Wallack's romantic play of _Rosedale_ (1863). He acted Joseph Surface in
the days when Lester Wallack used to play Charles, and he always held
his own in that superior part. He was equally fine in Sir Peter and Sir
Oliver. When the good old play of _The Wife's Secret_ was revived in New
York, in 1864, he gave a dignified and impetuous performance of Sir
Walter Amyott. I remember him in those parts, with equal wonder at his
comprehensive variety of talent and admiration for his always adequate
skill. I saw him as the volatile Ferment, in _The School of Reform_,
and nothing could be more comic than his unwitting abuse of General
Tarragon, in that blustering officer's presence, or his equally
ludicrous scene of cross purposes with Bob Tyke. He was a perfect type,
as Don Manuel Velasco, in _The Compact_, of the gallant, stately Spanish
aristocrat. He excelled competition when, in a company that included
George Holland, W. Holston, A.W. Young, Mark Smith, Frederick C.P.
Robinson, and John Gilbert, he enacted the convict in _Never Too Late to
Mend_. He was equally at home whether as the King in _Don Caesar de
Bazan_ or as Tom Stylus the literary hack, in _Society_. He passed
easily from the correct and sentimental Sir Thomas Clifford, of _The
Hunchback_, to the frivolous Mr. Willowear, of _To Marry or Not to
Marry_. No one could better express than he did, when playing Wellborn,
both pride of birth and pride of character. One of his most
characteristic works was Hyssop, in _The Rent Day_. His scope and the
rich resources of his experience are denoted in those citations. It is
no common artist who can create and sustain a perfect illusion, and
please an audience equally well, whether in such a part as Gilbert
Featherstone, the villain, in _Lost in London_, or old Baptista, in _The
Taming of the Shrew_. The playgoer who never saw Charles Fisher as
Triplet can scarcely claim that he ever saw the part at all. The quaint
figure, the well-saved but threadbare dress, the forlorn air of poverty
and suffering commingled with a certain jauntiness and pluck, the
profound feeling, the unconscious sweetness and humour, the spirit of
mind, gentility, and refinement struggling through the confirmed
wretchedness of the almost heart-broken hack--who that ever laughed and
wept at sight of him in the garret scene, sitting down, "all joy and
hilarity," to write his comedy, can ever forget those details of a true
and touching embodiment? His fine skill in playing the violin was
touchingly displayed in that part, and gave it an additional tone of
reality. I once saw him acting Mercutio, and very admirable he was in
the guise of that noble, brave, frolicsome, impetuous young gentleman.
The intense vitality, the glancing glee, the intrepid spirit--all were
preserved; and the brilliant text was spoken with faultless fluency. It
is difficult to realise that the same actor who set before us that
perfect image of comic perplexity, the bland and benevolent Dean, in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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