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Passion Framed by Art: Helen Faucit's Juliet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

Carol J. Carlisle
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Extract

A Victorian actress who undertook the part of Shakespeare's Juliet was faced with a paradoxical situation typical of her age: the role offered her a chance to create two effects that had tremendous appeal to her audience — ecstatic love and gothic horror — yet she could not take full advantage of her opportunities without risking some critical condemnation. Among the actresses who successfully exploited the possibilities without being caught in the pitfalls was Helen Faucit, who chose Juliet for her “first appearance on any stage” in 1833 and continued to act it until her last professional engagement in 1871. Because Miss Faucit was particularly skillful in resolving the problems I have mentioned, her Juliet offers an interesting study in technique. I propose, first, to discuss the problems themselves, then to describe two closely-related methods by which Helen Faucit dealt with them, and, finally, to illustrate her use of these methods in several major scenes.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , November 1984 , pp. 177 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1984

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References

NOTES

1 Faucit, Helena, Martin, Lady, On Some of Shakespeare's Female Characters, new and enl. [4th] ed. (Edinburgh, 1891), pp. 4Google Scholar (Satan, Ophelia), 89 (Juliet), 92 (“Darkness”).

2 See Prof. Booth, 's essay “Melodramatic Acting,” in the appendix to his English Melodrama (London: Herbert Jenkins, c. 1965), pp. 190–210Google Scholar. The quotation is from p. 208.

3 Morning Chronicle, 28 01 1836Google Scholar (does not “care a straw”); Examiner, 31 01 1836Google Scholar (intention of tragedy); Martin, Helena F., p. 295Google Scholar (Charles Kemble's advice).

4 SirMartin, Theodore, Helena Faucit (Lady Martin) (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1900), pp. 75–76Google Scholar. This advice is found in a list of nine rules of good acting, headed “Remember,” that Martin found among his wife's papers after her death. The rules were written in her hand and dated 20 Apr. 1840. Although Martin did not attribute them to Macready, I think they were based, partially if not wholly, on a list the great actor had drawn up for her a little earlier. Christopher Murray argues that they are identical with that list. See “Macready, Helen Faucit, and Acting Style,” Theatre Notebook, 23 (1968), 21–25.Google Scholar

5 Kenrick, Thomas, ed., The British Stage and Literary Cabinet, 46 (10 1820), 293.Google Scholar

6 Times, 19 01 1832.Google Scholar

7 For example, when Macready, as the diabolical Spinola in Nina Sforza, froze the blood of his spectators by standing over his dying enemy, whom he had driven to suicide, and contemptuously flicking aside his victim's clothing so as to gloat over the misery in his face. There were hisses from the audience, but, as one critic remarked, they were a tribute to Macready's superb acting. Even so, the reviewers, while praising the actor's skill, used words like “revolting” to describe his business, and one of them expressed the hope that in future he would “aim at exciting nobler and more healthful emotions.” See Athenaeum, 6 11 1841, p. 860Google Scholar; also Times, 2 11 1841Google Scholar; Morning Chronicle, 2 11 1841Google Scholar; and Spectator, 6 11 1841, pp. 1071–72.Google Scholar

8 Unfavorable quotations are from Morning Post, 25 04 1843Google Scholar, and Morning Herald, 25 04 1843Google Scholar. The favorable one is from Sunday Times, 30 04 1843Google Scholar. For reviews complimenting Miss Faucit on her success in a difficult character see Examiner, 29 04 1843Google Scholar, and Bell's Life in London, 30 04 1843.Google Scholar

9 Trollope, Anthony, The Small House at Allington (New York, 1892), III, 272–73.Google Scholar

10 For Portia see [Juliet Creed,] Pollock, Lady, Macready as I Knew Him (London, 1884), pp. 37–38Google Scholar. For Miss O'Neill's Juliet see Macready's Reminiscences and Selections from His Diaries, ed. SirPollock, Frederick (London, 1875), I, 97.Google Scholar

11 From Miss Kemble's letter to George Combe, written 7 Sept. 1830, quoted in Fanny, the American Kemble: Her Journals and Unpublished Letters, ed. Wister, Fanny Kemble (Tallahassee: South Pass Press, 1972), p. 46.Google Scholar

12 Martin, Helena F., p. 118.Google Scholar

13 Morning Chronicle, 5 03 1858.Google Scholar

14 Pall Mall Gazette, 8 04 1865.Google Scholar

15 Helena Faucit, p. 264.Google Scholar

16 Martin, Helena F., pp. 116–17.Google Scholar

17 Martin, Helena F., pp. 107–10, 153Google Scholar. Helen Faucit's experimentation with the text is reflected in her two extant promptbooks of Romeo and Juliet. The earlier one (Folger Library ROM 8), labeled in her hand “1st book Helen Faucit,” is a Cumberland acting edition with the “Garrick ending” — that is, Garrick's revision of the tomb scene followed by a brief portion of Shakespeare's long denouement. The second one (Folger Library ROM 9) is based on Charles Knight's edition of Romeo and Juliet, with cuts made in Helen Faucit's hand. The first promptbook has a number of handwritten restorations of Shakespearean lines, and it also shows that at some time before Miss Faucit stopped using this promptbook she struck out the Garrick additions to the tomb scene. The second one reveals that, even after she adopted the genuine text, she cut out much of the denouement. Later, however, she wrote “In” on the omitted part, indicating that she decided to restore it.

