4. CRITICISM AND ACTING OF THE CHARACTER OF ROSALIND.

[July 27th, 1844.]

MRS. Jameson's account of Shakespeare's Rosalind embodies the least erroneous of the prevalent views respecting this character. It will therefore suffice to shew how much the common estimate sinks below that ideal dignity, as well as beauty, with which we have shewn in detail that the poet has endowed it, if we point out the principal misapprehensions regarding it into which the authoress of the Characteristics of Women' has been betrayed.

The fundamental error of the critic in appreciating this noble as well as exquisite creation, seems to result from the mistaken attempt which she makes to classify the characters of which she is treating, as "characters of intellect," "characters of affection," &c. Of all characters in fiction, those of Shakespeare least admit of such classification-their individuality is so inherent and essential—so analogous to that of actual and living persons. We have shown before* how this classifying notion has misled the writer into underrating the intellectual and imaginative qualities of Imogen; and in the present instance we see the same fallacious endeavour causing her to make exactly the reverse mistake, by assigning too small a proportion to affectionate feeling in the character of Rosalind. Mrs. Jameson, indeed, commits too frequently, regarding these Shakespearian personages, the error so often committed in real life, of taking some prominent part of a character for the whole, or, at least, for a much larger portion of it than it actually constitutes. This too constant habit of estimating a given character simply through looking at it from the outside, rather

*See, in this volume, pages 94, 101.

than by penetrating to its inmost spirit, and then, as it were, surveying it from the centre, has been peculiarly fatal to this pleasing writer's criticism of the more ideal among Shakespeare's female characters. It would even appear to have made her overlook altogether the distinction between his ideal women and his women of real life; so much so, that among those which she classes as "characters of intellect, she actually ranks Rosalind-not only after Portia and Isabella-but even after Beatrice :

"I come now," she begins, "to Rosalind, whom I should have ranked before Beatrice, inasmuch as the greater degree of her sex's softness and sensibility, united with equal wit and intellect, give her the superiority as a woman; but that, as a dramatic character, she is inferior in force. The portrait is one of infinitely more delicacy and variety, but of less strength and depth," &c.

Yet, surely, the spirit of Rosalind is far more ascendant in this delightfully ideal play than that of Beatrice is in the spirited real-life comedy of Much Ado about Nothing.' The source of this false notion as to the comparative slightness in the character of Rosalind is, however, distinctly traceable in a following sentence of the authoress's critique :—

"Though Rosalind is a princess, she is a princess of Arcady; and notwithstanding the charming effect produced by her first scenes, we scarcely ever think of her with reference to them, or associate her with a court and the artificial appendages of her rank."

But if any reader or spectator scarcely ever thinks of her in the forest scenes with reference to those previous ones, this is assuredly no fault of Shakespeare's; who, as we have shown in the first of these papers, has laboured most carefully to impress his auditors with the true rank, character, and position of his heroine, so as to make it next to impossible for them so far to forget these afterwards as to see in her only-as Mrs. Jameson expresses it-"a princess of Arcady." The critic, however, proceeds on the same false bias::

"She was not made to 'lord it o'er a fair mansion,' and take state upon her, like the all-accomplished Portia, but to breathe the free air of heaven, and frolic among green leaves. She was not made to stand the siege of daring profligacy, and oppose high action and high passion to the assaults of adverse fortune, like Isabel; but to fleet the time carelessly, as they did i' the golden age.' She was not made to bandy wit with lords, and tread courtly measures with plumed and warlike cavaliers, like Beatrice; but to dance on the greensward, and murmur among living brooks a music sweeter than their own.' Though sprightliness is the distinguishing characteristic of Rosalind, as of Beatrice," &c.

She had already told us:

"I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry,' is an adjuration which Rosalind needed not when once at liberty, and sporting under the greenwood tree.'”

