The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 1, January 1810
General
The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 1, January 1810
Drama -- Periodicals; Theater -- Periodicals
multitude of great and worthy personages in Great Britain and India, and
particularly the feelings of a sister, the lovely inheritress of her
family's virtues, if they had known at the time, that which our hero's
manly pride concealed, that the son of doctor Cooper, whose goodness of
heart had often been the refuge of the distressed, was for months
languishing under the chill of public neglect, and dragging on existence
upon a miserable pittance which scarcely afforded him physical support;
or if they had seen him in his unaccommodated removal from that
situation, walking on foot to the metropolis.
The repulses of a mistaken and unworthy few, and the neglect of a world
very little better, had no other effect upon Mr. Cooper's friends Godwin
and Holcroft, than to quicken their sensibility and inflame their ardour
to serve him. It is more than probable those mortifications tended to
increase the conviction of the former that his _eleve_ had made a
deplorable choice of profession, but did not at all shake the opinion
which both, and particularly the latter, entertained that he had great
capabilities for the profession. The youth had now waded in so far, that
to go back might be worse than to go forward; Mr. Holcroft therefore
again took him in hand; read Shakspeare with him, and accompanied their
reading with practical commentaries upon the force of that author's
meaning, marked out to him those parts where the character was to depend
for its interest and impression, on the actor's exertions; heard him
over and over again repeat the most difficult speeches, and instructed
him how to adapt his action, looks, and utterance to the passion which
the author designed to exhibit, so as to excite appropriate feelings in
the auditor. Though Shakspeare is above all others the poet of Nature,
his meaning frequently eludes the dim or vulgar mind, and to be
intelligibly elicited from the stiffness and obscurity which sometimes
injures his language, requires profound consideration. For the minute
investigation requisite for this purpose few men were better qualified
than Mr. Holcroft--few men much more equal to the task of bringing forth
from the rich mine where they lay and purify of their dross the talents
of Mr. Cooper. With an earnestness and indefatigable zeal proportioned
to the object, and which nothing but the most generous friendship could
impel him to employ, Mr. Holcroft gave those powers to the instruction
of our hero, and with such speedy and felicitous effect, that the young
gentleman was, in the course of a few months, considered by his two
friends as perfectly qualified to appear before a London audience in
some of Shakspeare's most important characters. Having been for some
time a successful dramatic writer, Mr. H. enjoyed the ear and confidence
of the managers, and arranged with those of Covent Garden for his
pupil's appearance on that stage. And now the time arrived when his
fortitude was to be rewarded, his sufferings compensated, and his
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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