18 Newcastle Advertiser. 1 02 1844.Google Scholar

19 Bristol Mercury, 2 09 1843.Google Scholar

20 [Margaret Stokes, ed. Theodore Martin,] “Helen Faucit,” Blackwood's Magazine (12 1885), p. 755.Google Scholar

21 Glasgow Herald, 18 12 1843Google Scholar; Sunday Times (London), 1 02 1852Google Scholar; Belfast Daily Mercury, 3 06 1856.Google Scholar

22 Sunday Times (London), 1 02 1852Google Scholar, Evening Packet (Dublin), 4 03 1845Google Scholar; Scotsman (Edinburgh), 26 04 1845.Google Scholar

23 Sunday Times, 26 03 1865.Google Scholar

24 Kendal, Madge Robertson, Dame Madge Kendal. By Herself (London: John Murray, 1933), p. 4.Google Scholar

25 Times, 22 03 1865Google Scholar (“raillery”); Sunday Times, 26 03 1865Google Scholar (“shadow”).

26 From an essay on Miss Faucit's Parisian performances by Edouard Thierry, first published in Le Messager, 20 01 1845Google Scholar; rpt. by Martin, Helena F., p. 409Google Scholar. The translation is my own.

27 Martin, Helena F., p. 143Google Scholar; Folger Library ROM 9, p. 200 (the stage direction is written in pencil in the left margin).

28 Sunday Times, 26 03 1865Google Scholar; Martin, Helena F., p. 143.Google Scholar

29 Le Messager, 20 01 1845Google Scholar; rpt. by Martin, Helena F., p. 410Google Scholar. British writers spoke of the “rapid transformations” of her “singularly expressive face” and the “surpassing power” with which she rendered the “varying feelings” in this passage. See Glasgow Courier, 13 02 1847Google Scholar, 2nd ed.; Belfast Daily Mercury. 3 06 1856.Google Scholar

30 Martin, Helena F., p. 144, n. 1.Google Scholar

31 “Helen Faucit. Recollections of a Great Actress. By an Old Theatrical Hand,” Evening News and Post, 24 05 1889Google Scholar (signed “T.A.C.”).

32 Belfast Daily Mercury, 3 06 1856Google Scholar; Sunday Times (London), 26 03 1865.Google Scholar

33 Martin, Helena F., p. 145.Google Scholar

34 La Presse, 20 01 1845Google Scholar; rpt. in Gautier, 's Histoire de l'art dramatique en France depuis vingt-cinq ans (Leipzig, 1859), IV. 28–29Google Scholar; Sunday Times (London), 26 03 1865.Google Scholar

35 Newcastle Chronicle, 27 01 1844.Google Scholar

36 Her new way of ending the scene is described in a letter to her by Marston, Westland, written on 31 01 1852Google Scholar, and quoted by SirMartin, Theodore in Helena Faucit, p. 232Google Scholar. The “commencement and progress” of her potion scene, Marston said, “were instances… of what [Miss Faucit] could do” but “its close was the instance of what [she] could refrain from doing, when fidelity to nature required.” He “admired the self-denial of true art here.”

37 Martin, Helena F., p. 145.Google Scholar

38 Le Messager. 20 01 1845Google Scholar; rpt. by Martin, Helena F., p. 409.Google Scholar

39 Glasgow Herald. 18 12 1843.Google Scholar

40 “Bon Gaultier and His Friends,” Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, 02 1844, pp. 122–23.Google Scholar

41 Scotsman, 26 04 1845.Google Scholar

42 Le Messager. 20 01 1845Google Scholar; rpt. by Martin, Helena F., p. 410.Google Scholar

43 [Margaret Stokes, ed. Theodore Martin,] “Helen Faucit,” p. 757.Google Scholar

44 Martin, Helena F., p. 153.Google Scholar

45 La Presse, 20 01 1845Google Scholar; rpt. in Gautier, 's Histoire de l'art dramatique, IV, 28.Google Scholar

46 Contributed by Mme. Colmache to Margaret Stokes's article, “Helen Faucit,” edited by Theodore Martin, and published anonymously in Blackwood's, 12 1885, p. 744.Google Scholar

47 Glasgow Courier, 28 02 1861.Google Scholar

48 Quoted by SirMartin, Theodore in Helena Faucit, p. 371.Google Scholar