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Untitled Article
an exhibition of reckless and ferocious tyranny . The error , however ,, to which such an one is most liable , is in taking his first impressions of the acting of a character as the standard by which he ought to estimate all future representations of the same ; especially when playhouse applause or public report , not less frequently ill-adjudged than fairly awarded ,, has stamped the
actor with a tower mark' of current excellence . He will condemn another who shall give a picture unlike the first he saw , or finding in it a resemblance to his favourite , the aforesaid first , will wisely detect a mere imitation ; and either of the seconclusions may be erroneous . Nevertheless , he has seen the play ; and among the barren-thoughted , the merely curious of this class , are many to whom such seeing is a qualification for criticism : as those who take a trip to Brighton will return to London and talk of the < vast ocean' with as much profundity of wisdom as if they had fathomed its lowest bed , or traversed its furthest remotenesses .
Still each and all will enjoy an instructive delight for the price they pay for admission to a theatre when one of Shakspeare ' s dramas is performed . There is a fourth class distinct from all the former , although , like the second , one of this class marshals under his mind's eye the scenes , actions , movements of the beings whose thoughts , purposes , and sensations his body ' s eye peruses on the figured page ; equally with the first he is susceptible of poetic beauties and expressive forms of speech , and the philosophic or literary
spirit which awakes his desire , and kindles his admiration as he hears them from living lips . Yet must he hear them with truth ' s and passion ' s soul-convincing tones : to him a barren declamation is barren—it is unendurable ; and to him no orderly-marshalled emphases , no liquidity of undulation , no accurately-balanced cadence , and crescendo floatings , and measured mellowness of modulation , will compensate for the absence of nature ' s true eloquence : which absence his ear and heart detect immediately ;
and ' sweetness of tone , ' when the feeling does not give such a tone , is to him as harsh as saw-grinding , or the wheezing of a dry pump-valve . With the readiest and the warmest of the third class , also , his sympathies arise with the tale , and flow with the exhibited feelings before him ; but he will hear with indifference many things which receive their and the whole theatre ' s loudest
acclamations , and be enraptured with others which pass unnoticed by the multitude . Each passion and emotion touches a responding chord in his own frame , and his reason pays approving homage to the judgment of his senses . But , beyond all these , he holds at will a metempsychosis , which being , perhaps , unappreciable by , inconceivable to , the other classes , will be doubted , unrecognised by them ; or with some will be stoutly denied , if it attract their attention further than a laugh of ridicule . Yet I incline to the belief , that though it is unexercised by , and un-
Untitled Article
112 Readers of Sh akspeare .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 112, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/28/
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