Kurzbeschreibung von: H.B. Irving

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HENRY IRVING Lyceum Theatre, October 31, 1874 THE History of Hamlet," says an eloquent critic, "is like that of Macbeth, a story of moral poisoning." The subtle analysis of Goethe, the brilliant peroration of M. Taine, the scholarly criticisms of William Hazlitt, unanimously confirm this verdict. It is Goethe who tells us of the brilliant youth, a lover of art, beloved by his father, enamoured of the purest and most confiding maiden, who has perceived?from the height of j the throne to which he was born?nothing but the beauty, happiness, and grandeur, both of Nature and humanity. It is Goethe who paints for us the fall of misfortune upon this sensitive soul. M. Taine, with the passionate style and antithesis of his nation, whirls us along through all the stages of the moral disease, admitting the feigned madness, but insisting upon the ethical disturbance of Hamlet's mind, which, "as a door whose hinges are twisted, swings and bangs with every wind with a mad haste and a discordant noise." William Hazlitt is so much in love with the beauty of Shakespeare's picture that he would not have the character acted. He says there is no play that suffers so much in being transferred to the stage. He has seen Mr. Kean and Mr. Kemble; but the English critic refuses to be satisfied. He insists that " there should be as much of the gentleman and scholar infused intothe part, and as little of the actor"! Such criticisms as these are of the highest value as guides to the consideration of the Hamlet of Henry Irving, and to the previous history of the actor who has determined to realise his highest intellectual effort in the exhibition of moral poison. When we come to think of it, is it not true that the study, the experiences, and the peculiar influence of Mr. Irving's art tend in t...