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Untitled Article
vidnal , complete , and equally-sustained existence to a tjrain of other individualities ! And to such life as this what is the 4 < Revival ?"—the painted , puppet-moving , incomplete , brokenup , unequal , inharmonious representation of a mutilated playto an audience , of which half hear nothing—are not auditors ?
Drowning , with a chance of resuscitation , is a punishment which some jurists have proposed for heinous ill-doers : " Revival / ' with a chance of being murdered , and the certainty of beingj mangled , is nil the mercy likely to be allowed to the legitimate drama . " Revival ! " the word is excitive of every gradation of feeling which lies between the hateful and the ludicrous .
I have used the epithet " legitimate ; " but it is an odious and unfair distinction . All kinds of theatrical amusements , music , dancing , pantomime , feats of agility , and horsemanship —even those most ambiguous compositions , the new Haymarket farces , in which human passions are presented in
monstrous and impossible combinations—with such open licence of departure from the laws of nature , as to form a dramatic 41 grotesque "— -are capable in their kind and degree of being refined into instruments of instruction .
I propose a representation of Shakspeare ' s plays without any curtail men t— -all mere gvossness , of course , excepted . DtfatnUtic composition is necessarily elliptical . When the actor fails in the filling up of the mere visible scene , how miserable a set of half-covered dry bones are set in motion ! but when the case is aggravated by omissions of whole scenes
and half scenes—whole speeches and half speeches—to what tatters—to what very rags , is the course of a passion torn ! How much of the effect of a scene of Shakspeare is lost—escapes in pertrsal , unless the imagination be alive , alert , not only to realise the passions of the speakers , but to appreciate characteristic
silence—not only to enjoy the reflections of Friar Lawrence , but the mute admiration of the loquacious Nurse " listening to learning , " with the sort of animal enjoyment which fluent words , finely modulated , are capable of imparting even to those who are incapable of their sense . How much is lost by one who is inattentive to the gesture implied in Malcolm ' s
w What , man I Ne ' er pull your hat upon your brows "These sort of incorporated stage-directions are frequent in Shakgpeare * but always managed with consummate art—with consummate nature—^ in whicn none but a master could succeed . What a "prerogative instance" of the absurdity to which these touches of nature may be abused , is an exclamation of a character in one of Mr . Mihuan ' a dramatic poem a—
Untitled Article
624 Stage-Profanations of Shakspeare *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1836, page 624, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2662/page/36/
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