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Pigeons, at Brentford, and died there in 1658. Sir William Davenant (1605–68) was acquainted with the acting of Lowin, and when, in 1663, he cast the part of King Henry the Eighth to Thomas Betterton, he instructed that actor relative to the method of his admired predecessor. Betterton's performance was accounted essentially royal, and the example of stalwart predominance, regal dignity, and bluff humor thus set has ever since been followed. Barton Booth imitated Betterton, and when Quin assumed King Henry, he avowedly, but not successfully, imitated Booth. In this part, Quin is described as having been ungraceful in manner, deficient of the requisite facial expression, and vocally weak. Booth seems to have satisfied every requirement of it. There was grandeur in his personality, vigor in his action, and at times a menace in his look which inspired terror. In life, King Henry, as the reader of the excellent memoir of Wolsey by George Cavendish clearly perceives, was essentially selfish, despotic, tyrannical, capricious, and capable of cruelty. In Shakspere's delineation of him, the rigor of his character and the harshness of his temper have been much softened; and while he is shown as egotistical, haughty, arbitrary, impetuous, self-willed, and sternly regal, he is accredited with a certain amiability, a sense of justice, good humor, and geniality of disposition. It appears that he was thus represented, with admirable fidelity and effect, by Barton Booth. That actor's enunciation of "Go thy ways, Kate," after the Queen's majestic exit from the trial scene, is mentioned as exceptionally expressive of the King's character and hu

mor.

Specific information as to details of the dressing of King Henry the Eighth by the actors of old cannot be obtained. Kings, on the stage, wore scarlet cloth ornamented with gold lace. Sometimes an opulent nobleman, patron of the drama, would give to a favorite actor the costume that he had worn at the coronation of the reigning monarch, and that was considered and used as an appropriate garb for theatrical majesty. Burbage, if he acted King Henry, wore robes of red and gold. Betterton and his followers continued the custom; but as it was well known that King Henry wore his hair short, they dis

carded the usual wig when playing that part. Davies declares that King Richard the Third and King Henry the Eighth were garbed in something like appropriate costume, while suitability of attire, in presentment of the coöperative characters, was for the most part disregarded. In England, the chronicle of notable performers of King Henry the Eighth includes the names of Mathew Clarke, John Palmer, Joseph George Holman, Alexander Pope, Francis Aickin, Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, George Frederick Cooke, George Barrett, John Ryder, Walter Lacy, William Terriss, and Arthur Bourchier.

On the occasion (1663) when for the first time Betterton acted King Henry the Eighth, his associate and competitor Henry Harris acted Cardinal Wolsey, "doing it," says Downes, "with such just state, port, and mien that I dare affirm none hitherto has equaled him." The word "hitherto" refers to the period of about sixty years immediately prior to 1663, as to which period theatrical history affords comparatively little exact and particular information. Harris was a painter and a singer as well as an actor. He led a profligate life, but he is accredited with possession of dramatic talent of a high order, and it is certain that his ability was versatile, for he excelled equally as Romeo and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. He was one of the intimate friends of Samuel Pepys, the quaint diarist, and a portrait of him as Wolsey is in the Pepys Library at Cambridge, England. Detailed description of his performance of the Cardinal has not been found. He was prominently succeeded on the old London stage by John Verbruggen, 1706; Colley Cibber, 1723; Anthony Boheme, 1725; Lacy Ryan, 1743; West Digges, 1772; Robert Bensley, 1772; John Henderson, 1780; Alexander Pope, 1786; John Philip Kemble, 1805; Charles Mayne Young, 1844; William Charles Macready, 1823; and Samuel Phelps, 1844. On the Dublin stage Wolsey was acted by Henry Mossop in 1751.

Opinion as to the diversified representations of Wolsey that were given by those actors, long past away, must necessarily be somewhat vague. Such records of them as exist are in almost every case meager. Authorities are often misleading.

