The first quality observable in Mr. Fechter’s acting is, that it is in the highest degree romantic. However elaborated in minute details, there is always a peculiar4 dash and vigour5 in it, like the fresh atmosphere of the story whereof it is a part. When he is on the stage, it seems to me as though the story were transpiring6 before me for the first and last time. Thus there is a fervour in his love-making — a suffusion7 of his whole being with the rapture9 of his passion — that sheds a glory on its object, and raises her, before the eyes of the audience, into the light in which he sees her. It was this remarkable10 power that took Paris by storm when he became famous in the lover’s part in the Dame11 aux Camelias. It is a short part, really comprised in two scenes, but, as he acted it (he was its original representative), it left its poetic12 and exalting13 influence on the heroine throughout the play. A woman who could be so loved — who could be so devotedly14 and romantically adored — had a hold upon the general sympathy with which nothing less absorbing and complete could have invested her. When I first saw this play and this actor, I could not in forming my lenient15 judgment16 of the heroine, forget that she had been the inspiration of a passion of which I had beheld17 such profound and affecting marks. I said to myself, as a child might have said: “A bad woman could not have been the object of that wonderful tenderness, could not have so subdued18 that worshipping heart, could not have drawn19 such tears from such a lover”. I am persuaded that the same effect was wrought20 upon the Parisian audiences, both consciously and unconsciously, to a very great extent, and that what was morally disagreeable in the Dame aux Camelias first got lost in this brilliant halo of romance. I have seen the same play with the same part otherwise acted, and in exact degree as the love became dull and earthy, the heroine descended21 from her pedestal.
In Ruy Blas, in the Master of Ravenswood, and in the Lady of Lyons — three dramas in which Mr. Fechter especially shines as a lover, but notably22 in the first — this remarkable power of surrounding the beloved creature, in the eyes of the audience, with the fascination23 that she has for him, is strikingly displayed. That observer must be cold indeed who does not feel, when Ruy Blas stands in the presence of the young unwedded Queen of Spain, that the air is enchanted24; or, when she bends over him, laying her tender touch upon his bloody25 breast, that it is better so to die than to live apart from her, and that she is worthy26 to be so died for. When the Master of Ravenswood declares his love to Lucy Ashton, and she hers to him, and when in a burst of rapture, he kisses the skirt of her dress, we feel as though we touched it with our lips to stay our goddess from soaring away into the very heavens. And when they plight27 their troth and break the piece of gold, it is we — not Edgar — who quickly exchange our half for the half she was about to hang about her neck, solely28 because the latter has for an instant touched the bosom29 we so dearly love. Again, in the Lady of Lyons: the picture on the easel in the poor cottage studio is not the unfinished portrait of a vain and arrogant30 girl, but becomes the sketch31 of a Soul’s high ambition and aspiration32 here and hereafter.
Picturesqueness33 is a quality above all others pervading35 Mr. Fechter’s assumptions. Himself a skilled painter and sculptor36, learned in the history of costume, and informing those accomplishments37 and that knowledge with a similar infusion38 of romance (for romance is inseparable from the man), he is always a picture — always a picture in its right place in the group, always in true composition with the background of the scene. For picturesqueness of manner, note so trivial a thing as the turn of his hand in beckoning39 from a window, in Ruy Blas, to a personage down in an outer courtyard to come up; or his assumption of the Duke’s livery in the same scene; or his writing a letter from dictation. In the last scene of Victor Hugo’s noble drama, his bearing becomes positively40 inspired; and his sudden assumption of the attitude of the headsman, in his denunciation of the Duke and threat to be his executioner, is, so far as I know, one of the most ferociously41 picturesque34 things conceivable on the stage.
The foregoing use of the word “ferociously” reminds me to remark that this artist is a master of passionate42 vehemence43; in which aspect he appears to me to represent, perhaps more than in any other, an interesting union of characteristics of two great nations — the French and the Anglo-Saxon. Born in London of a French mother, by a German father, but reared entirely44 in England and in France, there is, in his fury, a combination of French suddenness and impressibility with our more slowly demonstrative Anglo-Saxon way when we get, as we say, “our blood up”, that produces an intensely fiery45 result. The fusion8 of two races is in it, and one cannot decidedly say that it belongs to either; but one can most decidedly say that it belongs to a powerful concentration of human passion and emotion, and to human nature.
Mr. Fechter has been in the main more accustomed to speak French than to speak English, and therefore he speaks our language with a French accent. But whosoever should suppose that he does not speak English fluently, plainly, distinctly, and with a perfect understanding of the meaning, weight, and value of every word, would be greatly mistaken. Not only is his knowledge of English — extending to the most subtle idiom, or the most recondite46 cant47 phrase — more extensive than that of many of us who have English for our mother-tongue, but his delivery of Shakespeare’s blank verse is remarkably48 facile, musical, and intelligent. To be in a sort of pain for him, as one sometimes is for a foreigner speaking English, or to be in any doubt of his having twenty synonymes at his tongue’s end if he should want one, is out of the question after having been of his audience.
