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

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sensuous, lacking the "educational" pretensions of Charles
Kean's play-bille, and making use of the new-found subtleties
of colour and psychology. Irving 1 s characters - detached,
melancholic, noble minds fallen into sin - were seen in an
eerie half-light, or were picked out by limelight from their
colourful surroundings. Nothing suggests the visual appeal and
the melancholy of the stage-pictures at their beat so well as
Ellen Terry's description of Eugene Aram, She explains that
Irvii -,..:r was fond of using a cedar tree as a symbol of Pate -
it appeared in Hamlet t among other plays:
In Eugene Aram the Pate Tree drooped low
over the graves in the churchyard. On one
of their. Henry used to be lying in a black
cloak as the curtain went up on the last
act. Not until a moonbeam struck the dark
nass did yourosethat it was a man.oq
$
ii. "Macbeth" at tlie Lyceum, December 1888,
In her autobiography Ellen Terry suggests that 'acbcth marked
an c-vDoli in the Lyceum regime:
. acbeth was the most important of all our
^roductionn, if I judge it by the amount of
preparation and thought that it cost us and by
•the discussion which it provoked., Q
•lacboth ivaa Irving's seventh Shake-'pearean production since
he ar;ou-.iod management of the theatre, being prcc. ded by i'lanlct,
The . •orcii°nt of Venice , Ot'-?! to, Pioneo and Juliet, iuch. Mo
.-boil': :-!otiling and ^welft.'.i lii^t.aa had played the title role
in 1 75 during Bateman's management, to a mixed reception -
"Mr Irving was not vheii fully accepted ae a Shakespeareon actor"
reflected .Hie '^or.'lc'.'y, in rnticination of the fortiiconiiif;
production (14 July 1888). Isnry James found the 1875 po,:-f :>rnance
unimaginative and suggestive of "a very anterior amateur"
who i:)i ;-;;lit benefit I'rom n, pro-.cr training:
In declamation he is decidedly flat; 2ii:: voice is
v-ithout chrnn, and hie utterance v.-ithout subtlety.
It v; 3 rvident that Irving had tl:-oufht out his -;
and the intoroct of hie ron^oriaf; of it lies
in oecing a sparo, refined i;i,\n, of an im-hictri^nic
- of a rat..ior oecl ntary - rrj^oc", c;a