COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE. |
| An experiment, and not a remarkably
successful one, as the emptiness of the house incontestably
proved; was last night essayed here. The tragedy of Othello
was performed, the part of the Moor by an individual, of Negro
origin, as his features sufficiently testify, who calls himself
Aldridge, and who has been facetiously nick-named "the
African Roscius." Such an exhibition is well enough at
Sadler's Wells, or at Bartholomew fair, but it certainly is
not very creditable to a great national establishment. We could
not perceive any fitness which Mr. Aldridge possessed for the
assumption of one of the finest parts that was ever imagined
by Shakspeare, except, indeed, that he could play it in his
own native hue, without the aid of lampblack or pomatum, just
as Stephen Kemble was, by nature, enabled to personate Falstaff
without the ordinary stuffing; but Mr. Kemble's Falstaff, notwithstanding
his ready-made obesity, was miserably deficient in humour; and
Mr. Aldridge's Othello, with all the advantage of "hic
niger est," wanted spirit and feeling. His accent
is unpleasantly, and we would say, vulgarly foreign; his manner,
generally, drawling and unimpressive; and when, by chance (for
chance it is, and not judgment), he rises to a higher strain,
we perceive in the transition the elevation of rant, not the
fiery dignity of soul-felt passion. His performance in the third
act - that overpowering act - was weak. The "vale!"
which is music in itself when delivered by an actor of even
ordinary voice and judgment, was miserably feeble. A few plaudits
followed it, but "the judicious grieved." Much praise
has been given to Shakspeare for the arguments which Iago adduces
to prove that nothing but a light, fickle constitution - a hankering
after novelty - could ever have induced so fair and gentle a
creature as Desdemona to view the Moor with the feelings of
love. The performance of last night was a keenly illustrative
comment upon that point. Well might Desdemona's father imagine
that sorcery, and not nature, had caused his daughter to listen
to such a wooer. It is, however, our duty to state that Mr.
Aldridge was extremely well received. He "fit audience
found, though few." Mr Warde's Iago evinced far more than
an average portion of merit, but, like almost all whom we have
seen in the character, he allowed the villainy of Iago to appear
too much on the surface. Iago should |
"Look like th' innocent flow'r, |
"But be the serpent under it." |
| He is such a consummate and habitual deceiver, that in one
or two of his soliloquies he even attempts to deceive himself.
We were greatly pleased with Miss E. Tree's Desdemona. In the
early scenes her manner, playful, delicate, confiding, was quite
in unison with the feelings of one to whom the annoyances of
life were as yet unknown; but the picture changes; and the harrowing
grief which the altered temper of the Moor creates was described
by Miss E. Tree with painful fidelity. Her acting was very beautiful
in the scene where, in contradiction to the Moor's most rudely-couched
accusation, she asseverates her innocence. |
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