FullReads

A player with Jack’s talents, if we had one now, would not dare to do the part in the same manner. He would instinctively avoid every turn which might tend to unrealise, and so to make the character fascinating. He must take his cue from his spectators, who would expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as the death-beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the prints, which I am sorry to say have disappeared from the windows of my old friend Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul’s Church-yard memory–(an exhibition as venerable as the adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad and good man at the hour of death; where the ghastly apprehensions of the former,–and truly the grim phantom with his reality of a toasting fork is not to be despised,–so finely contrast with the meek complacent kissing of the rod,–taking it in like honey and butter,–with which the latter submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet with the apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies’ surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass, would not covet to meet half-way the stroke of such a delicate mower?–John Palmer was twice an actor in this exquisite part. He was playing to you all the while that he was playing upon Sir Peter and his lady. You had the first intimation of a sentiment before it was on his lips. His altered voice was meant to you, and you were to suppose that his fictitious co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all of it. What was it to you if that half-reality, the husband, was over-reached by the puppetry–or the thin thing (Lady Teazle’s reputation) was persuaded it was dying of a plethory? The fortunes of Othello and Desdemona were not concerned in it. Poor Jack has past from the stage in good time, that he did not live to this our age of seriousness. The pleasant old Teazle King, too, is gone in good time. His manner would scarce have past current in our day. We must love or hate–acquit or condemn–censure or pity–exert our detestable coxcombry of moral judgment upon every thing. Joseph Surface, to go down now, must be a downright revolting villain–no compromise–his first appearance must shock and give horror–his specious plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our fathers welcomed with such hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic harm even) could come, or was meant to come of them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real canting person of the scene–for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother’s professions of a good heart centre in downright self-satisfaction) must be loved and Joseph hated. To balance one disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King acted it) were evidently as much played off at you, as they were meant to concern any body on the stage,–he must be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an injury–a person towards whom duties are to be acknowledged–the genuine crim-con antagonist of the villanous seducer Joseph. To realise him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match must have the downright pungency of life–must (or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament would move you in a neighbour or old friend. The delicious scenes which give the play its name and zest, must affect you in the same serious manner as if you heard the reputation of a dear female friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree, and Sir Benjamin–those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your mirth–must be rippened by this hot-bed process of realization into asps or amphisbaenas; and Mrs. Candour–O! frightful! become a hooded serpent. Oh who that remembers Parsons and Dodd–the wasp and butterfly of the School for Scandal–in those two characters; and charming natural Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter part–would forego the true scenic delight–the escape from life–the oblivion of consequences–the holiday barring out of the pedant Reflection–those Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, well won from the world–to sit instead at one of our modern plays–to have his coward conscience (that forsooth must not be left for a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals–dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without repose must be–and his moral vanity pampered with images of notional justice, notional beneficence, lives saved without the spectators’ risk, and fortunes given away that cost the author nothing?