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.
Nothing is too good for our fighting men. Let my subscription to that axiom be complete; and yet———
Well, it is like this. A man who is only a year or so too old for active service, but feels as fit and keen as a boy, has so many opportunities for regretting his enforced civilism and absence from the arena that it is hard when additional ones are thrust upon him.
He may do his best at home. He may guard gasworks, or organise funds, or campaign as an enlister, or visit the hospitals; but all the time he is conscious that being here is so different from being there. It galls him day and night, and the only thing that can help him at all is the society of lovely women, and now he has lost that!
I hate to grumble, and I have, I believe, shouldered my share of the new taxes like a man, but I am not made of such stern stuff as to be superior to all human aid, and in my own case the mortification of non-combating, which now and then becomes depressingly acute, is to be alleviated only in this way. Nice women must do their part.
But do they? No. They did at first, but no longer.
Let me tell you. The other evening I found myself one of the complacent hosts of a party of merry chattering young women, who seemed to be quite satisfied with our attention. All of us were just beginning to be very holly, and I had actually forgotten my hard destiny of inactivity, when who should come into the room but an officer on crutches, who happened to be an acquaintance of each of our guests but was unknown both to me and my other jsut too elderly male friends. In an instant we were alone, and alone we remained for certainly half an hour, while every attention was being paid by our guests to that other. When at last they tore themselves away and returned, their conversation was wholly confined to their wounded friend's adventures, and we need not have been there at all, except to pay the bill.
Now it is no fun to me to deceive anyone but myself, and hence I shall not go about with my arm in a sling and win sympathy and attention to which I am not entitled; but I do appeal to all the young women to have a little pity on some of us compulsory stay-at-homes. Nothing is too good for our fighting men. I repeat it. But just a tin y spark of animation might be retained in the feminine eye when it alights upon an old friend who is debarred from taking arms. Just a spark, otherwise we shall go into a melancholy decline.
Smart Work.
"Owner gone to the front, friend offers his Wolseley... £165, an extraordinary opportunity."—Advt. in "Autocar."
If we were not confident that we should be wrong in putting upon these words the sinister interpretation which they invite, we shouldn't envy the advertiser when the owner returns.
From verses in Punch, October 21st:—
And on our right wing there is nothing new."
From the French official report, November 12th:—
"We have also made some progress around Berry au Bac."
And on the right wing there was nothing new.
