in a tone of fine, clear, and natural recitation. His pronunciation of the word "contumely" in the last of these is, we apprehend, not authorized by custom, or by the metre.

Both the closet scene with his mother, and his remonstrances to Ophelia, were highly impressive. If there had been less vehemence of effort in the latter, it would not have lost any of its effect. But whatever nice faults might be found in this scene, they were amply redeemed by the manner of his coming back after he has gone to the extremity of the stage, from a pang of parting tenderness to press his lips to Ophelia's hand. It had an electrical effect on the house. It was the finest commentary that was ever made on Shakspeare. It explained the character at once (as he meant it), as one of disappointed hope, of bitter regret, of affection suspended and not obliterated, by the distractions of the scene around him! The manner in which Mr. Kean acted in the scene of the play before the king and queen was the most daring of any, and the force and animation which he gave to it cannot be too highly applauded. Its extreme boldness"bordered on the verge of all we hate," and the effect it produced was a test of the extraordinary powers of this extraordinary actor.

We cannot speak too highly of Mr. Raymond's

representation of the Ghost. It glided across the stage with the preternatural grandeur of a spirit. His manner of speaking the part was not equally excellent. A spirit should not whine or shed tears.

Mr. Dowton's Polonius was unworthy of so [excellent an actor. The part was mistaken altogether. Polonius is not exceedingly wise, but he is not quite a fool; or if he is, he is at the same time a courtier, and a courtier of the old school. Mr. Dowton made nothing, or worse than nothing, of the part.

OTHELLO.*

MR. KEAN'S Success in Othello was fully equal to the arduousness of the undertaking. In general, we might observe that he displayed the same excellences and the same defects as in his former characters. His voice and person were not altogether in consonance with the character, nor was there throughout the noble tide of deep and sustained passion which raises our admiration and pity of the loftyminded Moor. There were, however, repeated bursts of feeling and energy, which we have never seen surpassed. The whole of the latter part of the third act was a master-piece of profound pathos and exquisite conception, and its effect on the house was electrical.

* May 6, 1814.

THECA

B

ODL

Mr. Kean's Othello* is his best character, and the highest effort of genius on the stage. We say this without any exception or reserve, yet we wish it was better than it is. In parts, we think he rises as high as human genius can go; at other times, though powerful, the whole effort is thrown away in a wrong direction, and disturbs our idea of the character. There are some technical objections; Othello was tall, but that is nothing; he was black, but that is nothing. But he was not fierce, and that is everything. It is only in the last agony of human suffering that he gives way to his rage and his despair, and it is in working his noble nature up to that extremity, that Shakspeare has shewn his genius and his vast power over the human heart. It was in raising passion to its height, from the lowest beginnings, and in spite of all obstacles, in shewing the conflict of the soul, the tug and war between love and hatred, rage, tenderness, jealousy, remorse, in laying open the strength and the weaknesses of hu. man nature, in uniting sublimity of thought with the anguish of the keenest woe, in putting in motion all the springs and impulses which make up this our mortal being, and at last blending them in that noble tide of deep and sustained passion, impetuous, but majestic, "that flows on to the Propontic and knows * Jan. 6, 1816.

no ebb,”—that the great excellence of Shakspeare lay. Mr. Kean is in general all passion, all energy, all relentless will. He wants imagination, that faculty which contemplates events, and broods over feelings with a certain calmness and grandeur; his feelings almost always hurry on to action, and hardly ever repose upon themselves. He is too often in the highest key of passion, too uniformly on the verge of extravagance, too constantly on the rack. This does very well in certain characters, as Zanga or Bajazet, where there is merely a physical passion, a boiling of the blood to be expressed, but it is not so in the lofty-minded and generous Moor.

We make these remarks the more freely, because there were parts of the character in which Mr. Kean shewed the greatest sublimity and pathos, by laying aside all violence of action. For instance, the tone of voice in which he delivered the beautiful apostrophe, "Then, oh, farewell!" struck on the heart like the swelling notes of some divine music, like the sound of years of departed happiness. Why not all so, or all that is like it? why not speak the affecting passage-"I found not Cassio's kisses on her lips" -why not speak the last speech in the same manner? They are both of them, we do most strenuously contend, speeches of pure pathos, of thought, and feeling, and not of passion, venting itself in violence of

action or gesture. Again, the look, the action, the expression of voice, with which he accompanied the exclamation, "Not a jot, not a jot," was perfectly heart-rending. His vow of revenge against Cassio, and his abandonment of his love for Desdemona, were as fine as possible. The third act had an irresistible effect upon the house, and, indeed, is only to be paralleled by the murder-scene in Macbeth.

Mr. Kean's Othello,* the other night, did not quite answer our over-wrought expectations. He played it with variations; and therefore, necessarily worse. There is but one perfect way of playing Othello, and that was the way in which he used to play it. To see him in this character at his best, may be reckoned among the consolations of the human mind. It is to feel our hearts bleed by sympathy with another; it is to vent a world of sighs for another's sorrows; to have the loaded bosom "cleansed of that perilous stuff that weighs upon the soul," by witnessing the struggles and the mortal strokes that "flesh is heir to." We often seek this deliverance from private woes through the actor's obstetric art; and it is hard when he disappoints us, either from indifference or wilfulness. Mr. Kean did not repeat his admired farewell apostrophe to Content, with that fine "organstop" that he used,-as if his inmost vows and

* London Magazine, September, 1820.