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

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to "Mr David James's chick-a-leary step after sinking "The
Ugly Donkey Cart" in a Strand burlesque 11 (7 February), strutting
gait notwithstanding, The Times thought Hare's fool a "very
scholarly and accomplished person", and ^lilter, in The 'iramatic
Review, gave a description of the act or't, manner:
Could we conceive of Touchstone as a retired
cavalry major, living, say, at Bath, and given to
caustic re marks upon hie partner's bad play at
whist, this would be the figure that would present
itself. Its main feature is an abrupt nilitarism.
Touchstone hore cits, or stands and frowns severely
at the audieme, threatening any character he is
talking to with his forefinger, he shoots out his
jokes at liia like bullets, and then closes his
mouth and frowns again. Here and there, a kind of
surprised comicality appears in his face, as if he
was astonished to find himself, at his ego, playing
the fool in thio fashion.
Hare had evidently baaed his interpretation on observation of
a contemporary tvpe, and to the majority of critic© this no,3
a reprehensible "modernity", as out of olace as Standing's
comparable mistake in the recent Honco and Juliet* The Saturday
Review found him too sententious, and didiked the "thinness"
and "dryness" of the portrayal (31 January). The Aefereo
accused him of wa-Icing through hie part "in the most dismal
fashion, wit.iout so much ao a gleam of humour or brightness"
(first notice, 25 January), and The Weekly Dispatch remarked
that Touchstone uttered hie wiee sayings "as if he were inoculated
with ninetconth century pessimism" (1 I'obraary). Archer,
who found Hare lacking in "unction", suggested in :iis review
that Touchstone wac "the isoct loftily sententious of Shakespeare
'a clowns", and this vi'v; tlirov/c cone li'^lit on the expectations
that the actor tluvarted: Touchotone's manner Dhoulcl, it
seems, be sententious, but in a manner remote frora that to be
encountered in the ^nineteenth century, ic v;^s expected to be
remote and graceful, n