MRS. SCOTT-SIDDONS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5004, 7 April 1877, Page 3

MRS. SCOTT-SIDDONS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. Sir, —It appears to me much to be regretted that some injudicious friend of Mrs. Siddons should, just when she is about to leave us, have provoked unpleasant recrimination and controversy. Will you give me space, as one of the public who has received much pleasure and profit from her impersonations, to set down, in a discriminating way, my unbiassed opinions. The characters in which I have seen Mrs. Siddons are the following, viz., Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Viola, Julia in “The Hunchback,” Pauline in “ The Lady of Lyons,” Eosalind, and Beatrice. As I wish to speak a little in detail of the Shaksperian character, I may say at once of the Julia and the Pauline that these—especially Pauline—were the best renderings I ever saw. In that scene of the “Lady of Lyons” where Pauline, in the cottage of Melnotte, is made aware of the stem reality of her position, the alternating emotions of pride, despair, scorn, and love, so well displaying the woman’s nature, were finely given. In all her impersonations Mrs. Siddons is conscientious, and notably so in the Shaksperian ones, in thinking nut for herself and grasping the poet’s conception. Thus her Juliet differed from and surpassed all others I have seen in this respect, that it was made girlish, even infantine. It is curious how a thing so obvious as this should, like Columbus and the egg, not be very plain till someone pointed it out. Mrs. Siddons knows that Juliet is made by Shalespere to be hardly fourteen years old, and she believes, without doubt correctly, that the interest of the story lies in the warm and passioned rush of first love in the southern maiden’s nature, a tide which with resistless power carries her swiftly out of the calm of girlhood into the troubled sea of womanhood. And here, amidst alternating storms of rapture and despair, the supreme artist, poet, or actor sways us at pleasure. In the beautiful fifth scene of the third act, where, in Juliet’s chamber, Borneo parts on going into banishment at Mantua, Mrs. Siddons far surpassed every other actress I have seen, including Miss Helen Faucit and Mias Avonia Jones. But in the grand scene, when Juliet takes the friar’s potion, I am not sure that both these ladies did not beat Mrs. Siddons. The difference of physique would to some extent account tor this. But on the whole Mrs. Siddons looks the part to the life, and I like her Juliet better than any other. In Lady Macbeth Mrs. Siddons agreeably surprised me. It is I am convinced a mistake to assume that Lady Macbeth is necessarily a woman of commanding stature and presence. Shakspere’s Lady Macbeth (whatever the Lady Macbeth of the traditional stage may be) is essentially a woman of intense mental energy ; her faculties, under the stimulus of ambition, are wound up to the highest point, and womanlike she can see nothing but the one great bad object on which for the time her soul is fixed. But, the purpose gained, the penalty is paid, and the strain of fierce and fiendish mental power kills her. Here, again, let me notice Mrs. Siddons’ conscientious study and powerful grasp of the poet’s meaning. Shakspere's supremacy over the working of the human soul was never more startlingly displayed than the way in which, by the expressions put in Lady Macbeth’s mouth in the sleep-walking scene, the abrupt utterances cast back the mind to the earlier scenes when the murder is committed; and, above all, this one —“ One, two; why, then ’tis time to do’t.” It will be recollected that, in the first scene of act 2, the striking upon the bell by Lady Macbeth is, in Macbeth’s ears the knell which summons Duncan to his doom. The poet clearly meant

that this fatal knell, thus tolled by Lady Macbeth, should echo for ever in her guilty soul. Lady Macbeth was a true woman in the utter abandonment of the hour to ambitious guilt; she is equally the woman in sinking thus helplessly and hopelessly under the consciousness of the damned guilty deed in her sinful soul. Was there ever anything in any language finer than this ? When I say that Mrs. Siddons fully grasped all this, and rendered it to me as no artist ever did before, I pay her no fulsome compliment ; I state the simple truth. Another point of the same nature was finely given when she drags her husband off to bed. This sleep-walking scene, as given by Mrs. Siddons, was in my opinion perfect. Mrs. Siddons’ great beauty and grace of feature and person stand her in good stead in such characters as Beatrice and Viola. In the former she was charmingly piquant, but I think overplayed it; the latter would, I think, in most hands have become insufferably mawkish and moonish, and from this she saved it. But of all her Shaksperian impersonations that in which, to me at least, Mrs. Siddons unmistakeably displayed genius, was Rosalind. Genius is essentially creative, and Mrs. Siddons certainly created that character for me. The play is no favorite of mine ; and I never could have believed it possible that such a perfectly beautiful and consistent representation could be made out of it. Nothing could surpass the skill with which the verve and vivacity, the maidenly coyness, and the innocent boldness, joy, grace, and love were worked up to produce this beautiful and consistent whole. I do not believe it possible for any artist to surpass this ; it was truly perfect in its kind, though that kind may not perhaps be the highest. I hope Mrs. Siddons will not be displeased if I venture to pull her slieve and whisper in her ear. I promised, you know, to discriminate. Thus, if I heard a gentleman neglecting pauses at the close of sentences, and here and there pronouncing a word in a slovenly fashion, as a certain little lady sometimes does, I should tell him he was guilty of bad enunciation and bad elocution. And if the same gentleman were to gesticulate and saw the air with his hands where not needed, as the same little lady occasionally does, I should tell him he forgot Hamlet’s instructions, and ranted. But this is a whisper, and need not be repeated. Again, let me say I hope no injudicious friend will so act as to blur the golden opinions which I fully believe Mrs. Siddons has deservedly won in Wellington.—l am, &c., Ariel. Wellington, sth April.