applause. When Shakspeare elaborated the Apology with so many exquisite ornaments, and made it a model of rich and pathetic eloquence, he did so because he felt the Moor’s case to be far from strong, and because he saw that nothing but a speech full of cunningly adapted arguments, moving appeal and glowing description, would reconcile the Senate to condone the offence. Mr. Fechter mars this splendid oratory—this model of artless art—by a flat and monotonous delivery, a provoking nonchalance, a careful carelessness!
Our second suggestion relates to the delivery of the “farewell” in act iii. We are by no means inclined to quarrel with the tone adopted here—the conception is admirable, and the utterance suitable to the conception, but if attention had been paid to the scenic directions of the play as Shakspeare wrote it, the effect of this magnificent passage would have been enhanced tenfold.
The second scene of the second act is “a Room in the Castle. Othello, Iago, and Gentlemen enter.” and Othello, after giving letters to Iago, sets out to walk round the works and examine the fortifications . . . The scene then changes to “Before the Castle,” and here, in the course of their circuit of the windy battlements, where there were no curtains or corners to shelter eaves-droppers, and not in a gilded and painted saloon, furnished with oriental luxury, like a chamber in a hareem, and yet used rather curiously by the General for the transaction of official business, should the first drops of the poison be instilled into Othello’s mind. In the full view of the Castle and the Galleys, with the tents of his troops pitched on the shore, with his Standard waiving from the Keep, how vivid would be the effect of the lines:
Farewell the tranquiO now, for ever,
Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars,
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner; and all quality!
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
How fit a close, too, might be found to the apostrophe, if the General to whom “the tyrant custom had made the flinty and steel couch of war a thrice driven bed of down” had sunk, as he concluded, on one of the unwieldy bronze cannons, that still, honey-combed and green with verdegris, point their harmless mouths from the ancient castles of Rhodes and Cyprus, thus emphasizing the lines which Mr. Fechter timidly omits:
And you mortal engines, whose rude throats
The immortal Jove’s dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone!
The heaviest accusation we have, however, against Mr. Fechter, is in the matter of “The Song of Willow,” in the fifth act. Nothing can be less in harmony with the spirit of the play—nothing more sickly and sentimental! It is just the kind of improvement (?) of Shakspeare, which we should have expected from Kotzebue. “The Song of Willow” should have been unquestionably brought back—no more glaring instance of the power of Tradition for evil than the omission of it and the exquisite scene in which it occurs, can be found in stage history. But why do an unquestionable right in such a furtive, shamefaced way? The swan-like songs of Desdemona (which have one parallel, and one parallel only, the strains in the “Antigone” of Sophocles) have an exquisite meaning when sung by her, but have no meaning when sung by a soprano voice unknown in the town of Famagusta! . . .
The more gracious part of our task remains, viz. , the indication of those passages where Mr. Fechter has attained supreme excellence.
First and foremost we must, of course, point to the marvellous delivery of the three words—“not a jot.” Acute suffering, wild despair, and unutterable shame, making themselves perceptible in spite of an overpowering effort to preserve self-control, were all rendered evident as only an artist of consummate power could have exhibited them! . . . The lines
Though that her jesseIf I do prove her haggard,
Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings,
I’d whistle her off, and let her down the wind,
To prey at fortune
were accompanied by gestures so appropriate and natural, and, at the same time, so striking and intelligent, that we felt it hard to believe Mr. Fechter was not living in an age when falconry was an every-day pastime. Those who witnessed the action which illustrated the soliloquy in “Hamlet,” beginning
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
are aware of the command, or rather masterdom, which he possesses over gesture; but we feel assured that even those who were astonished at the way in which ironical self-reproach and submission to personal indignity were expressed by a few motions of the hands, would fail to believe it possible that a man should so easily and completely explain a metaphor taken from an obsolete sport by swaying his hands in certain directions, at the same time persuading us that he is not thinking at all about herons and jesses, but that his whole mind is bent on sifting evidence against a wife supposed to be disloyal. Delicate in conception and marvellous in its close adherence to nature, is the expression that accompanies the words, “Set on thy wife to observe.” The actor’s face is literally suffused with a burning blush, and as he buries his face in his hands, we almost fancy we see the scalding tears force their way through the trembling fingers and adorn the shame-reddened cheeks!
We are inclined to admire also the ingenuity and novelty of the glance at the reflection of his dark face in the mirror which suggests the words, “Haply for I am black;” and we are assured that never was a scene rendered with truer pathos and beauty than the irrepressible burst of tenderness which the magic of Desdemona’s loveliness, and the helplessness of her sorrow combine—alas, for a few moments only—to reawaken!
Though, as all the authorities tells us, an Othello must be judged by act iii.; and though his highest histrionic laurels are gained in that portion of the play, it is, however, in the last act that we conceive Mr. Fechter most triumphantly vindicates his claims to the title of an intelligent student of
