The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 3, March 1810
History
The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 3, March 1810
Drama -- Periodicals; Theater -- Periodicals
extraordinary men who are the immediate subjects of our remark: for, if
we are astonished at that power, which, from a single spot as it were,
could collect sufficient materials for the construction of a world of
its own, we cannot gaze without wonder at that proud magnificence of
intellect, which, rushing like some mighty river, through extended
lakes, and receiving into its bosom the contributary waters of a
thousand regions, preserves its course, its name, and its character,
entire. With Milton, from whatever mine the ore may originally be
derived, the coin issues from his own mint with his own image and
superscription, and passes into currency with a value peculiar to
itself. To speak accurately, the mind of Shakspeare could not create;
and that of Milton invented with equal, or nearly equal, power and
effect. If we admit, in the Tempest, or the Midsummer’s Nights Dream,
a higher flight of the inventive faculty, we must allow a less
interrupted stretch of it in the Comus: in this poem there may be
something, which might have been corrected by the revising judgment of
its author; but its errors in thought and language, are so few and
trivial that they must be regarded as the inequality of the plumage, and
not the depression or unsteadiness of the wing. The most splendid
results of Shakspeare’s poetry are still separated by some interposing
defect; but the poetry of Comus may be contemplated as a series of gems
strung on golden wire, where the sparkle shoots along the line with
scarcely the intervention of one opake spot.
KEMBLE AND COOKE COMPARED.
A German gentleman of the name of Goede, after having travelled in
different parts of the world, arrived in England in 1802, where he
resided for two years. On his return to Germany, he communicated his
observations to his countrymen in five volumes, from which translations
have been made and given to the world under the name of “The Stranger in
England.” His remarks are deemed in general just. He has particularly
expatiated at some length on the English stage, which he thinks on the
decline, and, in his strictures, has shown great knowledge of the
subject, and exemplary liberality. Of COOKE and KEMBLE he speaks thus in
one place; “The countenance of Kemble is the most noble and refined; but
the muscles are not so much at command as those of Cooke, who is also a
first rate comedian; but Kemble almost wholly rejects the comic muse.
Both are excellent in the gradual changes of the countenance; in which
the inward emotions of the soul are depicted and interwoven as they flow
from the mind. In this excellence I cannot compare any German actors
with them, unless it be Issland and Christ. Among French tragedians even
Talma and Lafond are far inferior to them.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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