The gray-haired pastor calls his loved ones around him, in his
garden, and simply and reverently tells them of their misfortune, which
is to be accepted submissively, as Heaven's will. The deep religious
feeling of that scene, the grouping, the use of sunset lights and
shadows, the melody of the chimes, the stricken look in the faces of the
women and children, the sweet gravity of the Vicar--instinct with the
nobleness of a sorrow not yet become corrosive and lachrymose, as is the
tendency of settled grief--and, over all, the sense of blighted
happiness and an uncertain future, made up a dramatic as well as a
pictorial effect of impressive poetic significance. In act second--which
is pictorial almost without intermission--there was a companion
picture, when the Vicar reads, at his fireside, a letter announcing the
restitution of his estate; while his wife and children and Mr. Burchell
are assembled around the spinet singing an old song. The repose with
which Henry Irving made that scene tremulous, almost painful, in its
suspense, was observed as one of the happiest strokes of his art. The
face and demeanour of Dr. Primrose, changing from the composure of
resignation to a startled surprise, and then to almost an hysterical
gladness, presented a study not less instructive than affecting of the
resources of acting. Only two contemporary actors have presented
anything kindred with Mr. Irving's acting in that situation and
throughout the scene that is sequent on the discovery of Olivia's
flight--Jefferson in America and Got in France.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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