File:Shakespeare on the stage (1911) (14781561241).jpg

Identifier: shakespeareonsta01wint (find matches)
Title: Shakespeare on the stage
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Winter, William, 1836-1917
Subjects: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 Actors Actresses
Publisher: New York, Moffat, Yard and Company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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not unjust to hismemory to say that his intellectuality exceeded histenderness. Writing in 1835 Macready made thiscomment on his Othello: I do not find that I yetgive that real pathos and terrible fury which belongto the character, and also he described his persona-tion as elaborate but not abandoned. The part hadthen been included in his repertory for nineteen years.His make-up for Othello was Venetian and correct.Othello is not only an officer in the military serviceof the Venetian government, but he has abjuredthe religion of Mahomet and become a Christian.There can be no question as to the costume thathe should wear, and Macready was too much ascholar and thinker and too scrupulous an executantto have made a mistake as to Othellos raiment.Hazlitt, generally a discriminative but sometimesa splenetic, censorious critic, tartly remarked (1816),relative to Charles Mayne Young and Macready,who were then acting together in this tragedy, andalternating the two great parts, that Young, in
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J^/o»i a photograph by Biailj EDWIX FORREST AS OTHELLO OTHELLO 261 Othello, was like a great humming-top, and Macready,in lagOj like a mischievous boy whipping him. Thegreatness of Macreadys acting was exhibited in thethrilling revealment of MachetJis agonized andhaunted soul, and in the full denotement of the terrificfrenzy of King Lear, but not in Othello,—his per-formance of which, nevertheless, gained praise forcondensation of vigorous utterance and masculineexpression. Samuel Phelps, while he seems to have followed ina conventional track when acting Othello, seems like-wise to have given a judicious, potent, and effectiveperformance. He followed old stage traditions incausing Othello to strangle Desdemona behind cur-tains, in an alcove at the back of the closing scene. AnEnglish critic, of judgment and taste, F. C. Tomlins(he died in 1867), wrote, of Phelpss Othello: Thegreat and pathetic speech of the Farewell was givenwith consummate art and force; the images rose oneafter t

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