Cymbeline - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

annoyed him:
89.
Though there was no startling display of
genius in the performance, the acting was
on the whole equal, and exhibited talent,
unless we except the Leonatus of Phelps,
who certainly gave no interest to the part,
but acted with an inelegance the very reverse
of the character. Vandenhoff...
appeared to much greater advantage than in
Coriolanus; he had not too much to sustain,
and took great pains with the part, while
the occasional monotony of his voice did
not accord badly with his position in the
fifth act, where he is weighed down with
remorse. The difficult chamber scene he
gave with judgement.
The Sunday Times gives a more specific account of Phelps's
failings:
... he played with spirit and power, but he was
utterly deficient in those nicer touches that
make the great actor. The utter self-abandonment
to grief, the heart-brokenness of one who rested
in mind, heart, soul, all upon one loved object,
and then found (or believed; that object false -
the recklessness attendant on misplaced and blighted
affection - where, where were they? Mr. Phelps
succeeds in Sir Edmund Mortimer ^in The Iron Chest
by George Colman the younger7 and other semimelodramatic
tragic assumptions, but he cannot
sound the depths of Shakespeare - he cannot make
silent agony speak to the beholder through the
agency of his features.
This opinion of Phelps's Posthumus was repeated nine years
later by The Morning Post * s review of his performance in
his own production at Sadler's v ells:
The great scene with the wily Italian ...
lacked intention; and in the last act the
lofty bearing and the high philosophy, the
bruised heart, and the ruined soldier wooing
death as his bride, found no adequate
representative in Ar. I helps.
(The Morning Post, August 26, 1847).
.both critics seem to be reading into the role elements of
other contemporary pathetic heroes - so that what emerges