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

Ha, ha, what a fool honesty is}
I picked and cut most of their festival purees;
And had not the old man come in with a hubbub
againct his daughter and the King's con and
scared my choughs from the chaff, I had not left
a puse alive in the whole army.
(604-9)
During this, blue lime-light had begun to suffuse the stage,
DO that the end of the ccene was a mo nlit picture of Perdita
setting out to voluntary exile. Shakespeare's scene ends with
the comic optimism of the Clown and Shepherd, and their touching
faith in Autolycus as a providential figure ("He was
provided to do us good"): this was the ending retained by
diaries Kean's version, but Miss Ancurson felt much more
strongly the pathos of Perdita's t,ioption.
The second part of the play was civen, thought the
reviewer from The Marning Post• "with much more c irit than
its earlier and stronger passages", and The Dramatic Review.
whose critj.c had disliked the trial scene, allowed that with
Perdita»s appearance "a delightful change came over the scene".
The Stage, on the other hand, found her "OG: entia'.ly modern"
and Archer complained of a "clear misreading of the poet's
intention" in tlie "mystic hesitation" with which she addressed
Camillo and Polixenes in welcoming them to the feast. Fuller
Hellish*s Florizel was "ardent" but "handicapped by an unrociantic
individuality" (The Times).*- Punch found iiim "oainc;
talcing, picturesque and conscientious" - faint and unpromising
t) raise.
The scene had taken twenty-five minutes, and was followed by
twelve minutes' wait whilst its net (v;hicli took up thirty-six
feet of the stage'3 depth) wac struck and replaced. The first
scene of the final act was relatively short* -A woman's voice
was hoard sinking, and the curtain rose to reveal a room in
Leontes*G palace, where Cleomenes, Leontes, aulina and Emilia
were ^roupsa on the .ota^e-richt j the singer stood oV-;c-left.
The dialogue was r.iuch abbreviated, vdth the loss of Dion's
aurr.eotion that Leontes choald marry a^ain and P&ulina'a
insistence that he should not (24-49) and, ; non. ct other minco
details, of Florizel f s pretence that his "wife" is the dau;,:at r