Chapter XL: Act I

‘_There is some soul_,’ _etc._ _Henry V._, Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘_Hussey, hussey_,’ _etc._ _The Beggar’s Opera_, Act I.

‘_Cease your funning._’ _Ibid._ Act II. Sc. 2.

195. _Described by Molière._ In _La Critique de l’École des Femmes_,
Sc. 6.

_Mrs. Liston’s person._ Miss Tyer (d. 1854), who married Liston
in 1807, was of diminutive stature. She retired from the
stage when her husband left Covent Garden in 1822.

_Richard Cœur de Lion._ The version (1786) by General Burgoyne
of Sedaine’s _Richard Cœur de Lion_, produced in Paris in
1784.

_Oh, Richard!_ _etc._ This song in the original opera ‘O
Richard! O mon Roi!’ had enjoyed great popularity in France
before the Revolution.

196. _Miss Foote._ Maria Foote (1797?-1867), ‘a very pretty woman
and a very pleasing actress,’ according to Genest. Some
circumstances of her private life, alluded to by Hazlitt
elsewhere, increased her popularity with the public. She
retired in 1831, and in the same year married the fourth Earl
of Harrington.

_Amanthus._ In Mrs. Inchbald’s _Child of Nature_. ‘_Youthful
poet’s fancy_,’ _etc._ Rowe, _The Fair Penitent_, Act III.
Sc. 1.

197. _Madame Grassini._ Josephina Grassini (1773-1850), a contralto
singer who first appeared in London in 1803. Cf. De Quincey’s
_Confessions of an English Opium Eater_ (_Works_, ed. Masson,
III. 389).

_Signor Tramezzani._ A favourite Italian tenor. ‘To a beautiful
voice he joined delicate apprehension, intense feeling and
rich expression.’ (_Dictionary of Musicians_, 1824.)

‘_Might create_,’ _etc._ _Comus_, 562.

198. _The Genius of Scotland._ Hazlitt is perhaps thinking of Sir
Pertinax Macsycophant in Macklin’s _The Man of the World_,
who ‘always booed, and booed, and booed, as it were by
instinct.’ (Act III. Sc. 1.)

_M. Vestris._ _The Champion_ reads: ‘M. Vestris, who made an
able-bodied representative of _Zephyr_ in the ballet, appears
to us to be the Conway among dancers.’

_Miss O’Neill’s Juliet._ For Eliza O’Neill (1791-1872),
afterwards Lady Becher, see _The Round Table_, vol. I., note
to p. 156, and many references in the present volume.

_The Gamester_, _etc._ Edward Moore’s tragedy, first produced
in 1753.

199. _Palmer._ John Palmer (1742?-1798), ‘Plausible Jack,’ the
original Joseph Surface. See Lamb’s Essay ‘On Some of the Old
Actors.’

_Isabella._ In _Isabella; or the Fatal Marriage_ (1758),
Garrick’s version of Thomas Southerne’s _The Fatal Marriage_
(1694).

‘_Sweet is the dew_,’ _etc._ Cf. vol. I. p. 91 (_The Round
Table_).

200. ‘_And Romeo banished._’ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘_Festering in his shroud._’ _Ibid._ Act IV. Sc. 3.

‘_The last scene_,’ _etc._ In Garrick’s version (1750) of
_Romeo and Juliet_.

‘_I have forgot_,’ _etc._ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

_Mr. Jones’s Mercutio._ Richard Jones (1779-1851), known as
‘Gentleman Jones,’ a good actor of farces.

_Mr. Conway’s Romeo._ William Augustus Conway (1789-1828) first
appeared in London in 1813, when he captivated Mrs. Piozzi,
who is said to have offered to marry him. He continued to act
in London and at Bath (sometimes playing important parts)
till 1821, when he was driven from the English stage by an
anonymous attack. In 1823 he went to America where, after
acting with success and delivering religious discourses, he
drowned himself in 1828. Hazlitt has somewhat softened the
asperities of this paragraph. See _The Champion_, October 16,
1814.

