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

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A little of this goes a long ways Wills provides a good deal
of it, in the first act there is some simple and unforced
dialogue but Wills*s "fine writing** devolve* on some long
passages of unbearable sentimentality. Characteristic of these
is William*s answer to Susan's question," And you knew I was
thinking of you, and praying for you?"i
Aye, in the battle* Susan, 'mid the roar of the
big guns and the clash of cutlasses, and death
spinning and whistling about me, I thought I
heard for a moment that little whisper rising
and falling,"Sue at her bedside praying for me"
- always in danger it seemed to come. Once in
the tropics, when we manned the Captain's
cutter and got separated from the ship, we saw
a little white cloud the size of your hand, and
it rose and rose like a white horse, larger and
whiter. We reefed our sail and it was on us
with a scream - the white squall. The whote sky
seemed torn to ribbons, and the sea was crushed
flat down in foam, and we ran before it with
bare poles, like a withered leaf, every moment
seemed our last in that death 'race. So help me
God, I heard that little whisper rising and
falling, "Susan at her bedside praying for roe".,,
This is Wills, not Jerrold, and it is writing, which manages
to be self-conecious and faux-naif at one and the same time.
Like Juana's description of the landscape, it is self-contained
and has the effect of causing a halt in the progress of the
play - Wills pauses for his poetic effects*
The chief attraction of the performance was its staging,
especially that of the first two acts, which Henry James found
"as trim and tidy as a Dutch picture". But the new text was
"flat and monotonous" and resisted the attempts of Mrs Kendal
to "infuse the vital spark". James was generous in his notice,
but with reservations:
Mrs Kendal is natural and delightful; she has
the art of representing goodness and yet redeeming
it from insipidity. Mr Kendal, who plays
the high-toned and unfortunate tar, is a graceful
and gentlemanly actor, but he is not another T.P.
Cooke. He has not the breadth and body fre put t
requires, fhe play, as it now stands, is of about
the intellectual substance of a nursery rhyme.
The mise-en-scene is as usual delightful,^
Among those who regretted the passing of the broad style of
acting was the reviewer of The Era, who suggested that audiences