physical [ 232 ]
HENRY IRVING courage. Nearly all the greatest commen- tators have agreed that Macbeth, after the murder of Duncan, grows steadily and rapidly harder and tougher, always strong in imaginative vision intellectually, but less and less capable even of high or unselfish conceptions, his whole nature sustaining hideous induration and decadence. But Mr. Irving in the first two acts so slurred the better elements in Macbeth's character that there was no possible interest to be taken in the struggle between the powers of good and evil in his soul; and, after his great crime, he appeared not different in substance from what he was before, or, rather, by a strange perversion and inver- sion of the scheme of the text, he was shown not as firmer, but softer, of fibre, more and more hysterical and spasmodic, more inordinate in grimace and snarl, a creature not much unlike the Louis XI. whom Mr, Irving has given us. In short, the heroic element, the potency of physique [ 233 ]
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A DRAMATIC CRITIC<br />
American engagement. None of these as-<br />
sumptions showed Mr. Irving in any new-<br />
lights. His Dr. Primrose was suave, be-<br />
nignant, and winning, the combination of<br />
simpHcity, rusticity, nobility, and essential<br />
refinement of Goldsmith's creation being<br />
beautifully reproduced. Mephistopheles<br />
was intellectually interesting and spectac-<br />
ularly effective. Robespierre was chiefly<br />
valuable because of the shrewd skill with<br />
which the softer side of the terrible patriot<br />
was contrasted with his hard cruelty.<br />
Mr. Irving's Macbeth, which was first<br />
shown in America during the season of<br />
1895-96, was what might have been ex-<br />
pected in every particular of its strength<br />
and its weakness. It was admirably self-<br />
consistent, and at its highest moments was<br />
briefly pathetic or fantastically impressive.<br />
The Scottish soldier, assassin, and usurper<br />
was presented as a subtle, crafty hypocrite,<br />
introverted, superstitious, sneakish, void of<br />
moral scruple, almost wanting in physical<br />
[ 232 ]
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