‘_The very beadle_,’ _etc._ ‘A very beadle to a humorous sigh.’
_Love’s Labour’s Lost_, Act III. Sc. 1.

_Mr. Coates’s absurdities._ Robert Coates (1772-1848), the
wealthy ‘Amateur of Fashion,’ who was known as ‘Romeo Coates’
from his representations of Romeo, the first of which took
place at Bath in 1810.

_Mr. Kean’s Richard._ Drury Lane, October 3, 1814.

201. ‘_Chop off his head._’ ‘Off with his head! So much for
Buckingham!’ Act IV. Sc. 3 of Cibber’s ‘miserable medley.’
See _ante_, p. 181.

‘_I fear no uncles_,’ _etc._ _Richard III._, Act III. Sc. 1.

203. ‘_Inexplicable dumb show and noise._’ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.

_Captain Barclay._ Robert Barclay Allardice (1779-1854),
generally known as ‘Captain Barclay,’ famous for his feats of
pedestrianism, the most remarkable of which was walking one
mile in each of 1000 successive hours, which he accomplished
in the summer of 1809 at Newmarket. Bets amounting in
the aggregate to £100,000 are said to have been made in
connection with this feat.

204. ‘_With her best nurse_,’ _etc._ _Comus_, 377-80.

_Mr. Kean’s Macbeth._ November 5, 1814.

205. ‘_Real hearts_,’ _etc._ Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution
in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, II. 101).

‘_Fate and metaphysical aid._’ _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 5.

206. ‘_Direness is thus_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ Act V. Sc. 5.

‘_Troubled with thick-coming fancies._’ _Ibid._ Act V. Sc. 3.

‘_Subject_ [servile] _to all the skyey influences._’ _Measure
for Measure_, Act III. Sc. 1.

207. ‘_Lost too poorly in himself._’ _Macbeth_, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘_My way of life_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ Act V. Sc. 3.

‘_Then, oh farewell_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘_To consider too curiously._’ _Hamlet_, Act V. Sc. 1.

208. _Mr. Kean’s Romeo._ January 2, 1815.

‘_Added a cubit_,’ _etc._ _St. Matthew_, VI. 27.

‘_As musical_,’ _etc._ _Comus_, 477.

_Luke._ In Sir James Bland Burgess’s _Riches; or, The Wife and
Brother_, founded on Massinger’s _The City Madam_, and
produced in 1810.

209. _Garrick and Barry._ Garrick and Spranger Barry (1719-1777)
were rival Romeos. In 1750 the play was acted twelve
consecutive nights both at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. See
Dr. Doran’s _Annals of the English Stage_ (ed. Lowe), II.
122-3, where the remark quoted by Hazlitt is attributed to ‘a
lady who did not pretend to be a critic, and who was guided
by her feelings.’

‘_The silver sound_,’ _etc._ ‘How silver-sweet sound lovers’
tongues by night,’ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

210. ‘_What said my man_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ Act V. Sc. 3.

211. _Mrs. Beverley._ In Edward Moore’s _The Gamester_.

‘_As one_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.

l. 36. In _The Champion_ Hazlitt proceeded as follows: ‘To
return to Mr. Kean. We would, if we had any influence with
him, advise him to give one thorough reading to Shakspeare,
without any regard to the promptbook, or to his own cue, or
to the effect he is likely to produce on the pit or gallery.
If he does this, not with a view to his profession, but as a
study of human nature in general, he will, we trust, find his
account in it, quite as much as in keeping company with “the
great vulgar, or the small.”[61] He will find there all that
he wants, as well as all that he has:—sunshine and gloom,
repose as well as energy, pleasure mixed up with pain, love
and hatred, thought, feeling, and action, lofty imagination,
with point and accuracy, general character with particular
traits, and all that distinguishes the infinite variety of
nature. He will then find that the interest of _Macbeth_ does
not end with the dagger scene, and that _Hamlet_ is a fine
character in the closet, and might be made so on the stage,
_by being understood_. He may then hope to do justice to
Shakspeare, and when he does this, he need not fear but that
his fame will last.’

