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Untitled Article
But if a critic demand an instance to justify all or any part of this , and require a quoted passage in which excellence and sublimity were combined ,, I will refer to one only : it may be cut as a trophy on Macready ' s monumental tomb . It is the reply to Prince Henry ' s
* Oh , that there were some virtue in my tears V in the words , ' The salt in them is hot ! " That hot salt seemed to drop on his fevered and parched vitals as he uttered the words ; he shrieked them out in the agony which the touch occasioned . The faculty of imagination ^ now infinitely more vivid , and more
rapid in its course , and bodily torture , rendering every sense a thousand times more exquisitely acute than in a state of corporeal ease , had , with the speed of light , darted and received the salthot tears , and the excruciating torture of their touch , threw forth that shriek of great agony . Then followed ,
* Within me is a hell !' Terrific was this ; it was given , in that deep groan which , as it up-heaved from the bosom , mingled in the fainter scream from the throat ; the extreme of physical pain neutralizing the power of speaking the situation and character of the suffering . Here I may ' notice a distinction which nature would have exhibited had
this internal hell' been referred to a mental instead of a physical one . This occurs in the drama frequently ; not so frequently , perhaps , in the drama ' s representatives . No scream , no shriek , no elevation , no acuteness of voice , would appear in the utterance ; all would be deep , dense , dark , hoarse , muttering ; a horror of blackness in the sound . Mr . Macready knows this , I am sure , and correctly and grandly showed his discrimination ; or , to speak more closely home , he had made the true feeling his own ; that compelled him to be ri ght ; it possessed every faculty of life and every organ of expression . I will not notice the offences of the play , as it was acted , though , by St . Patrick , there was
much offence . ' On a future day I shall ' have pleasure in discharging a duty in speaking of some whys and wherefores connected with the theatres and theatrical government . Now I must , in mercy to the reader , conclude ; but first beg leave to hint , that Bennet , as Hubert , would have pleased me vastly but
for a few touches of conventionalism , against which I entertain a cordial hate when it is resorted to merely because it is conventionalism ; and clever little Miss Poole , too , she would have looked much more beautiful if she had rubbed the rouge from her face before she came at Hubert ' s call : those red cheeks ruined her
portion of the scene—almost , not quite . Was that Faulconbridge ? And , Brindal , go on ; when your discretion has told your impulse it is correct , let the impulse have play : that touch in the fifth act was of the right breed .
Untitled Article
120 King John .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 120, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/36/
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