Adjectives, sometimes laudatory, sometimes condemnatory, are freely employed; but at the best they seldom do more than convey general impressions. Few details are furnished showing precisely what the actor did and how he did it. Verbruggen is commended as fine in Cassius, but is scarcely more than mentioned in Wolsey. He was a pleasing actor, apparently exuberant, lawless, and defective in art. Cibber is credited with a suave demeanor and a clever assumption of crafty deference in the trial scene; but he lacked dignity, and he was incapable of a convincing show of serious feeling. One recorder thinks it worth while to mention that when, in Wolsey's soliloquy about the king's marriage, he said, "This candle burns not clear; 't is I must snuff it," he made a gesture with his fingers, as though he were using a candle-snuffer. Boheme had been a sailor, and he walked with a straddle; but he was tall and of good presence, and he excelled in pathetic passages, so that his delivery of Wolsey's farewell must have been touching. Ryan was a judicious actor, of respectable abilities, and his performance of Wolsey was creditable. Digges marred by extravagance of gesture a performance which otherwise would have been perfect. Mossop could express the pomp and severity of the part, and he is praised for energetic delivery of the text. Bensley, who had been an officer in the British army (he served in America at one time), was a formal, correct, conscientious actor, a good Malvolio,-but he did not make a special mark as Wolsey. Henderson, great as Shylock, Iago, and Falstaff, was only notable in Wolsey for his correct elocution. Pope possessed a fine voice, but an inexpressive face; he excelled, nevertheless, in pathos, and his Wolsey was effective in the scene of the great minister's fall. Kemble, Young, and Macready could not have been otherwise than imposing as the Cardinal, for each of them possessed innate dignity, ample scholarship, stately presence, and facile command of the resources of expressive art. Phelps gave a highly intellectual, noble, austere, touching performance of Wolsey, invariable in its dignity, singularly expressive of a politic character, and in the parting scene with Cromwell profoundly affecting.

A superb portrait of Phelps as Wolsey, by Johnston Forbes-Robertson, adorns a wall in the Garrick Club, London, and will preserve to a distant posterity the expressive lineaments of an authentic image of passionate grief commingled with desolate submission.

The expedient employed by Shakspere to precipitate the downfall of Wolsey,that of causing the Cardinal, through haste and inadvertence, to inclose to King Henry a private letter, respecting the divorce of Queen Katharine, which he had intended to send to the pope at Rome, together with an inventory of his wealth, -was drawn from Holinshed's "Chronicle." No such mistake was ever made by Wolsey, but such a mistake actually was made by Thomas Ruthall, who held the office of Bishop of Durham from 1509 till 1522. That ecclesiastic had been ordered to prepare a record of the estates of the kingdom, to be delivered to Wolsey. He told his servant to bring from his study a book bound in white vellum. The servant obeyed, bringing, by mischance, a book, bound in white vellum, which contained an account of Ruthall's private possessions, and that volume was despatched to the cardinal. It appears to have shown that some of the bishop's gains had been ill-gotten. Ruthall, dismayed by that unlucky exposure of his secret affairs, soon afterward died of humiliation and shame. Expert use of that mishap is made in the drama (Act III, Scene 2), providing one of the best pieces of the action, and, for the actor of Wolsey, one of the most telling passages-the soliloquy which ends:

"I shall fall

Like a bright exhalation in the evening, And no man see me more."

Later representatives of Wolsey were Charles Kean and Henry Irving, both of whom acted it in America as well as in England. England. Herbert Beerbohm Tree also acted it in England, but his performance has not yet been seen in America. Kean produced "King Henry VIII" with much splendor at the Princess's Theater, London, in 1855. Irving produced it at the London Lyceum in 1892. When Kean, in the spring of 1865, made his last professional visit to America, he began his engagement at the theater which had been

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KING HENRY VIII, FROM THE PAINTING BY HANS HOLBEIN, THE YOUNGER

arine, and presented, the same night, "The Jealous Wife." Irving presented "King Henry VIII" at Abbey's Theater, now the Knickerbocker, New York, on December 4, 1893.

Charles Kean's impersonation of Wolsey, which it was my privilege several times to see, was remarkable for intellec

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gray hair suited well the part. He wore robes of scarlet cloth adorned with lace. His manner at first was that of repose, but it was lofty and predominant. The glance that he directed toward the defiant Buckingham as he paused, after partly crossing the scene, on his first entrance, seemed literally to pierce