A few words on two of his Shakespearian impersonations, and I shall have indicated enough, in advance of Mr. Fechter’s presentation of himself. That quality of picturesqueness, on which I have already laid stress, is strikingly developed in his Iago, and yet it is so judiciously49 governed that his Iago is not in the least picturesque according to the conventional ways of frowning, sneering50, diabolically51 grinning, and elaborately doing everything else that would induce Othello to run him through the body very early in the play. Mr. Fechter’s is the Iago who could, and did, make friends, who could dissect52 his master’s soul, without flourishing his scalpel as if it were a walking-stick, who could overpower Emilia by other arts than a sign-of-the-Saracen’s-Head grimness; who could be a boon53 companion without ipso facto warning all beholders off by the portentous54 phenomenon; who could sing a song and clink a can naturally enough, and stab men really in the dark — not in a transparent55 notification of himself as going about seeking whom to stab. Mr. Fechter’s Iago is no more in the conventional psychological mode than in the conventional hussar pantaloons and boots; and you shall see the picturesqueness of his wearing borne out in his bearing all through the tragedy down to the moment when he becomes invincibly56 and consistently dumb.
Perhaps no innovation in Art was ever accepted with so much favour by so many intellectual persons pre-committed to, and preoccupied57 by, another system, as Mr. Fechter’s Hamlet. I take this to have been the case (as it unquestionably was in London), not because of its picturesqueness, not because of its novelty, not because of its many scattered58 beauties, but because of its perfect consistency59 with itself. As the animal-painter said of his favourite picture of rabbits that there was more nature about those rabbits than you usually found in rabbits, so it may be said of Mr. Fechter’s Hamlet, that there was more consistency about that Hamlet than you usually found in Hamlets. Its great and satisfying originality60 was in its possessing the merit of a distinctly conceived and executed idea. From the first appearance of the broken glass of fashion and mould of form, pale and worn with weeping for his father’s death, and remotely suspicious of its cause, to his final struggle with Horatio for the fatal cup, there were cohesion61 and coherence62 in Mr. Fechter’s view of the character. Devrient, the German actor, had, some years before in London, fluttered the theatrical63 doves considerably64, by such changes as being seated when instructing the players, and like mild departures from established usage; but he had worn, in the main, the old nondescript dress, and had held forth65, in the main, in the old way, hovering66 between sanity67 and madness. I do not remember whether he wore his hair crisply curled short, as if he were going to an everlasting68 dancing-master’s party at the Danish court; but I do remember that most other Hamlets since the great Kemble had been bound to do so. Mr. Fechter’s Hamlet, a pale, woebegone Norseman with long flaxen hair, wearing a strange garb69 never associated with the part upon the English stage (if ever seen there at all) and making a piratical swoop70 upon the whole fleet of little theatrical prescriptions71 without meaning, or, like Dr. Johnson’s celebrated72 friend, with only one idea in them, and that a wrong one, never could have achieved its extraordinary success but for its animation73 by one pervading purpose, to which all changes were made intelligently subservient74. The bearing of this purpose on the treatment of Ophelia, on the death of Polonius, and on the old student fellowship between Hamlet and Horatio, was exceedingly striking; and the difference between picturesqueness of stage arrangement for mere75 stage effect, and for the elucidation76 of a meaning, was well displayed in there having been a gallery of musicians at the Play, and in one of them passing on his way out, with his instrument in his hand, when Hamlet, seeing it, took it from him, to point his talk with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
This leads me to the observation with which I have all along desired to conclude: that Mr. Fechter’s romance and picturesqueness are always united to a true artist’s intelligence, and a true artist’s training in a true artist’s spirit. He became one of the company of the Theatre Francais when he was a very young man, and he has cultivated his natural gifts in the best schools. I cannot wish my friend a better audience than he will have in the American people, and I cannot wish them a better actor than they will have in my friend.
