The Play
Skinner, R. Dana
October 28, I925 THE COMMONWEAL 623 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER zt Triumphant Hamlet S MALL wonder that Walter Hampden can make the song of Cyrano penetrate to the innermost castles of...
...and he had held it Not famous or illustrious to abide On woman's maintenance...
...There were many reasons--all of the surface--why Hamp- den's production of Hamlet should be one of the outstanding occasions of the theatrical year...
...They lack the vitality of Mr...
...At this point, Mr...
...In Selecting Your Plays (The following list includes all plays reviewed in The C.om.monweal--fa~:orably or othem~e--whleh are still playmg m New York...
...Hampden's acting it can be said that he fully carries out the new purpose and nobility he has discovered in Hamlet's character...
...Even Goethe insists on the moral tragedy of Hamlet...
...Nothing more fragile nor more delicately representative of the soul figure of Hamlet has probably passed before us than the vision created by Miss Barrymore...
...The Butter and Egg Man---Mostly good comedy spoiled by occasional offensively bad taste...
...In Lady Gregory's beautiful rendering of the Gods and Fighting Men and Cuchulain of Muirthemne, we were presented with a dramatis personae quite difficult enough for non-Gaelic tongues, and now again Miss Mary A. Hut'ton presents us with another recension in which we are confronted with an entirely different set of spellings...
...Arlen's weak-willed heroine obscured by the glamor of Katherine Cornelrs all-too-good acting...
...Hampden introduces his new theme...
...The battle and the achievement of Hampden for recognition and his rightful place in the American theatre have the quality of an epic and the romance of a French "chanson de geste...
...Hampden plays it, the story unfolds itself in this fashlon--Hamlet is called upon by his father's ghost to be the avenger of his own mother's sin...
...We often forget, I think, Hamlet's conversation with Ho-ratio when he tells as clearly as English can assert that his conscience is clear and that he can no longer be assailed with doubt...
...Is Zat So?--The best character comedy of the year, hung on a poor plot...
...Hay Fever T HIS latest play by Noel Coward, the author of The Vortex, is a good example of mechanical skill minus in- spiration...
...Miss Laura Hope Crews, Mr...
...Hampden, braving the bulwarks of tradition, has found a different meaning and has substantiated it so well by his use of texts generally omitted, that one feels, at his per- formance, a sense of glorious discovery, and the conviction that here, at last, is the theme which resolves what older critics have always called the contradictions of Hamlet's character...
...For the possession of this great bull of Cooley, begins the tangled struggle of the story of genealogies, hatreds, rivalries and friendships of the Gaelic chiefs and families...
...There is a moment in the death of Hamlet--an unforgettable mo-ment-when Mr...
...The Green Hat--Mr...
...Anderson and Stallings, two dra- matists in search of a play...
...But the play sags heavily at times, due chiefly, I think, to poor direction...
...The Vortex--Starts anywhere and ends nowhere, but has good theatrical quality in two scenes...
...Findbenna, 'White-horned'm This was his name, and he had been calved indeed By a cow mid Maev's own herds...
...T O every lover of the old folk-lore of Ireland, there must have often come the devout wish that some congress of scholars and literary men might convene in Dublin and settle, once for all, the question of a literary form for the personal and place names in early Irish literature...
...BOOKS The Tdin, by Mary A. Hutton...
...Arms and the Man.--Splendidly acted revival of Shaw's pleasantest comedy...
...But in doing this, it achieves the redemption of his soul...
...Accused~A fine Belasco cast, headed by E. H. Sothern, in an absorbing play of Brieux's...
...He reminds us that Hamlet, with no indecision what- ever, kills Polonious thinking he is the king...
...She has achieved here something of rare beauty and simplicity, something which her most unreasoning admirers would hardly have dared to expect...
...But this is a strengthening which future productions and future years--for this Hamlet is plainly destined to be a growing and enlarging figure on our American stage--can achieve...
...Hampden's own thought...