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corporate the reference to the fall of Lucifer, he stretched his arms upward and forward, conveying a grand image of the poet's thought, and then, upon the sad cadence of the verse, completely collapsed, uttering the abject desolation of a broken spirit in the four simple words, "never to rise again." Kean's delivery was often somewhat marred by a certain nasality of speech, and his performances were not illumined by those flashes of lightning which characterized the acting of his distinguished father; but he was a noble

the polished, elegant, highly intellectual prince of the church,-chimere, rochet, mantle, red hat, etc.,-and his tall figure, ascetic face, piercing eyes, authoritative bearing, incisive speech, and incessant earnestness of personification, combined to make the performance impressively lifelike and deeply sympathetic. He employed, as Kean had done, the traditional business relative to Buckingham in the opening scene-a scene in which the Cardinal, sure of his ground, is perfectly composed. In the trial scene his manner to

ward the king was profoundly respectful, and toward the queen, bland, almost humble, ingratiating, and ingenuous. Wolsey, until the moment of the catastrophe, is almost continuously acting a part, and Irving's performance was remarkably indicative of that condition-alert, vigilant, full of transitions from frankness to subtle artifice, revealed to the auditory by the expedient of transparency. Touches of mordant sarcasm, as when, replying to Campeius, he said in a dry tone, "We live not to be grip'd by meaner persons," and when, in the moody soliloquy about the king's marriage, he murmured, "I'll no Anne Bullens for him," - here and there lit the performance with gleams of austere humor. There was, in the scene of defeat and ruin, and in the delivery of the farewell, a touching simplicity of grief and resignation, and a striking revelation of profound knowledge of human suffering.

Before 1660, all characters in plays performed in England, male and female, were presented by males. Some one of the twenty-six persons named in the list prefixed to the first folio as "the principal actors in all these plays" was presumably the first performer of Queen Katharine. The first woman who ever acted the part was Mary Betterton, wife of Thomas, she having coöperated with her husband in the representation of "King Henry VIII" which was given at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1663. No account of her acting in it is extant, but she was highly esteemed as an actress, and it can be reasonably assumed that she gave a competent performance. The vision scene, as it is usually called (Act IV, Scene 2), in which the death-stricken queen asks for music, and presently lapses into slumber, was elaborately treated as a spectacle in the time of Mrs. Betterton, and that method, required by ample stage-direction in the folio, was followed in the time of her distinguished successors, Elizabeth Barry, 1706; Mary Porter, 1721; and Hannah Pritchard, 1743. Mrs. Porter, tall, fair, not handsome, but impressive by reason of great dignity, and winning by reason of acute sensibility, is said to have acted to perfection such parts as Shakspere's Hermione, in "The Winter's Tale," Otway's Belvidera, in "Venice Preserved," Queen Elizabeth, in John Banks's "The Unhappy Favorite," and Leonora, in Dr.

Young's "Revenge." Her embodiment of Queen Katharine was admired by her contemporaries, and the dramatic chronicles of her day commend it for royalty of demeanor, depth of feeling, and grace of sympathetic expression. Her voice is described as tremulous. She specially excelled in her delivery of the Queen's adjuration to the King in the trial scene. In early life she had attended on the fascinating Elizabeth Barry, and it is probable that she formed her style on the model of that great actress. Mrs. Pritchard, who succeeded her, was accounted majestic in deportment and natural in method of speech in this character, but less effective upon the feelings of the audience. Mrs. Porter and Mrs. Pritchard dressed Queen Katharine in imitation of the attire worn by royal persons of their period. There is no specific stage account of the stage-business used in this part by those eminent performers.

It is not until Mrs. Siddons comes upon the scene that the investigator of the subject finds particular mention of expedients that were employed in the acting of Queen Katharine. In 1788-89 John Philip Kemble, at Drury Lane, revived "King Henry VIII," making a new stage version of it, which was published in 1804, — and giving special attention to scenery, costumes, and processions. All was done that his sound scholarship could warrant and his liberality of expenditure compass. Mrs. Siddons acted Queen Katharine. Robert Bensley appeared as Wolsey. Kemble "doubled" in the characters of Cromwell and Griffith (reserving his essay in Wolsey till a later time, when he acted that part with distinguished success). That was the occasion when Mrs. Siddons made her first appearance as the queen. The peculiar, expressive business,―haughty, imperious, and openly and grandly hostile,of pointing at Wolsey and addressing him without looking at him in the trial scene, when Queen Katharine delivers the trenchant speech beginning, "Lord Cardinal, to you I speak," was invented by her, and her pause after the word "Cardinal," and the marked emphasis, incisive and scornful, that she placed on the word "you" were accounted wonderfully expressive. At a later period that point in the representation was chosen by Mr. G. H. Harlow when he painted the spirited picture of the

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