Charles Lamb - The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

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I.—G. F. COOKE IN "RICHARD THE THIRD"

II.—GRAND STATE BED

III.—FABLE FOR TWELFTH DAY

IV.—THE LONDONER

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(1802)

Some few of us remember to have seen , and all of us have heard our fathers tell of Quin, and Garrick, and Barry, and some faint traditional notices are left us of their manner in particular scenes, and their stile of delivering certain emphatic sentences. Hence our curiosity is excited, when a new Hamlet or a new Richard makes his appearance, in the first place, to inquire, how he acted in the Closet scene , in the Tent scene ; how he looked, and how he started, when the Ghost came on, and how he cried

Off with his head. So much for Buckingham.

We do not reprehend this minute spirit of comparison. On the contrary, we consider it as a delightful artifice, by which we connect the recreations of the past with those of the present generation, what pleased our fathers with what pleases us. We love to witness the obstinate attachments, the unconquerable prejudices (as they seem to us), of the old men, our seniors, the whimsical gratification they appear to derive from the very refusal to be gratified; to hear them talk of the good old actors, whose race is for ever extinct.

With these impressions, we attended the first appearance of Mr. Cooke, in the character of Richard the Third , last winter. We thought that he "bustled" through the scenes with at least as much spirit and effect as any of his predecessors whom we remember in the part, and was not deficient in the delivery of any of those rememberable speeches and exclamations, which old prescription hath set up as criteria of comparison. Now that the grace of freshness is worn off, and Mr. Cooke is no longer a novitiate candidate for public favour, we propose to enter into the question—whether that popular actor is right or wrong in his conception of the great outlines of the character; those strong essential differences which separate Richard from all the other creations of Shakespeare. We say of Shakespeare ; for though the Play, which passes for his upon the Stage , materially differs from that which he wrote under the same title, being in fact little better than a compilation or a cento of passages extracted from other of his Plays, and applied with gross violations of propriety (as we are ready at any time to point out), besides some miserable additions, which he never could have written; all together producing an inevitable inconsistency of character, sufficient to puzzle and confound the best Actor; yet , in this chaos and perplexity, we are of opinion, that it becomes an Actor to shew his taste, by adhering, as much as possible, to the spirit and intention of the original Author, and to consult his safety in steering by the Light , which Shakespeare holds out to him, as by a great Leading Star . Upon these principles, we presume to censure Mr. Cooke, while we are ready to acknowledge, that this Actor presents us with a very original and very forcible portrait (if not of the man Richard , whom Shakespeare drew, yet) of the monster Richard , as he exists in the popular idea , in his own exaggerated and witty self-abuse , in the overstrained representations of the parties who were sufferers by his ambition ; and, above all, in the impertinent and wretched scenes , so absurdly foisted in by some, who have thought themselves capable of adding to what Shakespeare wrote .

But of Mr. Cooke's Richard :

1st. His predominant and masterly simulation.

He has a tongue can wheedle with the Devil.

It has been the policy of that antient and grey simulator, in all ages, to hide his horns and claws . The Richard of Mr. Cooke perpetually obtrudes his . We see the effect of his deceit uniformly successful , but we do not comprehend how it succeeds . We can put ourselves, by a very common fiction, into the place of the individuals upon whom it acts, and say, that, in the like case, we should not have been alike credulous. The hypocrisy is too glaring and visible. It resembles more the shallow cunning of a mind which is its own dupe, than the profound and practised art of so powerful an intellect as Richard's . It is too obstreperous and loud, breaking out into triumphs and plaudits at its own success, like an unexercised noviciate in tricks . It has none of the silent confidence, and steady self-command of the experienced politician ; it possesses none of that fine address , which was necessary to have betrayed the heart of Lady Anne , or even to have imposed upon the duller wits of the Lord Mayor and Citizens .

2dly. His habitual jocularity , the effect of buoyant spirits, and an elastic mind, rejoicing in its own powers, and in the success of its machinations. This quality of unstrained mirth accompanies Richard , and is a prime feature in his character. It never leaves him; in plots, in stratagems, and in the midst of his bloody devices, it is perpetually driving him upon wit, and jests, and personal satire, fanciful allusions, and quaint felicities of phrase. It is one of the chief artifices by which the consummate master of dramatic effect has contrived to soften the horrors of the scene, and to make us contemplate a bloody and vicious character with delight. No where, in any of his plays, is to be found so much of sprightly colloquial dialogue, and soliloquies of genuine humour, as in Richard . This character of unlaboured mirth Mr. Cooke seems entirely to pass over, and substitutes in its stead the coarse, taunting humour, and clumsy merriment, of a low-minded assassin.

3dly. His personal deformity. —When the Richard of Mr. Cooke makes allusions to his own form , they seem accompanied with unmixed distaste and pain , like some obtrusive and haunting idea—But surely the Richard of Shakespeare mingles in these allusions a perpetual reference to his own powers and capacities, by which he is enabled to surmount these petty objections; and the joy of a defect conquered , or turned into an advantage, is one cause of these very allusions, and of the satisfaction, with which his mind recurs to them. These allusions themselves are made in an ironical and good humoured spirit of exaggeration—the most bitter of them are to be found in his self-congratulating soliloquy spoken in the very moment and crisis of joyful exultation on the success of his unheard of courtship.—No partial excellence can satisfy for this absence of a just general conception —otherwise we are inclined to admit, that, in the delivery of single sentences , in a new and often felicitous light thrown upon old and hitherto misconstrued passages, no actor that we have seen has gone beyond Mr. Cooke. He is always alive to the scene before him; and by the fire and novelty of his manner, he seems likely to infuse some warm blood into the frozen declamatory stile , into which our theatres have for some time past been degenerating.

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Ever since an account of the Marquis of Exeter's Grand State Bed appeared in the fashionable world, grandeur in this article of furniture has become quite the rage. Among others the Lord Mayor feeling for the dignity of the city of London, has petitioned the Corporation for one of great splendour to be placed in the Mansion-house, at the City's expence .