...Ophelia in death achieves something of the beauty and significance of Beatrice, the one whom Hamlet's soul has always loved and who has been rejected only by "this machlne"--as he tells her in his letter--when the machine of human reason itself was befogged by cross purposes...
...Stolen Fruit--ln which Ann Harding achieves greatness and lifts a good play to distinction...
...Hampden has shown us Horatio in the sense that Dante shows us Virgil...
...But even at this point, there is no flinching in his purpose to dis- cover whether the ghost is a good or an evil spirit, whether the terrible thing he is called upon to do is the prompting of truth or of falsehood...
...Gavin Muir, and Mr...
...Too much x-office blasphemy...
...In his moments of torture there is a surging from the knotted heat of passion to the aftermath of languor that carries along the action with a majestic cadence...
...Hay Fever is only slightly more stimulating than its name...
...First of all, there was the association of Ethel Barrymore with the new Hampden The- atre...
...Albert Bruning displays in his admirable Polonius...
...Harry Daven- port carry the burden of this thin comedy by some very clever work as the actress, her son and her husband, respectively...
...But the various week-end guests who find themselves casually assembled on this occasion are less adept and have in conse-quence about as uncomfortable a time as four human beings could crowd into twenty-four hours...
...There is too much of the stately and artificial older tradition in the other characters...
...The Buccaneer--Messrs...
...The Pelican--Well acted, well constructed, play on a thin and unpersuasive motive...
...Perhaps this explains why he has given us in Hamlet an heroic and triumphant figure rather than the tragedy of an enchained will...
...The scene at the grave thus assumes a new symbolic importance...
...They don't find it...
...From the moment of the playlet, he brings before us a figure of power and maturity, of inflexible will'and of superb de-tachment...
...Hampden had come be- fore the curtain and told his audience that he was presenting them with the life of a hero rather than with a tragedy of defeat, he could hardly have made plainer or more pointed the story which he unfolded...
...The last scene of the duel "shuffles of[ the mortal coils" of the man whose life has now been dedicated...
...Oh, Mama!--The wrong kind of French farce...
...his descent was traced from two venomous enemies, swine-herds--"After their being swine-herds they were birds, Old ravens-And after being birds they were huge beasts Who dwelt beneath the oceans and the waters-They left that river and became two warriors There on the shore before themu Till they became two stags who fought, and then Two towering haughty phantoms--next they rose, Rising into the heavens: and midst the clouds Became two dragons who sent wondrous showers Of heavy snow--they fell Out of the air and went into the shape Of little water-worms, with every color Shining upon them~ Lastly those swine-herds are these two huge bulls Namely, Findbenna and the Donn of Cooley Wondrous for forms and powers...
...Outside Looking/n--The hobo empire at its best and worst --marred by wholly unnecessary blasphemy...
...The king and queen particularly could be made characters of startling reality through something of the insight which Mr...
...Of Mr...
...I should like to see more of this spirit reflected in the pro- duction as a whole...
...the pastoral char- acter of life, the measuring of possessions in herds and flocks...
...The detail reveals its primitive origins at every turn...
...Hampden raises his eyes as if beholding a supernatural vision, holds up his hand as if yearning for final release, and then falls back--a spiritual conqueror...
...Whatever its defects and whatever the futility of the theme of The Vortex, it at least showed unmistakably the theatrical vitality which comes from strong feeling at the time of writing...
...It is rather typical of the whole play that the four guests make their escape from the house during the height of a family squabble and that their departure is only noticed when it has become a fact of history...
...We also forget the almost mystical sense in which Horatio is a figure of human reason, of its power and of its limits...
...One yearns at times for the deeper note which would seem to come from the centre of things and to make the soul of Ophelia something of power as well as pathos...
...The Poor Nut--One good hippodrome scene and little else...
...lo/6...
...As one recalls in memory interpretations such as that of Forbes Robertson, and more recently of John Barrymore, or scans the long tradition built up by the older tragedians, there is a singular persistency in the idea that Hamlet remains de- feated to the end...
