King Henry IV., Part I.
I commend Sir Herbert Tree's obvious desire to do his duty as an actor-manager and a patriot. His true intent is all for our good; and he supports his choice of a play in which Falstaff is the central obsession by a printed quotation from the words of "That Wise Ruler Queen Elizabeth of England," where she says: "'Tis simple mirth keepeth high courage alive." But yet he does not convince me that he has chosen wisely here. For in the first place we are not closely interested in civil war, as we came near to being in the dim Ulster period; and patriotism, which it is his object to encourage, is like to remain unaffected by a play in which our sympathies are fairly distributed between rebel and royalist. In the second place I cannot believe that the glorification of dunkenness and braggadocio in the person of Falstaff can directly assist the cause (which at the moment needs all the help it can get) of sobriety and self-respect.
Having made this protest I have little but praise for the performance itself, though I think Sir Herbert Tree's own lethargy was not wholly to be excused by the hampering rotundity of his girth; and that all this deliberate sword-play, where you wait till your enemy has got his right guard betfore you arrange a concussion between your weapon and his, fails to impose itself as an image of War. But it was no fault of the actors if we suffered a further loss of actuality by the incredible amount of fine poetry and rhetoric thrown off by military men at junctures calling for immediate action.
I also venture to make my complaint to the author that the Falstaff scenes are given too great a dominance, diverting us from the main issue so long that at one time we almost lost count of it; and that the picture of that far impostor lying supine in a simulation of death within a few feet of the fallen body of the heroic Hotspur was repellent to one's sense of the proprieties.
The King (Mr. Basil Gill) reclaims young Harry (Mr. Owen Nares) from old Harry (the Devil.)
Mr. Matheson Lang was a brave figure as Hotspur; but, after lately seeing that other keen actor, Mr. Owen Nares, in the part of a modern intellectual discussing the ethics of War, I could not quite get myself to believe in him as Prince Hal. He spoke some of his lines with a fine ardour, but he was too high-browed and slight of body, and it was unthinkable that he could ever have persuaded Hotspur to die at his hands.
Sir Herbert Tree affected an almost proprietary interest in the bibulous humours of Falstaff, presenting them with an easy and leisurely restraint; and Mr. Basil Gill both in form and manner made a quite good King. The minor parts upheld the standard of His Majesty's; and a pleasant rattling of steel and shimmer of mail ran through the scenes of active service. Mr. Percy Macquoid had seen to it that the period was there, and Mr. Joseph Harker had taken good care that the jewellery of Shakspeare's verse should have the right setting, though I could easily have mistaken his Gadshill scene for a section of the Lake Country.