deep and loving sincerity diffused throughout the work, was shown the
grand unity of the embodiment; a unity based on the simple passion of
love. To hear that actor say the one supreme line to Iago, "I am bound
to thee forever," was to know that he understood and felt the meaning
of the character, to its minutest fibre and its profoundest depth.
There were touches of fresh and aptly illustrative "business" in the
encounter of Othello and Iago, in the great scene of the third act. The
gasping struggles of Iago heightened the effect of the Moor's fury, and
the quickly suppressed impulse and yell of rage with which he finally
bounded away made an admirable effect of nature. In the last scene
McCullough rounded his performance with a solemn act of sacrifice. There
was nothing animal, nothing barbaric, nothing insane, in the slaughter
of Desdemona. It was done in an ecstasy of justice, and the atmosphere
that surrounded the deed was that of awe and not of horror.
For the character of King Lear McCullough possessed the imposing
stature, the natural majesty, the great reach of voice, and the human
tenderness that are its basis and equipment. No actor of Lear can ever
satisfy a sympathetic lover of the part unless he possesses a greatly
affectionate heart, a fiery spirit, and,--albeit the intellect must be
shown in ruins,--a regal mind. Within that grand and lamentable image of
shattered royalty the man must be noble and lovable. Nothing that is
puny or artificial can ever wear the investiture of that colossal
sorrow. McCullough embodied Lear as, from the first, stricken in
mind--already the unconscious victim of incipient decay and dissolution;
not mad but ready to become so. There is a subtle apprehensiveness all
about the presence of the king, in all the earlier scenes. He diffuses
disquietude and vaguely presages disaster, and the observer looks on him
with solicitude and pain. He is not yet decrepit but he will soon break;
and the spectator loves him and is sorry for him and would avert the
destiny of woe that is darkly foreshadowed in his condition. McCullough
gave the invectives--as they ought to be given--with the impetuous rush
and wild fury of the avalanche; and yet they were felt to come out of
agony as well as out of passion. The pathos of those tremendous passages
is in their chaotic disproportion; in their lawlessness and lack of
government; in the evident helplessness of the poor old man who hurls
them forth from a breaking heart and a distracted mind. He loves, and he
loathes himself for loving: every fibre of his nature is in horrified
revolt against such lack of reverence, gratitude, and affection toward
such a monarch and such a father as he knows himself to have been. The
feeling that McCullough poured through those moments of splendid yet
pitiable frenzy was overwhelming in its intense glow and in its towering
and incessant volume. There was remarkable subtlety, also, in the manner
in which that feeling was tempered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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