...Then, too, there was the romantic fact that Mr...
...In conclusion, is this not the moment to pay the tribute of greatness to the actor, the manager, and the romantic leader who has won success almost single-handed and through his art has been able to give us a Cyrano with the pathos of a 624 THE COMMONWEAL October 28, I925 Hamlet and a Hamlet with the courageous heroism of a Cyrano...
...But I imagine that whatever reasons may have at-tracted the audience this first night, there were many who left with the conviction that they had witnessed something very rich and startling and probably new in the long history of Shakespeare's greatest drama...
...Hampden has not yet carried into the ensemble of the play...
...Applesauce--Amusing characterization in a comedy of smalltown life...
...If the world is to accept these old stories and sagas of the north, if names like Cuchullin, Deirdre and Findabar are to come into the myth- ological lore of general literature, we should have some as-surance, some authority from the experts on these questions...
...Doctor Samuel Johnson was so puzzled by the complexities of the young prince's character that he frankly gave his preference to the far simpler tragedy of Othello...
...Hamp- den now has a theatre of his own, bearing his own name, and setting the seal upon his hard and brave battle of the last decade...
...Dublin: The Talbot Press...
...But in her quality of voice there remains, as always, a sense of the surface of things rather than of the depths--an unoffensive but monotonous note which stirs one as little as the ripples on a pond...
...Her husband, a novelist, her son, an artist, and her daughter, a frank and energetic young person are quite accustomed to the business of playing up to their mother on every occasion and entering into her innocent scheme of home-made dramatics...
...and he had gone, Till he was o'er the herds owned by the king---" This was the great bull of Cooley, the cause of dissension between Queen Maev and her husband Alyill, who start the story of the T~iin with a dispute over their individual possessions and dignities...
...It is nothing more than the story of a week-end in the country home of an English actress who can never resist the temptation of dramatizing every situation in her life...
...Again I hazard this little suggestion to Irish scholars in the hope that they will regard it as not untimely or too vulgarly practical...
...He reminds us again, by the use of the complete text, that Hamlet is sent to England immediately upon the discovery of the body of Pol- onius-in other words, that Hamlet had no physical opportun- ity to carry out his vengeance on the king until his return from England naked and alone, shorn of all weapons by the attack of the pirates...
...Hamlet must go down into the grave himself (like Everyman after his pilgrimage) before the com- pletion of his final act...
...If Mr...
...Yet Mr...
...There remains for discussion the Ophelia of Miss Barrymore...
...They Knew What They WantedJSin, punishment and forveness in swift and powerful sequence...
...These Charming People--Cyril Maude and Edna Best tip- toeing on Arlen ddbris...
...What he has achieved in the personal figure of Hamlet, Mr...
...It is one of the indications of the immense antiquity of this poem that the genealogy of this bull presents such strange transmigrations...
...Then comes the moment of the playlet and the completion of the evidence which Hamlet has been build- ing up...
...Hay Fever, by contrast, is a meticulous little comedy of English character written, one might imagine, as an amusing stunt and dependent entirely upon rapid dialogue and the invincible humor of human nature laid bare...
...I remember the shrug of horror with which a distinguished Irish poet re-ceived my suggestion that he might prepare some little book or catechism of personal and place names and explanations of literary allusions in this Gaelic literature, for the use of admirers and students...
...The Gorilla--The best spoofing of mystery plays in many a day...
...At first he is torn by all the doubts and the agony which uncertainty can create...
...White Cargo--Only if you llke to be harrowed to no purpose...
...As Mr...
...October 28, I925 THE COMMONWEAL 623 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER zt Triumphant Hamlet S MALL wonder that Walter Hampden can make the song of Cyrano penetrate to the innermost castles of our hearts when he has in himself so much of the gallant audacity of Rostand's hero...
Vol. 2 • October 1925 • No. 25
