Cymbeline - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

146.
them:
To appreciate to its full extent the value of
Mias Fauclt's triumph, it is necessary to
recur to the fact that to the multitude
Cymbeline is not a known play. The audience
have not, as in the case of Othello or Hamlet.
their regular cues for applause, which they
can follow with the regularity of an actor who
is guided by the last lines of the preceding
speaker. With many plays traditions may do
much. It is commanding excellence alone that
could have secured to Miss Paucit the enthusiastic
applause she received on Monday last.
(The Saturday Review. Oct.22, 1864)
This was the general opinion of the press: The Art Journal
after expressing the wish that tiere were means of perpetuating
Helen Faucit's attitudeB. went on to reflect with
compliment to her art,
this is indeed impossible, for she xiever poses
for effect nor dwells upon an attitude - each
position seemin0 to be the accident of the
minute, and yet no attitude is capable of
improvement.
In these details she was what the Illustrated London ^ ews
called "a lady ... who in all her impersonations regards
and realises the ideal of character."
The most remarkable of these coups de theatre was
Imogen's indignant rebuttal of lachimo: as the Saturday
Review expressed it,
However admirable a performance may be, some
one salient point is always requisite to convert
quiet approbation into demonstrative sympathy.
This point in Cymbeline was the sudden indignation
of Imogen, when lachimo's false reports of the
infidelity of losthumus are followed by an attempt
on her honour.