The End
点击收听单词发音
1 distinguished | |
adj.卓越的,杰出的,著名的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 appreciation | |
n.评价;欣赏;感谢;领会,理解;价格上涨 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 acting | |
n.演戏,行为,假装;adj.代理的,临时的,演出用的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 vigour | |
(=vigor)n.智力,体力,精力 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 transpiring | |
(事实,秘密等)被人知道( transpire的现在分词 ); 泄露; 显露; 发生 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 suffusion | |
n.充满 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8 fusion | |
n.溶化;熔解;熔化状态,熔和;熔接 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9 rapture | |
n.狂喜;全神贯注;着迷;v.使狂喜 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11 dame | |
n.女士 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12 poetic | |
adj.富有诗意的,有诗人气质的,善于抒情的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13 exalting | |
a.令人激动的,令人喜悦的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14 devotedly | |
专心地; 恩爱地; 忠实地; 一心一意地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
15 lenient | |
adj.宽大的,仁慈的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
16 judgment | |
n.审判;判断力,识别力,看法,意见 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
17 beheld | |
v.看,注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 );瞧;看呀;(叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现)哎哟 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
18 subdued | |
adj. 屈服的,柔和的,减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
19 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
20 wrought | |
v.引起;以…原料制作;运转;adj.制造的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
21 descended | |
a.为...后裔的,出身于...的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
22 notably | |
adv.值得注意地,显著地,尤其地,特别地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
23 fascination | |
n.令人着迷的事物,魅力,迷恋 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
24 enchanted | |
adj. 被施魔法的,陶醉的,入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
25 bloody | |
adj.非常的的;流血的;残忍的;adv.很;vt.血染 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
26 worthy | |
adj.(of)值得的,配得上的;有价值的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
27 plight | |
n.困境,境况,誓约,艰难;vt.宣誓,保证,约定 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
28 solely | |
adv.仅仅,唯一地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
29 bosom | |
n.胸,胸部;胸怀;内心;adj.亲密的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
30 arrogant | |
adj.傲慢的,自大的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
31 sketch | |
n.草图;梗概;素描;v.素描;概述 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
32 aspiration | |
n.志向,志趣抱负;渴望;(语)送气音;吸出 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
33 picturesqueness | |
参考例句: |
|
|
34 picturesque | |
adj.美丽如画的,(语言)生动的,绘声绘色的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
35 pervading | |
v.遍及,弥漫( pervade的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
36 sculptor | |
n.雕刻家,雕刻家 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
37 accomplishments | |
n.造诣;完成( accomplishment的名词复数 );技能;成绩;成就 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
38 infusion | |
n.灌输 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
39 beckoning | |
adj.引诱人的,令人心动的v.(用头或手的动作)示意,召唤( beckon的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
40 positively | |
adv.明确地,断然,坚决地;实在,确实 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
41 ferociously | |
野蛮地,残忍地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
42 passionate | |
adj.热情的,热烈的,激昂的,易动情的,易怒的,性情暴躁的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
43 vehemence | |
n.热切;激烈;愤怒 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
44 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
45 fiery | |
adj.燃烧着的,火红的;暴躁的;激烈的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
46 recondite | |
adj.深奥的,难解的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
47 cant | |
n.斜穿,黑话,猛扔 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
48 remarkably | |
ad.不同寻常地,相当地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
49 judiciously | |
adv.明断地,明智而审慎地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
50 sneering | |
嘲笑的,轻蔑的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
51 diabolically | |
参考例句: |
|
|
52 dissect | |
v.分割;解剖 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
53 boon | |
n.恩赐,恩物,恩惠 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
54 portentous | |
adj.不祥的,可怕的,装腔作势的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
55 transparent | |
adj.明显的,无疑的;透明的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
56 invincibly | |
adv.难战胜地,无敌地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
57 preoccupied | |
adj.全神贯注的,入神的;被抢先占有的;心事重重的v.占据(某人)思想,使对…全神贯注,使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
58 scattered | |
adj.分散的,稀疏的;散步的;疏疏落落的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
59 consistency | |
n.一贯性,前后一致,稳定性;(液体的)浓度 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
60 originality | |
n.创造力,独创性;新颖 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
61 cohesion | |
n.团结,凝结力 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
62 coherence | |
n.紧凑;连贯;一致性 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
63 theatrical | |
adj.剧场的,演戏的;做戏似的,做作的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
64 considerably | |
adv.极大地;相当大地;在很大程度上 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
65 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
66 hovering | |
鸟( hover的现在分词 ); 靠近(某事物); (人)徘徊; 犹豫 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
67 sanity | |
n.心智健全,神智正常,判断正确 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
68 everlasting | |
adj.永恒的,持久的,无止境的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
69 garb | |
n.服装,装束 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
70 swoop | |
n.俯冲,攫取;v.抓取,突然袭击 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
71 prescriptions | |
药( prescription的名词复数 ); 处方; 开处方; 计划 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
72 celebrated | |
adj.有名的,声誉卓著的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
73 animation | |
n.活泼,兴奋,卡通片/动画片的制作 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
74 subservient | |
adj.卑屈的,阿谀的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
75 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
76 elucidation | |
n.说明,阐明 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |