Acting in Europe & America in the 19th Century

Описание: England

Despite the attempts undertaken in the eighteenth century, by such actors as Macklin and Garrick, to introduce greater naturalism into the theatre, the style of most performances remained high-flown and artificial with standardised gestures. In the nineteenth century, however, theatrical tastes gradually changed. More middle-and upper-class people were going to the theatre, and a politer, more genteel style of play and performance was appreciated. The proscenium stage became the norm, with boxed sets imitating scenes from real life.

The early years of the century were still dominated by the acting styles of Sarah Siddons and her brother John Philip Kemble, but, with the advent of Edmund Kean in 1814, a more Romantic style came to prevail.

To the poet Coleridge is attributed the much-quoted comment: To see Kean was to read Shakespeare by flashes of lightning. And Byron noted in his diary: Just returned from seeing Kean in Richard. By Jove, he is a soul! Life, nature, truth without exaggeration or diminution. Leigh Hunt, the Romantic critic, commented that Kean seemed to actually know the passion he invoked: Kean knows the real thing, which is the height of the passion, manner following it as a matter of course, and grace being developed from it in proportion to the truth of the sensation…

For the critic William Hazlitt, Keans acting had the stamp and freshness of nature, and he wrote: He is possessed with a fury, a demon that leaves him no repose, no time for thought or room for imagination. Keans responses to such views of him are enlightening and have a ring of truth that doubtless applies to all good acting. He complained to the widow of Garrick that the critics were mistaken:

These people don’t understand their business; they give me credit where I don’t deserve it, and pass over the passages on which I have bestowed the utmost care and attention. Because my style is easy and natural they think I don’t study, and talk about the sudden impulse of genius. There is no such thing as impulsive acting; all is premeditated and studied beforehand. A man may act better or worse on a particular night, from particular circumstances; but although the execution may not be so brilliant, the conception is the same.

Another giant of the nineteenth century was William Charles Macready. Critics of the time noted that he reminded them of Kemble, but in speech and gesture seemed to have borrowed much from Kean. Distinctive about his style was his preference for introducing small, everyday details into highly tragic sequences. Hazlitt wrote: Mr Macready, sometimes, to express uneasiness and agitation, composes his cravat, as he would in a drawing-room. This is, we think, neither graceful nor natural in extraordinary situations. It was, however, indicative of the growing taste for realism in the theatre.

The dramatist, director and actor Tom Robertson did much to hasten the development towards a more realistic style, together with the actors Marie Wilton Bancroft and Squire Bancroft. The actor John Hare (1844–1921) wrote of Robertson: As nature was the basis of his own work, so he sought to make actors understand it should be theirs. He thus founded a school of Natural acting which completely revolutionised the then existing methods, and by so doing did incalculable good to the stage.

The last decades of the nineteenth century were dominated by the names of the great actor-managers: Sir Henry Irving, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Sir George Alexander. Irving was renowned for his idiosyncratic playing of the major Shakespeare roles and in contemporary melodramas.

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