"Mr. Gilbert's play 'Pygmalion and Galatea,' is a perversion of Ovid's
fable of the Sculptor of Cyprus, the main interest of which upon the stage
is derived from its cynical contrast between the innocence of the
beautiful nymph of stone whom Pygmalion's love endows with life, and the
conventional prudishness of society. Obviously the purpose of such a
travesty may be fulfilled without any call upon the deeper emotions--upon
the stress of passion, which springs from that 'knowledge of good and
evil' transmitted by Eve to all her daughters. It is sufficient that the
living and breathing Galatea of the play should seem to embody the classic
marble, that she should move about the stage with statuesque grace and
that she should artlessly discuss the relations of the sexes in the
language of double intent. Miss Anderson's degree of talent, as shown in
the impersonations she has already given us, and her command of classical
pose, have already suggested this character as one for which she was
eminently fitted. It was therefore no surprise to those who have been
least disposed to admit this lady's claim to greatness as an actress that
her Galatea on Saturday night should have been an ideally beautiful and
tolerably complete embodiment of the part. If the heart was not touched,
as, indeed, in such a play it scarcely ought to be, the eye was enabled to
repose upon the finest _tableau vivant_ that the stage has ever seen. Upon
the curtains of the alcove being withdrawn, where the statue still
inanimate rests upon its pedestal, the admiration of the house was
unbounded. Not only was the pose of the figure under the lime-light
artistic in the highest sense, but the tresses and the drapery were most
skillfully arranged to look like the work of the chisel. It is significant
of the measure of Miss Anderson's art, that in her animated moments
subsequently she should not have excelled the plastic grace of this first
picture. At the same time, to her credit it must be said, that she never
fell much below it. Her movements on the stage, her management of her
drapery, her attitudes were full of classic beauty. Actresses there have
been who have given us much more than this statuesque posing, who have
transformed Galatea into a woman of flesh and blood, animated by true
womanly love for Pygmalion as the first man on whom her eyes alight.
Sentiment of this kind, whether intended by the author or not, would
scarcely harmonize with the satirical spirit of the play, and the innocent
prattle which Miss Anderson gives us in place of it meets sufficiently
well the requirements of the case dramatically, leaving the spectator free
to derive pleasure from his sense of the beautiful, here so strikingly
appealed to, from the occasionally audacious turns of the dialogue in
relation to social questions, from the disconcerted airs of Pygmalion at
the contemplation of his own handiwork, and from the real womanly jealousy
of Cynisca."
_The Graphic_, 14th December, 1883.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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