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ment of Shakespeare's interest is suggested, the frigid common-place in which it must be written, or is written, would lead us almost to the belief that the poet had breathed common curse against the disturbers of any of his remains. See the lines over his grave at Stratford.

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CHAPTER XIX

It was natural to expect that the management of Mr. Kemble would have greatly strengthened the stage consequence of Mrs. Siddons; but certainly the reverse was the fact, and the second season of it saw her leave London for a tour both friendly and professional. If I have leave to blame in such a matter, I rather incline to think my late friend somewhat disposed, at that time, to build too strongly on his own resources; or at least to have been too attentive to the idle clamour relative to the family interests, and therefore disposed to allow his sister to demonstrate her value by her absence. I may have neglected to note down some still better reasons alleged at the time, but it was in truth a bold step to permit any one season to be divested of its greatest ornament; and I am apt to suspect some slight misunderstanding to have been at the bottom of her temporary secession. She was happily secure in the actual transcendency of her talent; and as one prodigy was dramatically sufficient for those times, she ran no risk whatever in the experiment. On the score of novelty she lost nothing; tragic composition was at a very low ebb among us; and indeed, since then, the only high tides we have experienced have been forced by the heavy swells of the German Ocean.

I have not continued a comparative estimate of the attraction of Mrs. Siddons in her old characters; but for many years Isabella, the first she acted of her brilliant period, continued to be most frequently repeated; and I must so far think the preference a just one, that I am quite sure I saw it myself oftener than any of the powerful list,

those of Shakespeare only excepted, in which the attraction was not entirely her own. Nor did she experience the slightest failure of patronage; on her own night, in the season of 1790-91, she had 412 in the house to Th Gamester. That house, it will be remembered, was Garrick's, and this was the year of its condemnation. We shall next survey Mrs. Siddons acting upon a larger stage, and attend to the alteration in some degree of her style of action, which, moving in a greater space, certainly became more grand and imposing.

In the year 1792 this experiment of her powers upon 2 stage constructed for Italian opera and ballet was made, and succeeded almost beyond expectation.

That the spectators in the front of the house lost much of her expression I know, though I seldom sat there; for the passage between the orchestra and the pit had a very comfortable seat for about thirty amateurs of the art, and, with a little activity and address, it was never very difficult to obtain a place there. And from this situation, in all her towering majesty of person, and in the maturity of her excellence, I received impressions which I could never consent to lose, and which have certainly not been endangered by any effects from succeeding performers.

But I have hinted at some change of style, the result of the new sphere of exertion. There is nothing in Italian opera that requires very extraordinary width of stage. It must, therefore, have been suggested by a numerous corp de ballet, which covers the whole proscenium. The side scenes are at a great distance from the front of the stage. In the Italian opera, after the singer, male or female, has finished the usual colloquy with the prompter behind the central hood which conceals his occiput, though not his tongue, from the visitors, the usual mode is to turn short round, and, presenting the back view to their admirers, with the arms raised, somewhat in the figure of a candlestick with two branches, to walk away rather rapidly, without the smallest grace, and if any applause should pursue their march, or has attended their music, to make a bow or curtsey at the wing, and hurry off to the fireside. But either the entrance or exit of English tragedy is a matter

hat must be somewhat closer in its bearing upon the business of the scene.

So few English performers are ever perfectly at their ease upon the stage, that the springing off with a glance at the pit, if it were not thought energetic, would be chosen from nervous impatience at supporting the gaze of thousands while the performer merely walks away. All the rhymed couplets to carry them off with effect attest the misery of departure; and the speaking a few words as entering also shows the desire to come into as speedy a commerce with the audience as can possibly be achieved.

The amazing self-possession of Mrs. Siddons rendered distance only the means of displaying a system of gracefu and considerate dignity, or weighty and lingering affliction, as the case might demand. In the hurry of distraction she could stop, and in some frenzied attitude speak wonders to the eye, till a second rush forward brought her to the proper ground on which her utterance might be trusted. I will not be so ungallant as to ascribe the composure of this grand woman to any vain complacency in her majestic form. By thinking so I should ill repay that artist-like admiration with which I always beheld it. No; I believe she thought at such moments only of the character and the support it demanded from her of every kind. When Mrs. Siddons quitted her dressing-room I believe she left there the last thought about herself. Never did I see her eye wander from the business of the scene-no recognisance of the most noble of her friends exchanged the character for the individual. In this duty her brother. would frequently fail; and he seemed to take a delight in showing how absolute a mastery he possessed-that he could make a sign and sometimes speak to a friend near him, and yet seem to carry on the action and the look of the character. I never saw this in his sister-no, not for a moment. It was this devotion to what she was about that left so little inequality in her numerous repetitions of the same part. Kemble, to use the extravagant opposition of one of Dr. Young's figures, in acting was a 'worm or a god.' He walked or dozed through the character, or sublimed it with energy and grace. Constitutional infirmity,

cough, and the opium he used to quiet it are to accoun for this-we had often to regret it. But I never saw in indifferent performance from Siddons, though I may have witnessed a cold or a noisy audience. The uniform temper ance of female life had its share in the conservation of this fulness of power; but no domestic life is without its own cares, vexations, or sorrows, and the admirable art by which their effects were suspended for the dutie of profession shows a mental firmness of the highest value.

Conspiring with the larger stage to produce some change in her style was her delight in statuary, which directed her attention to the antique, and made a remarkable impression upon her as to simplicity of attire and severity of attitude. The actress had formerly complied with fashion, and deemed the prevalent becoming; she now saw that tragedy was debased by the flutter of light materials, and that the head, and all its powerful action from the shoulder, should never be encumbered by the monstrous inventions of the hairdresser and the milliner. She was now, there

fore, prepared to introduce a mode of stage decoration and of deportment parting from one common principle, itself originating with a people qualified to legislate even in taste) itself. What, however, began in good sense, deciding among the forms of grace and beauty, was, by political || mania in the rival nation, carried into the excess of shameless indecency. France soon sent us over her amazons to burlesque all classical costume, and her models were received among us with unaffected disgust. What Mrs. Siddons had chosen remains in a great degree the standard of female costume to the present hour; and any little excesses by degrees dropped off, and left our ladies the heirs of her taste and its inseparable modesty. I have said that her deportment now varied considerably; and I have no doubt of the fact. In a small space the turns are quick and short. Where the area is considerable the step is wider, the figure more erect, and the whole progress more grand and powerful; the action is more from the shoulder, and we now first began to hear of the perfect form of Mrs. Siddons's arm. Her walk has never been attempted by any

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