_Mr. Kean’s Iago._ Cf. _ante_, p. 190.

212. ‘_Hedged in_,’ _etc._ Adapted from _Hamlet_, Act IV. Sc. 5.

_In contempt of mankind._ Hazlitt refers to a passage of
Burke’s. See _Political Essays_, vol. III. p. 32 and note.

213. ‘_Play the dog_,’ _etc._ _Henry VI._, Part III., Act V. Sc. 6.

214. _Plausibility of a confessor._ _The Examiner_ has the following
note on this passage: ‘Iago is a Jesuit out of orders, and
ought to wear black. Mr. Kean had on a red coat (certainly
not “the costume of his crime,” which is hypocrisy), and
conducted the whole affair with the easy intrepidity of a
young volunteer officer, who undertakes to seduce a bar-maid
at an inn.’

214. ‘_His cue_,’ _etc._ _King Lear_, Act I. Sc. 2.

215. ‘_Who has that heart so pure_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act III. Sc.
3.

216. ‘_What a full fortune_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘_Here is her father’s house_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ Act I. Sc. 1.

_Ode to Indifference._ By Mrs. Frances Greville, Fanny Burney’s
godmother.

‘_What is the reason_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 1.

217. ‘_I cannot believe_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ Act II. Sc. 1.

‘_And yet how nature_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ Act III. Sc. 3.

‘_Nearly are allied_,’ _etc._ Dryden, _Absalom and Achitophel_,
I. 163-4.

‘_Who knows all quantities_ [qualities], _etc._ _Othello_, Act
III. Sc. 3. In _The Examiner_ the following note is appended
to this passage:—

‘If _Desdemona_ really “saw her husband’s visage in his
mind,”[62] or fell in love with the abstract idea of “his
virtues and his valiant parts,”[63] she was the only woman
on record, either before or since, who ever did so.
Shakespeare’s want of penetration in supposing that those are
the sort of things that gain the affections, might perhaps
have drawn a smile from the ladies, if honest _Iago_ had not
checked it by suggesting a different explanation. It should
seem by this, as if the rankness and gross impropriety of the
personal connection, the difference in age, features, colour,
constitution, instead of being the obstacle, had been
the motive of the refinement of her choice, and had, by
beginning at the wrong end, subdued her to the amiable
qualities of her lord. _Iago_ is indeed a most learned and
irrefragable doctor on the subject of love, which he defines
to be “merely a lust of the blood, and a permission of the
will.”[64] The idea that love has its source in moral or
intellectual excellence, in good nature or good sense, or has
any connection with sentiment or refinement of any kind, is
one of those preposterous and wilful errors, which ought to
be extirpated for the sake of those few persons who alone are
likely to suffer by it, whose romantic generosity and
delicacy ought not to be sacrificed to the baseness of their
nature, but who treading securely the flowery path, marked
out for them by poets and moralists, the licensed artificers
of fraud and lies, are dashed to pieces down the precipice,
and perish without help.’ In the following number of _The
Examiner_ (August 14, 1814) Leigh Hunt, then in Surrey Gaol,
wrote a long reply to this characteristic passage. In the
number for September 4, the dramatic critic of _The Examiner_
replied to Hazlitt’s article on the character of Iago. A
letter from Hazlitt by way of rejoinder appeared on September
11 (see Appendix to these notes). The critic replied (closing
the controversy) on September 18.

218. ‘_Oh gentle lady_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘_The milk of human kindness._’ _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 5.

‘_Least relish of salvation_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘_Oh, you are well tuned now_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act II. Sc.
1.

‘_Though in the trade of war_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ Act I. Sc. 2.

219. ‘_My noble lord_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ Act III. Sc. 3.

‘_It is not written in the bond._’ _The Merchant of Venice_,