Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

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depth in the second act - it was a huge ccnvi'.c upon which the
relatively small figures of the actors stood out, by virtue of
their exquisite costumes, in what The Illustrated London News
called "lurid relief". Approval of such statecraft was accompanied
by a suspicion that Tennyoon had contributed little to
the play's success.
If Tennyson played a minor part in the success of Tho Cup
Goethe played even less in that of the Lyceum Faust. Again,
the pictorial effects were remarkable, and r^in their tendency
was to throw the major characters into "~.urid relief". Joseph
and Elizabeth R.Pennell, the future biographers of ,/liistler,
wrote in The Century Magazine on ".The Pictorial Successes of
lir Irving's jfeuct". They dwelt on the scenery and the groupings,
"fine not only in themselves but in their harmonious relation
to the play":
For Mr Irving sees himself and I5r Alexander
[_Faust3 not only as the chief characters in the
tragedy, but as the principal figures in a
picture rich in colour, vigorous in composition.
Irving was for the most part more prominently lit than
Alexander, but "their every poce" was "a subject for a painter,
and the result of long and careful stucly"^ . lien the Brocken
Scene was introduced, some time after the beginning of the
play's run, Clement Scott described in The Illustrated London
I rows the 3; iuterly effect of Irving's Mephistoohiles:
He has nothing to say, only to look. Hiu words
are immaterial - but in that face there is a
world of mo, ninr:. No one but an imaginative
pctor could hrve conceived such a picture, or
overmostored it with such a comnanding presence.
All the preconceived vioions of "anfrcd and
Sardanapulus and Belshazzar DClo before this
extraordinary scene. In it we detect the weird
fancy of Gustave Dore, the splendid d-.-.ring and
invention of John ".artin.
(26 Pecember 1885)
Joiner to the chorus of -'--raine for the ctr.cing were two reticles
in The Art-Journal by Joseph Ilatton, p... cccntin,-- Irving
artist v/ho used the st^e as a canvas. He represented
as "unr.t n./jeable fl work, and tefended itc opiL-odic treatment at
the iiL'.ii'-'s of illc and irving - the lover of Goethe can no
more complain "than can the . tudent of History when the dr-nio.