Mrs. Jameson, it should seem, has here literally adopted that reading of Rosalind's opening line on her first appearance in the forest, which Mr. Knight, in contradiction, as he tells us, to "all the modern editions," has deliberately inserted in his own 'Pictorial Shakspere

O Jupiter! how merry are my spirits!—

notwithstanding that Touchstone's reply, "I care not for my spirits, if my legs were not weary," demands weary in the previous line to give it any significance. Mr. Knight, however, in a marginal note, proceeds to support his alteration by an argument which involves a total misconception of the character and the situation: "Whiter," says he, "with great good sense, suggests that Rosalind's merriment was assumed as well as her dress." How, we would ask, does this interpretation agree with her following exclamations on the same occasion:

Alas, poor shepherd, searching of thy wound,
I have by hard adventure found mine own!

and again-

Jove! Jove! this shepherd's passion
Is much upon my fashion!

The assumption in this case consists in supposing that merriment, real or assumed, enters at all into the situation or the character. Here, again, the words of Rosalind to her cousin might be addressed to her histrionic representatives and to her critics: "I shew more mirth than I am mistress of, and would you yet that I were merrier?"

It is not, in fact, from the page of Shakespeare, as we have hinted already, that his critics can have drawn any such notion about this personage; but from the traditional ideas, respecting the character and the piece, with which their eyes and ears have been early familiarized upon the modern stage. The fundamental error in the established theatrical treatment of this play, has descended from that Restoration period of our dramatic history when, under the ascendancy which the restored court gave to French principles of taste and criticism, it was sought to subject even the great ideal dramas of Shakespeare to the commonplace classical circumscriptions of tragedy and comedy. Here we have a signal example of the perversion which must ever be effected by an endeavour to make the principles of art subordinate to the distinctions of criticism.

This great, unique, ideal play being once definitively set down upon the manager's books as a comedy in the limited sense, it followed of course, according to theatrical reasoning, that the part of its heroine was evermore to be sustained by whatever lady should be regarded, by distinction, as the comic actress for the time being. Surely, on this principle alone can it have been (notwithstanding all her genuine comic powers) that either the figure, the spirit, or the manner, of a Mrs. Jordan, for instance, was ever, not merely tolerated, but relished and applauded, in her personation of the "heavenly Rosalind !" But the managers have not stopped here. When the comic actress of this part, as in the instance just cited, possessed a singing voice, an occasion was to be furnished her of displaying it, how much soever it might be to the

contempt of Shakespeare and consistency, and to the degradation of his heroine. And so, the "cuckoo song" was taken out of the mouth of Armado's page in Love's Labour's Lost,' to be warbled in the ears of her lover by the "heavenly Rosalind." This barbarism, however, it is due to Mr. Macready to observe, was suppressed in the last Drury-Lane revival of this play; but another grand impropriety was retained, which has contributed not a little to the popular misconception of the character (since it is upheld to this hour by the editors of Shakespeare as well as the managers)—the making Rosalind herself come forward to deliver that unfeminine epilogue, which its every word shews to have been written for the mouth of the male actor who, in Shakespeare's time, constantly enacted "the lady's" part, and to be spoken in his proper masculine person.

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But the point, in the last London revival of the play, which most demands observation in this place, is, the perpetuation which it exhibits of the old greenroom notion, that the most prominent comic actress of the day must make the best Rosalind; that the qualifications for the heroine of As You Like It,' are to be sufficiently proved, for example, by the enacting of a Constance (in 'The Love Chase'), or a Lady Gay Spanker (in London Assurance'). And truly, if the manager understood Shakespeare no better than to offer to the public such a personation of one of his most ideal heroines, the actress herself must be held excusable for displaying in it, to the utmost of her power, her peculiar joyous graces.

It is not for its own sake merely, we repeat, that we care to notice what passes on the stage in reference to these great Shakespearian creations, but yet more on account of that misreading of Shakespeare, even in the closet, which these continued theatrical perversions contribute so largely to create and to perpetuate. False impressions of this nature can be effaced from the minds of the living generation only by juster impressions conveyed through the same